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Home > Standard 4

Standard 4

Instruction
The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.

Reflection

Pennsylvania state standards for Language arts include several for each reading, writing, listening, and speaking.  All four of those components are wholly necessary to the English classroom, and I incorporated them all to the best of my ability through student teaching.  In terms of the INTASC standard's goals of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance, I used class discussion and group and individual activities to meet those goals.  Class discussion required a great deal of critical thinking on both the part of myself and my students as I would ask them difficult questions that forced them to reflect on their understanding of the text.  The group work involved with the scene writing (see evidence below) required the students to do some problem solving as they did not have enough class time together to do a perfect scene.  This constraint required them to meet together outside of class and work through schedules and student strengths and weaknesses to create a good final product.  The scenes also required performance, as did the monologues I had them memorize; in fact, one could even consider class discussion a type of performance as well.  My teaching style and assessments achieved these goals of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance.

Evidence

Because the state standards for language arts include standards for reading, writing, speaking, and listening, I chose to create a project for my class which required them to memorize a monologue from William Shakespeare's Othello which they had to perform in front of the class. They were graded on their memorization as well as their enthusiasm in performance. The assignment sheet for this project is attached below.

In addition to this project, I also had the students write an original scene that could be placed anywhere in the Shakespearean play. This assignment required a great deal of creativity as well as a close reading of the text so as to stay loyal to it. That assignment sheet is also attached.
File Attachments:
  1. Monologue Memorization.doc Monologue Memorization.doc
  2. writeascene.doc writeascene.doc
Author: Jill Kingsland
Last modified: 6/19/2005 1:23 PM (EDT)