Browsing, Walking, and Talking

Overview:  Students can often have trouble finding topics that they want to write about.  This lesson provides teachers with a way to address multiple intelligences in the classroom while helping students discover topics that will develop into exciting written works.

From theory to practice:

Howard Gardner’s popular discussions of multiple intelligences have inspired teachers to adapt their teaching strategies to meet the needs of diverse learners.  We know that students create knowledge in far more ways that simply reading, writing, speaking, and listening.  In her book Talking, Sketching, Moving, Patty Dunn suggests many ways to address these multiple intelligences in the classroom through both teacher behaviors and student activities.  The following lesson features activities appropriate for verbal/linguistic, body/kinesthetic, and interpersonal learners.

For further reading:

Dunn, Patricia.  Talking, Sketching, Moving:  Multiple Literacies in the Teaching of Writing.  Portsmouth:  Heineman-Boynton/Cook, 2001.

Gardner, Howard.  Frames of Mind:  The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.  NY:  BasicBooks, 1993.

Gardner, Howard.  Intelligence Reframed:  Multiple Intelligences for the 21^st Century.  NY:  BasicBooks, 2000.

Student Objectives:  Following the activity, students will have thought of two or three paper topics to write about.
 
Instructional Plan

Instruction/Activities:

• Allow students about 20 minutes to "browse" through the reading materials.  They can skim articles or items that look interesting to them.
• Have students then pair up and take about 20 minutes to "walk and talk" about possible topics.  They could walk around in the building (if permitted) or outside if weather permits.
• Encourage students to keep walking and talking to their partners about what they read in order to come up with topics.
• When they return from their walk, they should have a short list of topics they would want to write about.
• Students should write down these topics and then spend the last part of the class writing discovery drafts of their essays.

Extensions:  Leaving the room may be difficult because of school restraints, but any movement is better than none in this activity.  The instructor might try to have students walk around the school track if it is unoccupied at the time.

Student Assessment/Reflections

Students can be assessed informally and receive teacher feedback on the quality/quantity of topics they generate through this activity.  They can also reflect on the effectiveness of this lesson through commentary on their process in writing the paper.

Standards:

1.  Students read a wide range of print and non-print texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
 
3.  Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
 
5.  Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
 
7.  Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and non-print texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.
 
11.  Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
 
12.  Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).