UbD/DI Chapters 6,7 and MI Chapters 5,6

            All of these chapters discuss traditional teaching methods and how they are challenged by differentiated instruction and multiple intelligences. The chapters also touch on how these new types of instruction can be integrated into more traditional styles of teaching. Each of the chapters provides some example or recommendations of successful teaching using differentiation and/or utilizing the multiple intelligences.

            Chapter 6 of UbD/DI discusses how teachers have a tendency to teach students labeled as low achieving only the basics, not allowing them to fully synthesize and understand material. This topic is also touched upon in the next chapter, which discusses how the “ladder method” is flawed. The ladder method is the idea that in order for students to analyze and make meaning of material, they must first understand the basic facts. This practice is flawed, as all studies have shown that all students, despite whether they are labeled as high or low achieving, have the ability to synthesize material. Using the ladder method prevents all students from learning the material and forces low achieving students to be stuck in that category.

            The importance of teaching more than just the facts is emphasized even more in the chapters of UbD/DI. Chapter 7 discusses the flaw in “covering” content. Covering content means the teacher is just skimming the surface of that topic and rushing through it in order to meet standards. The book argues that teachers should “uncover” content. That is, to go into multiple layers and allowing their students to discover and investigate this topic. Due to the pressures put on teachers by standards and testing, many teachers do not uncover content, but rather just rush through units.

            This pressure put on teachers is discussed in Chapter 5 of MI. This chapter emphasizes how standards, pressure to complete text books, and testing is shaping classrooms in a negative way. This chapter discusses how important it is to teach to “awake minds” and how traditional teaching does not always succeed in doing this. However, it is possible to incorporate multiple intelligences into more traditional teaching styles. Chapter 6 of MI goes into great detail of how to suit each intelligence in the classroom. Many of the ideas presented in this chapter could be incorporated into a more traditional chapter, and others are more modern.

            These chapters were helpful for me as a future educator because they gave me explicit examples of how to differentiate and utilize multiple intelligences. I liked the discussions on covering versus uncovering material. I agree that classrooms are under too much pressure to meet standards and not enough pressure for students to actually be learning and enjoying school. I see a lot of posts on social media and hear a lot of people in real life talking about how they hate school and find it to be a requirement to get through life rather than an actual enriching learning experience. I hope that as I teacher I will be able to use multiple intelligences to differentiate my classroom in a way that encourages students to truly dig into material and understand it on a deep, meaningful level.