The Partnership for 21^st Century Skills

http://www.p21.org

Let me first say that although the website is full of information, I think a website about 21^st Century Skills should be more appealing.  Being someone who is committed to 21^st Century Skills, and interested in the topic, the aesthetics of this site are not very appealing.  If I do not find it appealing, I find it hard to believe someone who is being introduced to the idea of 21^st Century Skills would give much thought into digging into this website.   I find the website hard to read.  Some of the links needed updated.  For example, the Assess 21 link is broken on the Assessment Landscape Report (http://www.p21.org/overview/skills-framework/131).

One of the most useful tools I found on the website was the Resources for Educators located at http://www.p21.org/tools-and-resources/educators.  It focuses on the implementation of 21^st Century Skills in the classroom through such tools as the

MILE Guide and the Common Core Toolkit. 

The MILE Guide includes a Self-Assessment Tool.  I chose to fill out this tool, and I am realizing that while I thought I was doing a fantastic job of implementing 21^st Century Skills, I am barely scratching the surface.  According to the Self-Assessment results, I am in the early stages in every category.  I need to work toward implementing the skills in at least 75% of my lessons instead of hovering around 25-50% of the time.  This means taking a serious look at the standards I am teaching and evaluating what aspects of 21^st Century skills I could implement with each standard.

Where I am teaching, the state is moving toward Common Core Standards.  Anytime the standards are changed slightly, it makes teachers nervous.  The toolkit provides explanations of 21^st Century Skills and examples of how to implement them with connections to Common Core Standards in the classroom.  This would make implementing both Common Core and 21^st Century Skills easier on any teacher who is nervous about juggling both “new” concepts in the classroom.

Overall, the implications for me as the teacher involve not only implementing the skills in lessons, but also knowing how to assess the skills.  Yes, it takes time and energy, but I need to take a serious look at creating more project-based learning assignments and authentic assessments.  The students can then build a portfolio of their work to use in the assessment process.  The difficult part will be to develop a rubric to be able to assess the portfolio and individual assignments.  What suggestions do you have for developing a rubric?  Is there anything you would include as being standard for every project?  Do you think it is even possible to create a generic rubric to assess 21^st Century Skills?

Where blogs can take us...

The idea of a blog is intimidating to me.  I love to write and share ideas, but I generally consider myself to be a very private person.  As I was doing some research this week, I feel like a blog could easily turn into something that consumes a lot of my time.  For instance, this past weekend when I was setting up my blog, I realized that I spent almost two hours just playing with the templates before reverting back to this simple template.  Before the week is over, I probably will be playing with it again.  But that is a topic for another time.

I am currently teaching K-8 students in an afterschool setting focused primarily on reading, writing, and math.  A blog could be used in my classroom to communicate important announcements as well as to interact with students about the content they are learning or producing in the classroom.

In writing, a great way to use the blog would be for peer revising and editing.  Often, when students get to the revising and editing stage of a paragraph, essay, narrative, or other types of writing, they struggle because they recognize that something needs to be changed, but cannot put their finger on it.  They become too dependent on the teacher to revise or edit for them.  If students can post their “rough drafts” to a blog, then other students can comment and offer feedback and suggestions to improve the piece of writing.  This also takes a lot of pressure off of the teacher to feel like they need to be the one giving all of the feedback to the students.  As a teacher, my job would then be to facilitate the revising and editing rather than to tell them specifically what students should revise and edit.  In addition, I could post a grammar question of the day for students to correct and post in their comments.  This would be especially helpful for younger students who are just beginning to develop structuring sentences.

In math, there is a movement toward constructed response questions being used on state assessments.  I could use the blog as a spring board for conversation with my students by posting a question of the day and asking students to respond.  This could be integrated with the writing posts as students could give feedback on specific vocabulary their peers are using to answer the question and offer suggestions as to how to clarify their explanations.  For younger students, the math could simply be another question of the day.  

In reading, students could share their thoughts and ideas about the books or stories they are reading.  In addition, I think students could do an author study and build a database of links to information about their favorite authors.  I have had a student compare and contrast two or more authors in the past.  For example, one student chose to write and compare and contrast essay of “The Chronicles of Narnia” and “The Lord of the Rings” especially since the authors of both series were connected in real life.  In addition, I primarily work on specific reading skills in the after school setting such as being able to identify main idea, using context clues, or reading techniques such as skimming or scanning.  I think I could use a blog to show examples of each technique and allow my students to practice.

What about you?  Where have you successfully implemented blogs into your classroom?  What difficulties do you foresee in using a blog in any of these ways?  What safety precautions have you taken with your students addressing internet safety? 

I admit, I struggled the most with ideas for reading and math, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

A New Endeavor

I am new to using blogs.  While I read / follow several, this is my first attempt to create one.  Let's see how this goes!