A story of multiple intelligences

I had the privilege to participate in a workshop on Multiple Intelligences (MI), led by Phil Dexter, from Pilgrims.  It was during the course on Creative Methodology For The Classroom I attended at the University of Kent, in Canterbury, on the second half of July 2010.

Phil Dexter used different strategies to show how to put into action a variety of MIs in an integrated way. As he dictated a story (All about John), he interrupted it to invite us to respond to activities regarding the story. For example,  in pairs, we were invited to write the first six lines of the dialogue between John and Elaine; individually, we were invited to listen to a few questions, choose two and answer them; in pairs, we were asked to describe his mother's character; in groups, we were asked to design John's room, using the rods and the buttons provided in a box; we were also invited to describe the sort of music John enjoyed and to imagine and write a sentence from his blog post.

This activity turned out to be very funny as we would never believe so many alternative stories would come out from a very simple plot that had been embedded with our own contributions coming out of our MIs.

The activity presented by Phil Dexter was based on an idea in Dictation - New methods, new possibilities, by Paul Davis and Mario Rinvolucri, CUP, 1988.