Curriculum planning and design

Curriculum Planning: Multiple Intelligences and Standards-Based Education

Develop classroom instructional criteria for accommodating various learning styles in a standards-based curriculum environment

The demand that teachers tailor their instructional criteria to the requirements of standardized testing seems to fly in the face of the need to differentiate instruction to incorporate student's different learning styles. Teachers may long "to attend to student differences, but they must ensure that every student becomes competent in the same subject matter and can demonstrate the competencies on an assessment that is differentiated neither in form nor in time constraints" (Tomlinson 2000).

However, the fact that all students must be subject to the same criteria does not mean that every child must learn such basic concepts in the same way. In one Algebra II class filled with a room of individuals with different learning styles and needs that was facing the challenge of standardized tests, the teacher incorporated more group learning and individuated instruction, to accommodate student differences while still preparing students for the format they would face on standardized tests. In the groups students were asked to show different ways to demonstrate the same concepts, verbally, visually, kinesthetically, and so forth. Teachers using a differentiated, multiple-intelligence-based philosophy in their instruction who still have to meet standardized benchmarks for learning must have a clear understanding of test requirements but they can use the requirements as a destination, and not use the same map or blueprint for every child, when creating a syllabus.

In another example of "an elementary classroom, a teacher organized many of her standards around three key concepts -- connections, environments, and change -- and their related principles; for example, living things are changed by and change their environments... That approach, she said, allowed everyone to work with the same big ideas and skills in a lesson while she could adjust materials, activities, and projects for varied readiness levels, diverse interests, and multiple modes of learning" (Tomlinson 2000).

Knowledge, and demonstrating how to use knowledge, must remain the focus, and there are many ways to demonstrate knowledge. "For example, students can share how to solve an arithmetic problem in many ways. Some students may...write a paragraph explaining the process, and still others may express their knowledge through drawings. In addition, students in the same classroom can focus on problems that range in complexity, with some students describing the process for reducing fractions and others designing and explaining binomial equations," (Kluth & Straut 2001). In short, teachers can give students some discretion in demonstrating how they know the concept in a way that is fun and meaningful to the child, such as asking an artistically-minded child to create a drawing to demonstrate a solution to a word problem. Also, some of the more confident and gifted students may strive to take the standards to the 'next level' of learning.