Lesson Plans That Involve Critical Thinking Skills

The three lesson plans that involve critical thinking skills are attached. Documents associated with the Zoo Design Project are also attached. Documents for the other two lessons can be found in Artifacts #20 and #21.

As a culminating project for the Technical Animal Science course, our students run a pet physical exam clinic.  ACC staff are sent invitations to bring their pets in for a physical exam and parasite screening.  Student groups are created with a leader chosen for each group.  Leaders must verify that all group members can do all of the prerequisite skills involved in the project prior to the clinic dates.  Each group is given client names, dates and times, and phone numbers and must set up the appointments.  In addition, each group must make arrangements to get parasite-screening kits to the clients prior to the appointment dates.  The class must meet with each other to prepare the room and set procedures for running the clinic.  The tasks for each appointment are assigned by the team leader, so that each team members performs each task over the 3 days that clients are present. 

The teams create client folders and a report of findings is made for the clients.  Each group turns in the client folders as part of the grade.  The teams also are responsible for break-down of the clinic setup and returning things to the normal classroom setup. Procedures, leader checklist and pictures from a clinic are attached.

Instructional Practices Resulting From Professional Development

There have been two major focuses for professional development at the Arlington Career Center in the past few years, English Language Learners (ELL) and Cultural Awareness. There are some instructional practices described in the workshops that we were already doing, but new techniques or tips were also learned and incorporated into class instruction.

One of the most useful bits of information given in an ELL workshop was how to identify student proficiency levels and what they meant. Frequently, as instructors, we know the student has limited English but the extent of the limitation is not easily determined. This is further confused by the difference in the development of social language and academic language. A student who may be able to talk to me easily about handing in assignments, may not be able to complete those assignments due to this delay in developing academic language. The workshop showed where in our student database we could access the information. Instructors now check to see what level of ELL the students are, this includes the two monitoring levels after the students have tested out of the formal ELL program. The monitoring information is especially useful since the student will not have any ELL classes on their schedule and this could be misinterpreted as the student is fully proficient in all aspects of English.

In the same workshop, ways to increase the student’s academic English were discussed. One tip was to focus on academic vocabulary in class. During informational lectures, new words are defined and broken down if possible. Those words are repeated on subsequent days with students offering definitions. Students also complete a vocabulary sheet where they write the definitions of new words.

The entire Career Center staff participated in a Cultural Competency Professional Development program last year. The focus of the program was to educate everyone on different cultural norms and how to be sensitive to these differences. One of the suggestions, which also relates to ELL students, was to find ways to show students that their culture is valued. Prior to this workshop we had restricted the use of other languages in the class to only instructional purposes. After engaging in the Cultural Competency process we have reevaluated this policy and now allow students to speak to each other in any language as long as it is at an appropriate time and they are not disruptive.