Goal #5:  Instructional Strategies

The beginning teacher is able to use a variety of instructional strategies to encourage learners' development of critical thinking, problem solving and process skills.

To demonstrate my ability to use a variety of instructional strategies and evoke students’ ability to engage in critical thinking skills, I am submitting one artifact:  a lesson about bullfights.

In this lesson, students work in small cooperative groups.  In these groups, students go to seven different centers to obtain information about the different aspects of bullfights in Spain.  Students were told to look for information that would help support their position on bullfighting, either for or against.  Cooperative strategies were used.  Each student was assigned a specific cooperative role: note taker, reader, summarizer and facilitator.  Students had a short amount of time to work in each center.  Several different strategies were used here.  Students had to read for understanding since they were going to have to use the information to support their opinions.  Also, the summarizer as well as the rest of the class had to use active listening skills, especially when the "debate" began.  Finally, students were actively moving around the classroom adding a kinesthetic factor to the lesson.

Once all students had finished, the entire class discussed the issue: Is bullfighting culturally acceptable or is it pure animal cruelty?  Students had to speak in an orderly fashion.  If students were not being respectful of other students' ideas or beliefs, they would not be allowed to participate further in the discussion.  Students had to justify their answers with information they had researched at the centers or with prior knowledge they may have had on the matter.  The students were all engaged in the activity and all students made comments either for, against or undecided on the topic of bullfighting.

Students seemed to enjoy this assignment.  All students participated in the discussion/debate about whether or not they agreed with bullfighting.  Although several students were against it, I was surprised by the number of students who were in favor of bullfights since it is so different than anything in the United States.  Their main justification was that bullfighting was cultural and therefore should not be banned.  My favorite comment was that bulls were going to die anyway, this way they go out in a blaze of glory.       

On Bloom’s taxonomy, the top three levels are addressed in this activity: analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  Students analyzed the information given to them.  Then, they compiled and organized information that helped them construct their opinion.  Finally, students evaluated their values and compared their ideas to others.  Most importantly, they made value judgments based on evidence which shows how they used higher levels of thinking.