Chapter 5 Learning Log

What?
This chapter is about the psychology of intelligence. We covered many different vocabulary words and theories that pertain to the overarching idea of intelligence. We covered the legislation of IDEA and the lasting impact that it has had on schools, including different programs that have been permanently implemented because of it.
We also went over 5 different theories from various psychologists about the nature of intelligence and how it is manifest. We did a jigsaw exercise and therefore, I became more proficient in Spearman's g theory, then learned about the other theories from my group members. The theories that have stuck with me are spearman's g, gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, the triarchy of intelligence, crystallized vs. fluid intelliegence, and distributive intelligence (which is the most interesting to me). It is based on the idea that intelligence is actually augmented by different support systems- social, cultural, and another.

So What?
- What is the most popular song written by the author of cool, Miles Davis, Alex.
-correct
These theories of intelligences are very interesting to me. It is interesting to look at the history of intelligence theory and how we seem to have come from the idea of one very general, over-arching intelligence that can be easily measured to many multiple intelligences that are too difficult to accurately measure. I personally believe they all hold some validity. I am mostly interested in the idea of distributive intelligence as we defined it. Where our intelligence is augmented through different support systems. I really like that idea because it is a proactive type of theory that we can practice in our classroom and lives.
I did an activity in a Business Management class of mine where we took a test individually about nature survivalism. We then got together in groups of 4 and took the test together. The purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate that as a group, we collectively score higher on the test than any one single member of the team does alone. It was interesting to see that across the board, every team's scores were higher than any individual of that team scored alone. This seems to pertain to the idea of distributive intelligence to me.

Now What?
First of all, I now understand IDEA and what is expected of me as a teacher as far as the education of exceptional students. I understand the concepts of gifted, retarded, and inclusion. Also, I plan on adapting my instruction to include these theories. Especially the idea of multiple intelligences. I strongly believe that people have very different approaches to learning and that we would do well to include different activities that would allow for different access to the knowledge. This goes along with the activity we did at the end of class where we were to come up with 8 different approaches of teaching the same content- which correspond to the 8 different intelligences.