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 Anne E. Moncure Elementary School 75 Moncure Lane Stafford, Virginia 22556 Phone (540) 658-6300 Fax (540) 658-6292 |
| Gifted Research Project | |
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Background
I have taught at the elementary level for ten years (nine years at the third grade level and currently in the fifth) and am in the Track Two Program at the University of Mary Washington. I have my endorsement in Gifted Education and presently have four identified FOCUS students in my classroom. Additionally, three ED students are currently assigned to my class for lessons in the subject areas of Social Studies and Science. From my experiences of teaching in a heterogeneous class, I have come to believe that critical thinking is a necessary skill for students of all ability levels. Many educators often state the teaching of critical thinking skills as objectives in their daily plans, but rarely focus on this in practice. It is my plan to conduct action research in this area this spring, and I would like to have a meeting with you to discuss this topic and possible methodology further. Problem Gifted students are often removed from the regular education setting for at least one hour weekly in order work with a resource teacher on activities that promote the development of critical thinking skills. Many of these students also benefit from ability level grouping in their classroom where these same skills are reinforced. On the other hand, the remaining students in a regular education setting are regularly prohibited from taking part in these higher level-thinking activities. Instead, they are forced every day to endure a knowledge-based curriculum targeted towards promoting their adequate performance on yearly-standardized tests. The narrow scope of this curriculum limits their ability to analysis, synthesize, and evaluate information, depriving them of skills they will require later in life in order to be contributing members of society. Many educators have emphasized that "equity and excellence must be a standard for all students in the classroom (Tomlinsin, 1999)." However, this principle is not actualized in practice as long as development of critical thinking skills is only permitted for a limited subset of students in the classroom. The insertion of critical thinking skills into the standard content area of instruction must become a constant if all students are to realize their maximum potential in all facets of life. Although many professional curriculum specialists prescribe how thinking should be taught in content area classrooms, the most interesting and realistic approaches come from the work of creative classroom teachers who have redesigned the way they teach standard content in order to seamlessly promote critical thinking as well (Schwartz, 2001). Purpose As teachers, we are expected to prepare our students to be good citizens. If we are not teaching all of our students to think critically, we are not only doing a disservice to our students, but to our nation as well. Through my action research I intend to demonstrate that all students in the regular educational setting can benefit from critical thinking curricula even if they enter the classroom with a minimal background. The focus in my classroom will be to incorporate critical thinking strategies within the Language Arts content area. I intend to develop daily lesson plans incorporating a section for critical thinking, targeted assessments utilizing critical thinking, and a three-question assessment to evaluate upper level thinking skills which will be conducted at the beginning of the school year, mid-year, and end of the year in order to track student progress in this area. I will also conduct an analysis of the SOL Language Arts tests for the third, fourth, and fifth grade of each student to determine if the use of these skills has improved assessment scores. Hypothesis Students in a regular education setting can learn critical thinking skills. Strategies can be incorporated into daily instruction to improve critical thinking. Improvement of critical thinking skills will also improve performance on standardized tests. Research Questions The questions that I wish to answer with my research review are fourfold. They are:
Abstract The purpose of this action research is to determine how this type of instructional strategy can improve student=s daily instruction and testing outcomes. From the data collected throughout the year, the construction of new language arts lessons plans which incorporate critical thinking skills, weekly observations of videos and evaluation of a daily teacher journal, the increase of critical thinking skills can be determined.
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