21st Century Skills
As a teacher, we must provide students with the necessary skills to be lifelong learners. One way to do this is to teach students 21st Century Skills that will allow them to make their own discoveries. These skills include:
Creativity: As teachers, we must promote creativity. Children are full of imagination, I hope to provide students with activities that will allow them to show and use their creativity.
Critical Thinking: Critical thinking skills are extremely important for students to learn. This includes skills such inductive and deductive reasoning. They must know how to analyze, interpret, and synthesize information.
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Communication: Students must learn how to articulate their thoughts and ideas. Other communication skills includes being able to listen effectively, utilizing multiple media, and being able to communicate effectively in different situations.
Collaboration: Working effectively and respectfully with others is extremely important for the real world. Students need to be flexible and accepting of other's ideas and beliefs.
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Resources for how to teach 21st Century Skills
As teaching 21st Century Skills is important for students, I began looking for resources about effective strategies to teach these skills. Here are some resources that I found:
- http://www.thoughtfullearning.com/inquire/student-edition - Thoughtful Learning has developed a learning guide called Inquire designed for students to learn about 21st century skills, developing inquiry skills, and improving information and media literacy. Teachers are also able to order a Teacher's guide which provides explanations of how to integrate 21st century skills into their teaching.
- http://www.rand.org/blog/2012/10/nine-lessons-on-how-to-teach-21st-century-skills-and.html - This blog post provides 9 Lessons for teaching 21st century skills. I hope to use theses ideas to include teaching these skills in my own lessons.
Importance of Collegial Collaboration
As we teach students 21st Century Skills, it is also important for teachers to have skills in collaboration as well. As our lesson plan was developed in a group, we used collegial collaboration to develop our activity. There are many benefits in collaboration. Here are some benefits of effective collaboration:
Because of these benefits, I plan on collaborating with other teachers in order to plan lessons that are effective and engaging for students.
Here are some ways teachers can collaborate with others:
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- Collaboration allows teachers to learn effective classroom management techniques from one another.
- Collaboration can also be effective in designing joint lessons that cater to diverse student needs and interests.
- In their collaborative process, teachers will identify successful classroom activities, methods and ideas.
- Teachers benefit from engaging in a dialogue with colleagues to understand how to incorporate oral instruction in their teaching of English language learners.
- Collaboration also gives teachers insights on using oral instruction in a mixed ability class. Sharing ideas together with colleagues exposes teachers to different types of activities related to oral instruction
Because of these benefits, I plan on collaborating with other teachers in order to plan lessons that are effective and engaging for students.
Here are some ways teachers can collaborate with others:
- Together they can identify effective classroom management techniques.
- They can pool their strengths and resources to plan lessons and generate a wide range of activities for targeted skills.
- They can identify areas in which teachers need solutions to meet needs of students.
- They can give each other ways to cope with the daily task of helping struggling readers.
- They can generate awareness on different ways of achieving goals and different approaches to teaching methods.
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