Let's find out which 21st century skills
haven't found their way into your classroom just yet
and how you can start teaching them.
21st century skills are what our students need to learn in order
to thrive in a rapidly changing modern world.
The first on our list is critical thinking.
Critical thinking is the ability to analyze a situation,
weigh out, the different options, and then identify potential solutions.
And critical thinking is not just something that students do on their own.
Often we ask students to read a book and then write
an essay that shows that they have thought
critically about reading the book.
But we need to add support there in the middle
to help them develop those critical thinking skills.
One of the ways to do this is to use something called thinking routines.
One of the thinking routines
that I like to use at the beginning of a math lesson
was that I would present a mathematical problem
or a mathematical pattern to the students
and then have them write down what they see,
what they think, and what they wonder.
It seems simple enough,
but what this does is it forces careful observations
to see the beginnings of interpreting
those observations, the think and the opportunity to develop questions
in light of those observations. The Wonder.
It was great to see students begin
to think critically about a math concept on their own.
Before I did any explicit teaching about that concept,
and you can do this in any class
you can have students do these close observations about a poem
or about a political cartoon,
or about some scientific phenomena that's happening.
One of the ways that I like to do it was up on the board having the words see,
think and wonder and three different columns.
And then students could write what they see,
think and wonder on Post-its
and then put it in the appropriate column.
Any time that you can get the kids up and moving as they are thinking
and engaging with the lesson. It's a win.
There may be instances where it would make more sense
for you to do a see think in wonder digitally on an app like Padlet.
Particularly if you want to be able
to save these observations and refer back to them later,
which is especially useful
for going back to the things that students wonder and see
which of those questions were answered by the end of the lesson.
And doing a digital version of this makes it more accessible
to students who may be absent
or just not physically present with you in the classroom.
Harvard's Project Zero has documented
lots of different thinking routines you can use in the classroom,
and I will link to their resources so you can explore more types
of thinking routines for different contexts. Creativity.
When you hear creativity, you may just conjure up
images of students doing art projects.
But creativity is so much more than that.
Teaching creativity means that you are giving
your students an opportunity to show what they have learned
by creating something new, like a video or a digital book
or a podcast, instead of always reverting to a multiple choice
or standard written assignment.
Creativity is the ability to solve problems
that do not have obvious solutions.
It often takes a level of creative
thinking to be able to make connections
between things that other people are not making.
It took a creative mind to think,
What happens if I take pickles and I add peanut butter to it?
This is truly the first time I'm trying this.
It wouldn't be my go to snack, but it's not terrible.
Some people think that having students do
creative activities is not that rigorous.
But when you're having students
take the things that they have learned
and then transform them into something different,
there's a lot of higher order thinking going on
and it requires a deeper understanding of that content
in order to transform it into something different.
Take creating this video, for example,
having to take the things that I've learned
about 21st century skills and turn it into video
forced me to go learn even more about those 21st
century skills to make sure that what I was saying
was true and right and correct and then I had to think through
how exactly do I want to articulate this
in a way that it is clear in a way
that it is helpful to the person that's watching this
and in a way that's interesting and engaging for the viewer.
That is a ton of problem solving that happens in the act
of taking something that I've learned
and transforming it into a video in this case.
So if you want to try something simple to give your students an opportunity
to show what they have learned by creating something,
have them make a whiteboard video
where they show what they know.
In math class, you can have them work out a problem
on a digital whiteboard, using sketches and visuals
and explaining their thinking and their process along the way.
In more languages, you can have your students draw a scene
that is going to incorporate a majority of the vocabulary
that they are learning, and then they have to describe the scene
that they have drawn.
In history class, you can have students
take a historical event
and then sketch out a story with key characters
and dialog that show that student's understanding of that event.
Our digital whiteboard of choice
is an app called Whiteboard by myViewBoard, since it's
super versatile and even has a built in screen recorder
right in the app and it's actually the app
that I have been using for all of the whiteboard sketches
that you are seeing in this video.
I've linked to a video in the description
where I walk you through all the different things
that you and your students can do with Whiteboard. Collaboration.
Solving the world's toughest
problems is going to require people to work together,
not only in person, but also in digital environments as well.
When working with others, we need to recognize
that we bring certain strengths to the table and the other people
that we are collaborating with also bring different skill sets
and together we can do so much more
than if we were trying to solve these problems alone.
But working together is hard.
Even when Sam and I are collaborating on a project,
he'll have this idea that he thinks is gold.
And I'm like, I don't like that idea at all.
Or I've got this plan that's going to be a game changer for us.
He's like, Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.
Thankfully, throughout our lives, we've both learned
tools and strategies that help us collaborate,
and our students need the opportunity to learn those tools
and strategies for collaboration as well.
Often when you put students together to begin
collaborating, students begin to argue
one student's doing all of the work,
one student's doing none of the work.
And these problems don't disappear
when you move over to a digital space like a Google doc,
someone's work is getting deleted or unhelpful.
Comments are being left and it can be a mess.
Quick side note in Google Docs, if you would like to see
who edited or what part of a document,
you can highlight it right click and show editors.
Just in case you're trying to find out who may be causing
all of the Google Docs mayhem.
One small thing that you can do
to help students begin to collaborate a little bit more effectively,
whether it is physical or digital
collaboration is giving them language that fosters collaboration.
I agree with this person
because I disagree with this person
because I'm wondering such and such.
What if we tried to fill in the blank?
Can you explain what you mean by that?
You can have these up on the wall.
I know Sam had something similar in his classroom
where there were these cards that were laminated
and at the tables that students could use.
And this is not going to solve all of your collaboration problems,
but it is a small step in helping students collaborate more effectively,
and it's fairly closely tied to our next scale.
Communication. Communication is the ability
to have your ideas understood in a variety of mediums.
Developing communication skills go beyond students,
raising their hand and sharing their answer out loud
or writing their thoughts in an essay.
I like this tweet by entrepreneur Ali Abdaal, where he says,
I really believe talking to a camera is one of the most important skills
you can develop in the modern world.
It gives you a competitive edge
and opens the door to countless opportunities.
So let's take that as an example giving students
the opportunity to communicate, to show what they have learned
by speaking to a camera and making a video.
You can't just tell a student to record a video
to show what you have learned
without telling them what goes into making an effective video.
A few things to teach students when making a video.
Students need to learn that to communicate well on camera.
You have to look directly at the lens because looking at the lens
is what simulates eye contact with the person watching the video.
They need to learn that you often can't just wing it
when you're making a video, particularly
one where you're sharing what you have learned.
But instead you need to outline
what you are going to say with bullet points
or an actual word for word script
in order to organize your thoughts.
For me, way more time goes into writing the script
than actually making the video, because that's the process
of taking these things that I want to say
and then organizing them in a way that I can communicate
on camera effectively.
Students need to learn that talking to the camera
is going to involve rehearsing and practice and multiple takes.
I've been making YouTube videos
since 2015 and I am still having to do retakes
and re saying I don't like how that came out
and let me try it again until I'm happy
with the way that I've communicated something.
And students need to learn how to concisely communicate on camera.
There's this Mark Twain quote that says,
Sorry, I wrote you such a long letter.
I didn't have time to write a short one.
And what that's saying is that
it takes a lot more effort to consolidate your thinking.
Take out the redundancies and strip
everything down to the essential message
that you're trying to communicate,
whether that's a letter or a video that you're making.
So give your students a time limit of 1 to 3 minutes,
depending on the nature of the video, to teach them
how to boil it down to the essential message
and communicate more effectively on camera.
The app formerly known as Flipgrid, it is now just Flip.
If you didn't know about that name change, is a perfect tool
for students creating video in the classroom because it's kind of built
like a social media app and so it's a little bit more intuitive
for the students making the videos.
And it also allows teachers to set time
limits on the video submissions that students turn in.
These four skills are sometimes referred to as the 4 C's,
and teaching them to students often requires
you as the teacher to develop your skills as well.
So we've created a 21st century teacher quiz
to help you identify which teacher skills you are already doing well in
and which skills you can continue to develop
in order to reach your learners.
You can click right here or down in the link in the bio
and it'll take you right on over to the quiz.
We will see you over there.