Chapter 5 Learning Log

What?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), is a legislative act to help schools address individual needs of students. It covers children from early childhood education, all the way through the age of 21. An Individualized Education Plan, (IEP) is overseen by IDEA and is a list of accommodations, goals, and plans for accomplishing goals. It is complied by a committee of professionals, parents, and teachers. In high school, this IEP plan also conatains a transition plan to hlep students transition into a real-world environment. The goal of special education today is to ehlp the students remain in the least-restrictive environment as possible.

IQ tests used to be implemented liberally as a way to evaluate students on t heir intelligence. The most commonly used was Spearman's g, but others included Catell's Fluid and Crystallized, Sternberg's Triacrchic Theory, and Distributed Intelligence. The most accepted form of IQ test today is Gardner's Multiple Intelligences.

So What?

As a teacher, abiding by all of the components of IDEA is essential. It is a legally binding contractual educational plan that must be implemented in order to provide students with special needs with their rights to equal education. We must support our students with special needs in order to help them gain the best education possible.

Understanding Gardner's Multiple Intelligences can help us as teachers better reach or students who learn in different ways. The different components of Gardner's intelligences are: Linguistic, Logical, Spatial, Musical, Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal, Naturalist, and Existential. By understanding the best way our students learn, we can better fulfill their educational needs.

Now What?

For the 'Now What' section of my learning log, I am going to share the multiple intelligences "lesson plan" we were asked to think about in class.

My lesson plan incorporating multiple intelligences is a Biology lesson about the different kinds of plants and trees that are indigenous to our climate. The lesson would require the students to go and collect (Kinesthetic) leaf samples of different kinds of plants surrounding the school. They then would be required to identify the plants using a field guide (Naturalist) of the indigenous plants of the region. Then, they would be required to draw (Spatial) the leaves they found. They then would write a paragraph (Linguistic) describing each type of leaf they found.