THE C-WHEEL

Hi friends! In this post I want to talk about the importance of c-wheel, but… what is the c-wheel? Who developed it?

The “creator” of the c-wheel is Carol Read, teacher educator and writer. For this reason, possibly, she developed the c-wheel to use on teacher education courses in order to help develop awareness and understanding of ways to create optimal conditions for children´s learning.

Is very important to considerer that the c-wheel is a flexible tool, which could be applied to many different teaching and learning context, and the second part, to suggest that by adopting and approach in which we take account of the whole child.

The c-wheel is a “wheel” as the name suggests, in the centre of the wheel is the child. Around the child are eight segments:

• Context: must be natural, relevant, active and experimental for the child, also it is important use of gestures, mime, body language…
• Creative: it is more important in a child´s learning, much more of primary-age children.
• Connections: it is a very important the connection with other areas (science, geography…), to teaching-learning sequence, the connections serves to child´s previous knowledge.
• Coherence: it is crucial to ensure that the reasons for doing things are perceived as relevant and worthwhile.
• Challenge: we need to develop thinking skills as well as language skills.
• Curiosity: we need to make the process of learning interesting, relevant and enjoyable for the children.
• Care: supporting the learning using positive language.
• Community: children need to feel part of a community and also feel valued and secure.

On the other hand, around these eight segments are others factors, this factors are:

• Materials: is important to know the material to be used, for example, books, posters…
• Methodology: we have to decide how we will give class, individual or general class.
• Educational and cultural context: the context and culture are important in children´s learning and therefore must be taken into account.
• Curriculum: refers to the objectives and learning outcomes are specified.
• Evaluation: including the assessment of children´s learning.

For this reason, it is important to ask the following question: which ingredients of the c-wheel are most relevant to you?

In my opinion all of the “ingredients” are very important in the teaching-learning process.

WHO IS HOWARD GARDNER?

All teacher have an “obligation” to know who is Howard Gardner, for this reason I write this post, so we all know a little about him.

Gardner is a psychologist, researcher and professor at Harvard University, he is known for having formulated the Theory of Multiple Intelligences, theory that made him prize winner the Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences.

In this theory he explains that the intelligences work together, but each person develops some more than others.

Professor Gardner is considered one of the most influential intellectuals of the world. His ideas have inspired thousands of schools from five continents, where they grow different intellectual capacities in each student and the teachers use all type of methods to get it.

Gardner´s ideas also stimulate creativity, this ideas propose teachers to think of new forms to approach the concepts that the teachers want to explain.

For this reason, I believe it is important to know the eight intelligences of Gardner, these are:

•  Linguistic: these people understand the order and meaning of words in reading, writing, speaking and listening. These people are political or religious leaders, orators, writers, etc.
•  Logical/mathematical: these people use logic and numbers to establish relationships between different data.
•  Spatial: let´s think in three dimensions, displaying the forms from their different angles.
• Bodily/kinaesthetic: they are especially bright in this type of intelligence dancers, athletes and even surgeons and plastic artists, they all have to rationally their physical abilities.
•  Musical: people who are able to play instruments, read and compose musical pieces easily. In this intelligence include musicians, singers or people who enjoy the music.
•  Interpersonal: allows us to interpret the words or gestures or the objectives and goals of each speech.
•  Intrapersonal: intelligence that enables us to understand and control internally self. People who stand out in the intrapersonal intelligence are able to access their feelings and emotions and reflect on them.
• Naturalistic: allow us to detect, differentiate and categorize the aspects related to nature, for example animal and plant species or natural phenomena.

On the other hand, we must be aware that human have not only a single intelligence, but that has all but in characterized by more developed one another.

Actually the problem is that at schools the teachers care about enhancing the linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligences, giving less importance to the others intelligences.