Story Time

Once upon a time there was a student named Radimus who was going into first grade. He loved school when he was in kindergarten and woke up early each morning excited to see his friends and participate in all the activities. Although he loved his classmates and the daily routine he was behind all of his peers in reading, writing, math and memorization. He had begun to notice and was starting to loose confidence as he watched his friends move on to harder books.

His teacher, Ms. Smith, was worried but she had confidence that he would catch up with his friends. At the beginning of first grade he was unable to identify most letters and numbers. He had also forgotten many of the skills taught the previous year. His teacher had recently heard about “Gardner's theory of multiple intelligence” (RG, May 18, 2009) and decided to test him to see his strengths and weaknesses. After the assessment it was found that Radimus “was highest in kinesthetic and interpersonal” (TS, May 18, 2009) and his lowest scores were in linguistic and mathematical. This confirmed Ms. Smith’s suspicions. She decided to do “research to understand these learning styles in order to address them effectively” (LK, May 16, 2009).

A plan was devised to include more “poems, music, essays, pieces of art” (DH, May 18, 2009) and other types of activities that would help him and his classmates to learn the information in a variety of ways, thus reinforcing the information. She did research on the concept of universal design which helps teachers adapt the classroom to reach diverse learners “and it also really helps those with disabilities (fulfills IDEA)” (MH, May 19, 2009). Ms. Smith thought that this new teaching method would benefit all of her students so she began to use it with her class. After a few months Radimus was still behind his peers in linguistic and mathematical skills but the new classroom routine gave him confidence and he was helping his peers to improve on their weaknesses and learn from their strengths. All the students were improving in all skill areas and helping each other to improve learning.