Amber Teel

Quality Indicator 5. The pre-service teacher uses a variety of instructional strategies to

encourage students development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance
skills.
Performance Indicators: The pre-service teacher
1.2.5.1 selects alternative strategies, materials, and technology to achieve multiple
instructional purposes and to meet student needs.
1.2.5.2 engages students in active learning that promotes the development of
critical thinking, problem solving, and performance capabilities.
I used multiple instructional strategies, in my literacy project that encourages
students to develop their critical thinking, use problem solving and build performance
skills. I chose to apply these strategies by using the topic of the American Flag and the
Pledge of Allegiance. By using several types materials and technology, I am able to meet
the needs of my students and provided them with a variety of instructional strategies. By
making a range of instructional strategies available to my students, it allows them to take
part in active learning that enhances the development of critical thinking, problem
solving, and performance capabilities.
The first alternative instructional strategy that I integrated to support students
development of performance skills and meet their needs was a vocabulary word sort. I
used a closed word sort, which allows students determine characteristic qualities of a
group of words and organize classifications for the word groups. Gillet and Temple
developed this strategy. I also incorporated another vocabulary strategy, a self-awareness
chart, created by Goodman. This allows students to show their understanding background
knowledge of vocabulary from the text, as well as highlight what they still need to learn
to comprehend the text fully.

The second instructional strategy I incorporated was question-answer relationship

chart; this allowed me to achieve instructional purposes. This strategy, created by
Raphael, encourages students to think deeper about the text they are reading and how
other things can relate to the text. It also encourages them to ask multi-level questions
about the text. Two other alternative instructional strategies I incorporated into my
literacy project were note taking and graphic organizer. Note taking provides students
with the opportunity to highlight important information from the text and to construct a
relationship between all the pieces of information they collected. Graphic organizers,
like note taking, allow students to highlight relevant information from the text. In
addition, it provides the student and the teacher as a way to assess their level of
understanding.
While constructing my literacy project I was able to utilize a wide variety of
materials, which included fiction books, nonfiction books, picture books, newspaper and
magazine articles, websites, songs and lyrics, and a video. One of my fiction books, The
Flag Keeper contained factual material about American flag etiquette. By having factual
material in a fiction book, will allow students to make comparisons between what that
text states and what other non-fiction resources state. All of my nonfiction book provide
the students with fun facts and history of the American flag. These books allow students
to expanded on their background knowledge of the American flag to create a better
understanding of what they will be learnt during this unit. One of my articles from The
Baltimore Sun talked about a group of students from Maryland who came together to
create a football field-size American flag. This shows students how someone just like
them takes an active role in using the American flag as a symbol. Both my video resource

and my music resource provide students with the Pledge of Allegiance and the meaning
behind it. For many students, the Pledge is something they just say at the beginning of the
day. These resources will allow students to make text to self-connections by explaining
why we say the Pledge and its connection with the American flag. All these resources
provide the students with opportunities to interact with technology by looking up
websites, using online books, viewing videos, and so much more.
To get students engaged in active learning, I incorporated instructional strategies
that encourage questioning, problem-solving, and critical thinking. During shared reading
students are expected to create questions by using background knowledge and prediction.
By doing those things, students enhance their ability to high order questions and increase
their learning. When using the self-awareness chart students are recording the
information about what they already know and what they need to work on. Students then
take that information and continue gathering information. Then they revisit their selfawareness chart revise it. This falls under a form of problem solving. Students are
learning what they do not know well and are using that information to learn more about
the terms they struggled with.
Lastly, my literacy project promotes performance capability by engaging students
in active learning. Through this project, students are encouraged to become independent
learners and to self-adjust their learning. In every instructional, I used in my literacy
project students are being engaged in active learning. Examples of this would be the selfawareness chart, note taking, and graphic organizer strategies. As mentioned before, with
the self-awareness strategy students can independently monitor their knowledge of
vocabulary from the text. They with what they know, then add and revise as they gain

more knowledge. Also, they are learning to self-adjust. If they find that they do not know
the term then, they are aware that that is a term they need to focus on. Note taking and
graphic organizers are also an excellent way for students to focus on independent
learning. During these strategies, students process what they are learning or have learnt
by identifying critical information and organizing it.