A lot has happened since my last post.  I really must get more disciplined in posting.  Since December 11th, we have had Christmas, and my area of the world had a snow storm.  I was one of the privileged few that went without power for a week - right over Christmas.  It was definitely a Christmas to remember.  My kids are telling the world that it was the Christmas that mom was trying to freeze them out.  We did survive, a couple of friends lent us generators, (2) and one of those friends not only cooked our Christmas dinner they brought it up to the house for us - we were very touched.

Now where were we; the math - logical intelligence.  The individual who is strongest in this area of intelligence finds creating stories very frustrating.  (The cow jumped over the moon what more do you need thinks this kind of mind.)  To help this individual help them create a story path to start off with.  It is a very structured process so helps make sure that they get all the points.   Another suggestion is that in the beginning have the writer write about something that has actually happened in their life. That is exactly what I have done here.  Realize that the first five steps are done in point form, don't worry about full sentences, grammar or spelling, that is what step 6 is for.
Step 1 -Create a character - Bev - a woman 
                      1. mother, slender, wearing black pants, white shirt, hair tied back, lunch bag and purse in her hand
Step 2 - Create a problem - trying to get to work, and the car will not start
                       1. puts the key in the ignition, turns, and nothing
Step 3  - Create a solution to the problem - gets the car fixed
                        1. have starter replace, and pays the bill
Step 4 - Create 2 to 5 events between the problem and the solution
                         1, tried pushing
                                 - thinking the starter was out of alignment tried pushing the car a bit to see if it would help  - no luck
                         2. tried to  jump start the car
                                 - calls friend to jump start, thinking it might be the battery - no luck
                         3. call tow truck to take it to the garage
                                 - give up and call a tow truck to take the car to the garage
                         4. call a friend to drive her to work in the mean time
                                  - ask the friend to drive her to work
Step 5 - add details to each of the above steps.
                          for the sake of this I have written these details in this colour above.

Step 6 - Write the above steps in story order in full sentences.

This should give you a good idea of what I am talking about.  With the younger students, to give it a visual I actually draw a road on the paper or blackboard, and put the first four steps up.  Think of the process as sandwiching it - the beginning, the end and then everything else in the middle.

I hope this helps.  Next time we will be examining visual - spatial intelligence.  This individual has the capacity to see the visual world and recreate aspects of it, even without the object right there - definitely not my strength.