Partnership for 21st Century Skills

Visiting the Partnership for 21^st Century Skills led me to a lot of good information about the importance of embedding these skills into my teaching practice.  As I read about all of the complex skills and strategies students will need to be successful in future careers, I was a little overwhelmed by the task of preparing them for this. However, as Levy and Murnane (2006) state, literacy and mathematics are critical skills and the skills needed for complex communication and expert thinking can be taught in any subject area.  This realization is crucial since all educators I know are hard-pressed for time these days.

The discovery of the Common Core Toolkit was the beginning of my adventure on this site.  The toolkit provides background research, explains why these skills are important, but I think the most important part is the real-life field examples of how teachers are incorporating 21^st century skills in the context of what they are already teaching.  The most important task a teacher has (in my opinion) is in teaching students how to learn, and how to find answers to questions they have about the world around them.  Students are typically naturally inquisitive about the world around them, and it is our job to show them how to evaluate resources and find answers to the questions they have. 

The thing I would like to see more of is how to apply these skills to learning in the primary elementary grades.  All of the examples in the toolkit were in grades 4 and up.  While the Partnership acknowledges (as do I) the need for students to be able to read and write, I think we need to bring them up asking these questions and beginning to show them how to think in these ways, so that when they get to 4^th grade (or higher), it is not new to them. 

As an educator, the critical need for 21^st century skills calls for a shift in pedagogy.  Many times, especially in special education, students are used to being told the information they need and given repetition in order for them to master the concept(s).  However, this needs to change.  Students need to learn how to think, and how to solve their own problems.  I have started something in mathematics that after I introduce a new concept, I pick a student to come up to the board and guide the group through a problem.  This motivates and engages students, but also forces them to communicate and lead a group, a task they would typically despise, but isn’t so daunting when they get to use the interactive whiteboard and manipulatives.  However, this is just the beginning.  This type of thinking needs to carry over into all subject areas and encourage students to inquire, explore, and do more project-based authentic learning tasks instead of rote paper and pencil tasks and assessments. 

References:

http://www.p21.org/index.php

Levy, F., & Murnane, R. (2006). Why the changing American economy calls for twenty-first century

learning: Answers to educators' questions. New Directions for Youth Development, 2006

(110), 53–62.

Using a blog with my students and parents

I teach learning support for kindergarten through third grade students.  Although I support all content areas, the main focus of my instruction is reading, language arts (writing), and mathematics.  The majority of my day is spent with small groups of students delivering interventions and differentiated lessons to meet the needs of diverse learners.  I am also in charge of overseeing a paraprofessional who does extra practice and review with my students when I am not with them, along with four teaching assistants who are paired 1:1 with a particular student due to significant challenges. 

Since I work with a very young population of students who are still learning how to read and write, I aim to use my blog to communicate with parents of students and support staff.  Each post would focus on a specific lesson or strategy that I am teaching that support staff and/or parents could go on to see exactly how I am teaching the skill and reinforce/practice the skill with students in the same manner.  This consistency is key with learning support students and when I find a way that works for them, I want to share it with everyone so they can utilize it with students as well. 

This idea was inspired by a recent unit on double digit addition and subtraction (first without regrouping, and then with regrouping).  In order to make this abstract concept a little more concrete, we spent a lot of time using manipulatives (base-ten blocks) so my students could learn the reasoning behind their mathematics.  However, when they were given homework, they were not able to take base-10 blocks home. 

After a few days introducing the skill, I pulled up virtual manipulatives (http://www.glencoe.com/sites/common_assets/mathematics/ebook_assets/vmf/VMF-Interface.html) on my interactive whiteboard and had students who really "got it" start leading problems with the base-10 blocks at the board.  Then I got to thinking, "This would be a great idea to let students do at home!"  They were so motivated by the interactive base-ten blocks and it made grouping and regrouping even easier than the actual blocks.  I would include a brief screencast of how to use the tool to help with the problems that come home for homework (or for my support staff, the extra practice in school). 

It would take a lot of time to start up until I got all of the lessons and strategies going, but by adding one at a time parent would then be able to go back and search for a specific skill their child is struggling with and have immediate resources to refer to for help.