Gardiner and Blooms...together

Today in Year 9 I started a unit on the Earth which brings together the Muliple Intelligences ideas of Gardiner and Bloom's taxonomy of joy.
The students got into groups of three and had to choose one of three units on the Earth.
They included:

• Rocks and crystals
• Inner Earth
• Earthquakes

Each unit also had a different style of intelligence that it appeals to. For example the Earthquake unit is for students who like the mathematical/calculating style of working. Plenty of worksheets, statistics and calculations. The Rocks and crystals is more of a hands-on unit with practicals on making crystals, making booklets and the like. The Inner earth unit is more interpersonal with presentations and discussions the focus.
It is the culmination of the last 18 months and the AGQTP work being done. I like it because it is student driven and planned. Once I have outline what is expected (took about 15 minutes) they had to sit and plan all the work for the next three weeks (including homework).
I am very much the guide rather than the teacher. It is a logistical nightmare though. Makes teaching interesting.

Current Developments

I have tried a few techniques recently and so I would like to share them with you all.

1. Y-chart with Year 11 Psychology. I was trying to introduce the topic of aggression to the students and thought that they Y-chart with "What does it look/sound/feel like" would be a useful way to get them thinking about the topic. It worked well and I shall try it again with some other aspects of the course that they have an experience of.
   
2. Round-Robin with Year 9 Science. I wanted them to generate ideas about acids and bases - their uses and dangers. They had a piece of paper and then passed it round 1 at a time, wrote ideas down and passed it to the next person. I needed to go over the idea of brainstorming because they spent too much time trying to get affirmation from each other about their ideas - however at least it got down on paper some of the ideas from all of the group.
3. I followed this up with Tournament Prioritiser where the students went through the ideas and omitted some and keep other depending on their ranking.
4. Finally, I then asked them to give members of the group a job. The jobs included: Organsier (overall coordination), Clarifier (had to make sure the point of the project was clear), Creative Genius (had to try and improve the creativity of the response), writer, andChecker (whose job it was to make sure the information was accurate from a scientific point of view). I need to work on this because this is the first time I have explicitly used the cooperative groups idea.
   

They will present their information as a radio play (ie read from a script with sound effects) and they rest of the class will listen in and assess them on their clarity and creativity. We have practiced this beforehand and so hopefully they will have enjoy being involved in the assessment of their peers.