Chapter 10: MI and Assessment

The MI theory suggests a fundamentally new way for teachers to teach the students but that theory would be useless if teachers continued to assess students with the same methods that have always been used. Again observation and documentation of a student’s work will show true understanding. A few schools or programs that have implemented a system using the MI theory are project spectrum, the Key learning community, and Arts PROPEL. The chapter also suggests the idea that the way the student learned the material should be taken into consideration when assessing the student’s understanding. If the student learned the material by graphs and pictures and the test had neither of those, only a written explanation of what the graphs would show, the student would not do as well. The chapter ends reiterating the importance of portfolios to document students’ progress of learning. Assessing portfolios should assess two types of learning; competency, how much the student learned, and ipsative, comparing a student’s learning against his or her own work. This affects me as a teacher by affecting the way I assess. It offers many ways in which I can assess my students’ learning. Besides if a student can use multiple intelligences to communicate their understanding of a subject then that really shows that the students has learned the material. This effects my students by helping them demonstrate their learning in the way it was learned. It will also help them learn the material better if they learn it in different ways and then are assessed in those different ways as well.