Multiple Intelligences Assessment

The Intelligence Aspect that I scored the highest in was the "Musical" (also referred to as "Rhythmic") intelligence. To me, this assessment makes a lot of sense: my grandmother was a piano prodigy when she was younger, and composed a sizable body of work during her lifetime; both of my parents play instruments, and actually met when they were in a rock band together; and my mother recently made the comment to me that if she ever wanted me to learn something as a child, all she had to do was sing it to me. At the time, she brought up a song that she had taught me in kindergarten to remember my address. I promptly sang the exact song back to her (although I learned it when I was 5 - that's 18 years ago, now!), much to her surprise.

I have a strong habit of playing with words, especially those that form an interesting cadence, and very often compose new lyrics to songs both for fun and to teach myself or others something. These are all common characteristics of Musically Intelligent people, along with easily dancing to a rhythm, playing an instrument, and being distracted my music or ambient noise, all of which describe me very well.

Some technologies I would love to play with that would be helpful to these learning types are music editing programs, so students can see the sound waves of songs that they enjoy and see how it relates to mathematics. I would also love to have students play around with a simple music creation programs on the computer, so they could see how pitch and tone change the feeling of a piece. I also believe that having students write their own songs or lyrics will help them to remember the material they cover better. If the entire class created songs on a particular subject it would be nice to make a CD of all the students work at the end of the project.

In order to accommodate these types of students, I find it very important to keep the classroom at an appropriate level of noise (i.e. if I am talking, no one else should be talking; if people are working together there should be only a medium amount of talking); I like to create rhyming or sung mnemonics so students can remember tricky facts; I will try to integrate art and music into my classroom; and I will seek to find new ways for students to make connections between my subject and the subjects they find in

I believe that being aware of all different types of intelligences will allow students to better use their minds and memories, leading to new types of understanding. If the format of the classroom is widely varied, every student can develop their own method of learning that plays to their particular strengths.