How

1.

A specific integration matrix from Bloom and Gardner has been developed for pre-school children. This includes questions for various intelligence preferences and different thinking levels, tailored to toddlers.

(de identifying tools van Maruska noemen).

2.

The Australian Tony Ryan invented the concept of Thinker’s Keys in 1990.

They are 20 keys with a question or assignment that encourages children to think creatively, analytically and practically.

Almost all children are familiar with the concept of "key" as a thing you use to open something.

We use the thinking keys to open our minds. This is an easy to explain concept for children.

There is also a video available with explanations.

We present also some projects with topics that are very familiar to young children and that are very useful to differentiate in the questions during the regular lessons.

Thinker's keys  makes the lessons and tasks  much more interesting and challengin for children with a developmental advantage, and actually for all children!

Example

Integration matrix

There are several examples of an matrix in which multiple intelligences of Gardner are presented in the thinking levels of Bloom. Most of them are useful in Primary School. Some of them can be used as inspiration to develop tasks for younger children (5 - 8 years)

We present here an example from Australia inspired by the Just as me? project (integration of different cultures) .

Another example can be used in Christmas time. 

A task for children based on the matrix could be: 

The teacher asks children to present a problem of the classroom and to find out 3 manners to solve. And for that task the teacher chooses some of the multiple intelligences of Gardner to use.

De leerkracht vraagt aan een aantal kinderen om een probleem uit de klas te bedenken en daar 3 oplossingsrichtingen bij te bedenken. Daarbij helpt hij de kinderen gebruik te maken van een van de meervoudige intelligenties van Gardner.

Problem  ...................   (e.g. how to prepare Christmas time; or: how to make the classroom more attractive; or ......)

Solution 1 ....................

Solution 2: ....................

Solution 3: ...........................

In this way the children are challenged to think in more directions for solutions and to cooperate.

Example

Thinker's keys.

Thinker's keys are very useful to challenge children to think on different ways. In this example we use the thinker's key Winter

Children are challenged to think using the "What if"  key: 

➔ What happens if it never snows again?
➔ What if the temperature is always 25 degrees?
➔ What if winter falls in the summer holidays?
➔ What happens if all snowmen could talk and walk? Think of nice stories from books.
➔ What would you do if you had five days of ice / snow free?

etc. A teacher can easily find more examples. 

There are more keys you can use:e.g.  the alphabet key, the reverse key, the brainstorm key, the construction key).

More examples of Thinking Keys  (Autumn, Summer ) including surveys of keys are presented in the project page of this Toolkit.