Howard Gardner and PBL

One of my favorite educational theorists is Howard Gardner. His theory of multiple intelligences proposes that there are eight different intelligences that people have. A person can be outstanding at one of the intelligences and yet not so great at another intelligence. They include bodily-kinestetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, naturalistic, and spatial intelligences. The reason I like love this theory is its ability to explain why a student would excel in mathematics and struggle in English. As a teacher, I can use this theory to create projects that would allow students to utilize what they are good at as well as work with students who have different intelligences.

I was looking into a holiday greeting card project and I wanted to examine it through the eyes of Howard Gardner. What would he think? Is it a project that gives children an opportunity to use their different intelligences?

In this greeting card project, students will create and mail out a large number of greeting cards to their friends and family. In order to get to the point of being able to actually get cards mailed out, students will have to:

1. Create a mailing list - Who do you add to the list? What are you going to use to write the list (paper or computer)? How will you get addresses?
2. Content - What will the cards look like? Will there be multiple cards? Will you include an newsletter? What about personalized notes?
3. What materials will you need? Paper, paints, envelopes, stamps, etc. ?
4. Addressing envelopes - Check the inside of the card to make sure everything is there. Decide if some cards will be e-mailed to save on postage.
5. Affixing stamps and mailing out cards; e-mailing cards.
6. How much will it all cost? How can the money be raised?
7. How much time will this take?

Gardner would think this is a pretty good project. The students who are in charge of creating the cards will be using their bodily-kinesthetic intelligence as well as their spatial reasoning. Students with good interpersonal skills will be able to think about what kinds of cards to create to send out to the people on the mailing list. Writing the inside greeting will utilize the students' linguistic intelligence. And the logical-mathematical students can create a budget and figure out what supplies to buy. The teacher can also get more specific with the project, which seems to be very flexible, and bring in more intelligences.