UNDERSTANDING+AND+WORKING+WITH+MULTIPLE+INTELLIGENCES-MEGHAN+BELER+by+Bekir+Karataş

UNDERSTANDING AND WORKING WITH MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES by MEGHAN BELER – Speaking This session tries to give an overview of and allow teachers to reflect their own understanding of multiple intelligences and how different preferences for learning should be taken into consideration by teachers. Firstly, Beler’s accent and pronunciation impressed me a lot. Her intonation was perfect, just perfect. Meghan Beler was very well-prepared for the session and she was very effective. The topic was quite interesting and I think it was one of the important points many teacher do not take seriously. She tried to explain multiple intelligences, general overview and tried to explain teachers’ understanding of multiple intelligences. She explained current usage and done a demonstration. She emphasized that every learner has their own unique way of understanding, capability and ability. In classroom, all these differences should be taken into consideration. She put an emphasis on student diversity, which is important for both education and equal opportunity, following Gardener’s Multiple Intelligences Theory. She gave a series of activities, which I think using those can be very effective in a real classroom environment. “4 songs, 4 questions” addressing learners’ musical, interpersonal and linguistic intelligences. Other activity I like most is “My Secret Picture”- my favorite one. Its procedure; students form pairs, one turns back to teacher/front side of classroom. Teacher shows a picture and wants the one turned back to ask yes/no question and draw accordingly. Then the seeing picture tells what they see. Other student are responsible for drawing what is s/he heard. This activity addresses nearly all the intelligences plus critical thinking ability. Third activity was Word Clouds, another interesting one. With the help of some websites, most frequently words in a text are separated and are given on screen varying in size according to frequency. Meghan Beler wanted us to draw a tree with branches and wanted us to discuss what this story may be about. These last two activities were the ones I heart first. Meghan Beler continued by explaining the combination of these intelligences and gave some hints how to combine easily and effectively. She frequently emphasized the importance of uniqueness and differences of learners. I think suggestions/ideas of Meghan Beler can be applied to all language levels and it would be useful. I have learned that integrating multiple intelligences is not as hard as I used to think before. Planning is the key point. . I’m fully agree with Meghan Beler. New activities Meghan Beler mentioned were quite surprising to me. If we think, usage in real classroom, they are quite applicable in our education system. On the contrary, application may be very problematic in our education system because of some major problems such as crowded classrooms and education of teachers. To sum up, my impressed situation lasted from the beginning to the end and I am really happy to be there and attend this session. I believe that this session gave me new ideas and concept beside perception of multiple intelligences and I will use the tactics and the activities in real classroom environment. **Comment by Mehriban Arnazarova ** After reading your reflection, I wished I would attent to the same session either because first of all the topic attracted my attention and you explained it clearly. That's why, thank you too for sharing the summary and your ideas. To come to the point, I think most of the educators seem to be aware of the importance of using different strategies to students having different intelligences. However, that's all. They do not apply those strategies as they are aware of them. I appreciated Meghen Beler because she emphasized how important to achieve it and shared some techniques to accomplish the goal and I liked the activities which seem to be applicable in Turkey and each level of students as you think. By the way, I can not help saying I appreciated you that you paid attention to the pronunciation of the presenter:) As teachers of future we should also pattern and be motivated by how speakers use the language or how they pronounce the words in English. Thank you.  **Comment by Büşra Çalışıcı:** I have attended to this session, too and it was my favourite session in that conference also. The presenter was so impressive and explained the topic she wanted to tranmit perfectly. Also the activities that she made us do were very useful and applicable in real classrooms. I found activities interesting also because I have seen the power of intelligences on the learning. I have learnt how much important multiple intelligences are and how they can be applied in classes. In my mind, the most interesting activity is the one that encourages students to speak in target language by asking questions each other. Yet, the activity in which most frequently words are used is interesting also and I have not seen such activity before. Consequentlyi I liked this session very much and learnt many thing. Also, I refresh my memories thanks to Bekir's reflection. He writes clearly about the session and his opinions. **Comment by Zeynep Ceyhan:** I agree with you Bekir since Beler’s accent and pronunciation impressed me a lot, too. Multiple intelligences should be taken into consideration by every teachers since we cannon leave behind any child. I also attended the session and I remembered the activities we have done during session. They were enjoying. As teachers, we can use her activities in a real class and I think students will love those activities. I totally agree with you that with a good plan combining multiple intelligences and integrating them to lesson functions we can create a perfect classroom. Thanks to session, I focus on multiple intelligences issue more deeply and I think it will be helpful for my future teaching life. I liked this session very much and learnt many thing. Additionally I like Bekir's reflection because he mentions points very clearly. Thank you:)