Cynthia A. Wooding
The intervention curriculum topic is the profiles of African American achievers. These African American achievers have succeeded in one or more categories of Sternberg's Triachic theory: creative, practical and analytical. The students will already have their own prior background knowledge of talents to bring to the first instructional lesson. They will demonstrate their talents in the first lesson called "You are Gifted". The students will have a choice to draw a picture, write a 3-paragraph essay, or verbally communicate what special talents they have to share with the class. The performance component is the selection process in regards to how they will choose and demonstrate their talent. The teacher will then share the outcomes with the class in a nurturing environment.
After self-evaluation, the second lesson of instruction takes place. The second instructional lesson is called "Exploring the Gifts of African American Achievers." At this point, the students are given new information. The teacher presents the profiles of African American achievers. The class will explore and define what intelligences each of these African American achievers possess, and how these African Americans achieved their goals through behaviors and tasks. The instructional lesson will go into detail about what tasks and goals each of these achievers did in order to become successful. The students will have graphic organizers to outline the tasks and goals that the achiever set for him/herself to understand the achiever's goals and what behaviors and tasks they used in order to obtain their goal. This is when Sternberg's metacomponents activate performance and knowledge acquisitions performance. These latter components in turn provide feedback to the metacomponents. This allows the student to prepare for the third instructional lesson.
The students are given new information about African American achievers and need to identify the task and goals for each African American profile. By having all components working highly interactive, the third instructional lesson takes place. The third lesson is about comparison. The comparison is the talent the student already possesses and the talent of the African American achiever. The student also evaluates the tasks of the achiever. The cognitive action in this lesson has three parts: having the student analyzes his/her talents, analyzing the achiever, and comparing the first two parts to come up with behaviors and tasks in order to succeed the students' goal. The student then has to come up with a plan of behaviors and tasks in which the student will be able to succeed in his or her positive goal to become an achiever.
The third instructional lesson is where the external world meets the individual. There needs to be a lot of nurturing and cultural awareness on part of the teacher, for this process to be a success. These tasks have to generate meaning and be purposeful in order for the student to successfully change his behavior and perspective in order to achieve their positive goals. The third lesson is called, "Reach for the Stars". The student selects one type of career. Whether the career will be more focused on creative, analytical, or practical goals, usually one type of occupation has more than one type of intelligence. The student will than set a goal and create tasks and positive behaviors in order to obtain their career goal, and succeed in going towards that career path.
The third lesson will have a graphic organizer for the student to fill out his or her goal, behavior and tasks. The next part of the lesson will be reflection from the first lesson. The student will take his/her talent describe in the first lesson and compare it to the goals and tasks that the students set for themselves in the third lesson. They students will explore how their talent is going to help them succeed with their goals. This is where Sternberg's intelligence behavioral goals are expressed. According to contextual sub theory, intelligence thought is directed toward one or more of the three behavioral goals: adaptation to an environment, shaping of an environment, and selection of an environment. This is not a random or aimless mental activity that happens to involve certain components of information processing at certain levels of experience. Rather, it is actively purposefully directed toward the pursuit of the global goals that serve a purpose and meaning for people's lives. It is again stressed that the school environment be a positive setting for the student. The student will start to identify which behavioral tasks and goals he/ she needs to act upon in order to obtain the goal. These behavior tasks and goals will be written down in the graphic organizer.
The last part of lesson three will conclude the four objectives. Those four objectives are as follows: who am I and what talents do I have, what to a want to be, how will I do it, and how can I change to help achieve my goal. At the end of the lesson the student will summarize the objectives and sign a contract for the year. The contract will have a goal, behaviors, and the tasks of how the student accomplishes the goal. The tasks will have behavior tasks such as respecting others, and having patience for others. These are just a few examples of how the student will perform in demonstrating the tasks.
The fourth lesson called 'I Have a Dream to Make" the students will create a collage. This collage will allow them to express their talents and to motivate them in pursuing their goals. This is the activity of practical intelligence. The students have been given information, now how will the students use the information? The will use this information by executing positive behavior while completing the collage to move closer to the their goal. There are four major components to the collage: showing themselves at the present time, who they want to be, how are they going to do it, and the attached goal contract. There will be guidelines the teacher will present in designing the collage, and a sample will be shown for better understanding. The student collages will be displayed in the Media Center for everyone to enjoy.
