Tools for Planning Holistic Learning Experiences
One useful tool that I have used successfully to plan holistic experiences for my students is called ‘The Big Four’. This tool categorizes different types of intelligences or learning styles into four quadrants: Intellectual, Kinaesthetic, Social Emotional, and Intrapersonal. Educators can use tools such as these to plan learning experiences, differentiate instruction, assessments and evaluations, or to design curriculum.
I try my best to incorporate various activities suited to different learning styles; however, this can sometimes be challenging — especially in high school Literacy or Math. The biggest challenge that I encounter (in planning and instruction) is finding ways for the students to explore learning/concepts through these frames of learning and not have them be stand alone activities.
One example from my experiences in an intermediate Math/Literacy class called ‘Flatland’. This course was based on Abbott’s text and explicitly designed to integrate Math and English outcomes at the intermediate high school level. Using the ‘Big Four’ as a planning tool, here is an example of various activities designed to allow students to holistically explore the idea of privilege as applied to the class system in Victorian England:
Social-Emotional — Each student is randomly assigned character based on the text (and in different social classes). Students are prompted to act their character and dramatize how they would treat others.
Kinaesthetic — There is an activity that teaches about privilege that we adapted to fit the story of Flatland(waste-basket basket-ball-type game that privileges certain students based on character and position to target). (https://theequalitycirrculum.wordpress.com/2014/12/07/a-simple-way-to-teach-students-about-privilege/)
Intellectual — Journalling the connections to the text ‘Flatland’ — students make explicit connections between the activities in class and how the author uses satire to expose the unjust features of the class system. Then, students connect those issues to modern day society.
Intrapersonal — Reflection — Head / Heart / Hands — one of my favourite prompts for reflecting. Students reflect on what they learn, how it makes them feel, and what they would like to learn/do about it.
