Visiting the Partnership for 21st 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 21st 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 4th grade
(or higher), it is not new to them.
As an educator, the critical need for 21st
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:
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.
I also discovered the Common Core Toolkit and loved the way that it aligned the 21st century skills to the Common Core State Standards. Are you currently using the CCSS? We are making the main transition to CC next year but have begun to plan with these standards. I believe the CCSS really address the type of critical thinking and application skills also found in the 21st century skills. Also, thank you for sharing your best practice of having students come up to the board to teach a new concept that they have learned. I also do that and the students are so much more engaged while the student who is doing the teaching is gaining a higher level of knowledge if they are able to teach it. A win-win situation!
ReplyDeleteSmartboards are a fantastic tool and the interactive properties are enjoyed by all. I find that smartboard lessons and integration in elementary grades to be even more beneficial than older students. You can even have students shoot a plastic dart gun, or stuffed animal at the board for activities in which students need to see the answer behind the image. Don't worry the boards don't break. Smart technology is well set up with many lessons which can be downloaded and manipulated for your class. They have even created their own section in youtube http://www.youtube.com/user/SMARTClassrooms
ReplyDeleteAt first when I first visited this website I was a bit confused as to where to begin looking. There is certainly a lot of useful information up there,it was overwhelming. I like the fact that you spoke about the common core tool kit because when i read the P21 mission the common core comes to mind. I then start to think they must be the brainchild of the common core. funny enough I had plans to mention it in my post but never did because I get caught up with so many other stuff on the site. there was hardly anything on the site that I could disagree with it was just very informative. Our school will implement the common core in September so hopefully we will start to move in the direction of the mission of the partnership for 21st century skills.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that we need to challenge the students by incorporating these skills in order for the students to be successful in the ever increasing global work environment. This year, I plan to include more of the collaboration skills and communication skills in the lessons because I feel that these skills are part of a foundation to incorporate other skills in the lessons. Even though my students use critical thinking skills in my classroom, they seem to struggle to get started to think critically. Thus recently, I have included a SIOP model where students use sentence frames to communicate and think critically. Students are using these skills more effectively using this model after hearing them using more academic language.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, let me say that I love the look of your blog! I have no idea how to do that to mine and am pretty jealous of yours! That being said, I completely agree that students need to learn to think, especially special education students. I teach special education and every year it takes me a few months to get them comfortable explaining how to work out problems to each other. I explain to them that if they can explain how to work out a problem to each other, then they completely understand how to solve it. Day by day, my students become more comfortable talking to the class and I have to speak less and less. There are even days where I can not get them to stop talking! Of course this always happens on the days where I need to do some talking. I really enjoy teaching these students because they have become so comfortable with each other which makes class an adventure each day!
ReplyDeleteI agree with your summations that students need to think for themselves and find the answers. With the implementation of the Common Core standards. I believe that many of the students we have seen in the past that waited for the answer, will not search and find it for themselves.
ReplyDelete