Students possessing this intelligence generally are good in science, especially biology. They love to work outdoors, gardening or taking care of animals and plants. They often stand apart from the crowd, involving themselves in environmental issues. Here are some classroom strategies you can use to reach these students, or to work on "stretching" other students' naturalistic intelligence.

• Taste-Write-Discuss:
  Students use their sense of taste to guess an object. Blindfolds work well, and make sure that every students gets a turn.
• Touch-Write-Discuss:
  Same idea as above, only using a different sense. If you can get students to write about their experiences, you are also stretching their verbal-linguistic intelligence. Also, if they make a chart of the results of their "experiment," then they are using their logical-mathematical intelligence, too!
• Observe-Draw-Compare:
  Students observe a specimen, draw it, then pair up to compare drawings and list or chart characteristics of the chosen object. This activity also incorporates the logical/mathematical, verbal/linguistic, and interpersonal intelligences!
• Same-Different:
  Each student or pair of students are given two items, and must make lists or charts of their similarities and differences. This activity can work with almost any content, and you can use abstract ideas instead of actual objects (e.g. compare and contrast decades, battles, parts of the cell, etc.).
• Field Trips/Nature Walks
• Class Greenhouse/Terrarium/Pet

  Skills and Preferences

  Students who are "naturally smart" are good at or like:
  • Analyzing similarities and differences
  • Appreciating living things
  • Caring for living things
  • Classification systems
  • Collecting nature objects (rocks, leaves)
  • Seeing patterns in natural occurences (weather, etc.)
  • Observing details
  • Understanding environmental interdependence
  --Kagan & Kagan, 1998