By the end of that class year I was seeing something else that I thought was significant. Not only did I observe students using their strongest intelligences to learn GED materials, but I also noticed that students who traditionally drop out, those with learning disabilities (LD) and attention deficit disorder (ADD) appeared to be involved in learning in ways that I had never seen before. These students were coming to class and starting the Choose 3s immediately. They were more willing to go into the workbook material that was related to a Choose 3 activity they had done. Compared to the non-MI-informed class, and to the period before I started the MI project, there was less complaining, less protesting: "I don't understand!" and less avoidance of any classroom or workbook activity.
When I looked back at my classroom observations and attendance records, I noticed that, although usually students with ADD attended no more than a few weeks, one of my students with ADD had stayed on from enrollment in December to the end of class in May. Another LD student had attended regularly and gotten her GED, unlike past students with LD who never came to class long enough to be test-ready. A third student had excellent attendance compared to other LD students in a class where I was not trying MI-informed lessons.
In the second year of the project, my research question was: How do MI-informed lessons affect the attendance and progress of adult learners with LD or ADD? I also liked the idea that I could develop and refine the Choose 3 lessons to help students pass the GED tests. I planned to add some math activities and also design Choose 3s for science, social studies, grammar, and writing. Examples of the lessons are given on pages 3-5. I was so pleased by the results of MI- informed instruction the first year that I could not deny it to either group of students, so both classes subsequently received MI-informed instruction.
The students had struggled with doing daily and MI logs in year one. In the second year, they talked and I recorded their MI activities, which included their views on the MI lessons. I also kept my teacher's log. I also kept my MI activities log. At intake and during the year, I recorded studentsí self-disclosures about LD or ADD diagnoses through school or agency testing, and I compiled attendance data.
The second year of the project was especially exciting. I had the whole year to incorporate MI theory into my GED lessons and could be more attentive to how learners with LD and ADD were responding to an MI-informed class.