Attainment of the Achievement Goal I currently teach Business-related courses at Downingtown HS East Campus, which has experienced an overall high performance of students over the last few years. The Business-related courses that I teach are designed students prepare to compete in competitions like mock trial, DECA, and other business topic competitions. While most of my students have demonstrated significant interest in pursuing a career in the field of business, they have challenges in reading. Due to reading challenges, the biggest problem in my class is that most of the students who take these courses are lower level or average students and struggle with higher level thinking and development of their idea. The desired change in this area is for students to demonstrate higher level creative thinking and be able to develop their own ideas. This paper discusses strategies that I could use in my classroom to help in the attainment of this student achievement goal. The strategies are identified through conducting an extensive research on some of the most strategies used by high-performing schools to realize this objective.

Research-based Strategies for Attainment of this Achievement Goal

The identified area of instructional need in my current Business class is the struggle with higher level thinking and development of personal ideas among my lower level or average students due to difficulties in reading. High performing schools in Pennsylvania and other regions utilize various strategies to enhance higher level thinking and development of own ideas among lower level or average students in the classroom. Through conducting a comprehensive research, some of the research-based strategies I could use to eliminate the barrier preventing the attainment of this student achievement goal are as follows:

Use of Graphic Organizers

One of the research-based strategies employed by high-performing schools to promote higher level thinking and development of personal ideas among lower level or average students in the classroom is the use of graphic organizers in teaching. This is considered as an important teaching strategy that involves the provision of readable, higher interest texts that motivates students to develop critical thinking skills and their own ideas during learning (Thoughtful Classroom, n.d.). According to Cox (2017), graphic organizers provide students with an effective way to shape their thoughts in an organized manner. The use of graphic organizers entails giving students the opportunity to draw diagrams or mind maps relating to the various concepts they are learning...

As students engage in these activities, they enhance their capabilities to better connect concepts learned in class and see their relationships. The process will not only help students create habits of connecting concepts but also provide a means for them to engage in higher level thinking and develop their own ideas.
According to Professional Learning Board (n.d.), graphic organizers are effective teaching and learning tools towards enhancing critical thinking skills. As teaching tools, graphic organizers enable teachers to introduce a topic, activate previous knowledge and connect it with new information, arrange content in a visual manner, and evaluate student comprehension to identify areas of need. These tools have also proven effective in attainment of the desired student achievement goal since they increase student participation in learning, promote cognitive processes like brainstorming and generation of ideas, and enhance comprehension of concepts (Professional Learning Board, n.d.).

Encourage Questioning

The second research-based strategy utilized to enhance higher level thinking and development of own ideas among lower level or average students in the classroom is encouraging questioning. Teachers should create a learning environment where students feel free to ask questions (Cox, 2017). Tofade, Elsner & Haines (2013) contend that questions have been traditionally used as a teaching tool by instructors to promote comprehension and stimulate critical thinking. Questioning stimulates higher level thinking and development of own ideas by students through generating discussions that are geared towards stimulating comprehensive exploration of concepts and issues relating to the subject matter. Additionally, well-developed questions help in generating new insights through which students’ comprehension and critical thinking skills. Teachers also utilize divergent questions that stimulate deep thinking in the classroom, which becomes a premise for students to develop their own ideas as they analyze and evaluate concepts and learning materials.

On one hand, this research-based strategy involves encouraging students to ask questions relating to the concepts they learn in class. This provides a premise through which students become active participants in their learning process. Additionally, it enables them to enhance their reading skills and mastery of the learning material and concepts. On the other hand, this strategy involves development of well-crafted questions by teachers. In this case, teachers develop higher-level cognitive questions that they…