What is 21st Century Learning?
Definition: The term 21st century skills refers to a broad set of knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits that are believed—by educators, school reformers, college professors, employers, and others—to be critically important to success in today’s world, particularly in collegiate programs and contemporary careers and workplaces. Think jobs that have yet to be thought of or created.
I have talked throughout the year about how my district has encouraged the 4Cs in all my planning. It has driven how I created my students Personalized Learning Pathways (PLP) for my students—they have IEPs.
You know the four Cs right. Great colors, wonderful wording and multiple ways to explain:
- Communication
- Collaboration
- Creativity
- Critical Thinking
Problem solving
Students need the ability to solve complex problems in real time.
Why it’s important: In the future, complex problems that we can’t even conceive right now will be everywhere. The more we focus on students’ ability to devise effective solutions to real-world problems, the more successful those students will become.
Creativity
Students need to be able to think and work creatively in both digital and non-digital environments to develop unique and useful solutions.
Why it’s important: Our digital students are in a constant state of stimulation and neural development with technology use. They are natural producers and consumers, or prosumers, of information. Problem-solving is a skill that comes naturally to them and this can be advanced profoundly with the proper engagement in their learning. This comes from doing rewarding projects and meaningful tasks that give them challenges to overcome in imaginative ways.
Analytic thinking
Students need the ability to think analytically, which includes proficiency with comparing, contrasting, evaluating, synthesizing, and applying without instruction or supervision.
Why it’s important: Analytic thinking means being able to use the higher end of Bloom’s Digital Taxonomy or higher-order thinking skills (HOTS).
Collaboration
Students must possess the ability to collaborate seamlessly in both physical and virtual spaces, with real and virtual partners globally.
Why it’s important: Students of the digital age are social by nature. They text, post, update, share, chat, and constantly co-create in technological environments with each other. When they are unable to do this in school, they become disengaged and unattached to their learning. Connection and collaboration with others are essential not only to their learning but their mental and emotional health. This kind of interaction goes hand-in-hand with the mindset of global awareness that is part of Global Digital Citizenship. Simply put, better collaborators make better students—and better citizens.
Communication
Students must be able to communicate not just with text or speech, but in multiple multimedia formats. They must be able to communicate visually through video and imagery as effectively as they do with text and speech.
Why it’s important: Communication is a broad term that incorporates multi-faceted levels of interaction and sharing information. Students love to communicate using technology. But it’s more than just being able to effectively use digital media. It’s about personal interactions as well.
What does this mean my Resource Room?
In my world, it’s about pushing students’ thinking with Higher Order Thinking Skills—think Create or Evaluate (Old Bloom’s), Synthesis or Evaluation (New Bloom’s), or Depth of Knowledge Level 4—Extended Thinking).
I do this with more than thinking critically about a book. With each book or group of books (depends on reading level) students have an Essential Question. This question encourages then to think beyond the text and create new information based on what they have learned. This question becomes the starting point of their PLP. They have voice and choice in how they answer the essential question. You also have to realize the work leading up to them creating their answer maybe anywhere from a couple of days to a whole month. I see students 4 days a week for at least 30 minutes a day. Most of
them are students with learning disabilities, communication delays or students with Autism. Students only get at the MOST a couple of days to do their work—that time is theirs’s; not mine. I’m a guide, a support, techno wiz, troubleshooter, ear, problem solver but not teacher or answer giver. They do all the work. I’m really looking forward to seeing how their work with the new version I created with App-Smashing instead of one app for each of the 4C’s. Plus, we are moving everything second semester over to Seesaw (which I hope is way more user friendly to share work with parents, peers, and families. I'll post ideas and project on how I make all this work and meet IEP goals in the coming year.
December Show and Tell
This year my big goal has been looking for ways to bring a little bit of tech into what we are doing. For the pieces I have added to the room I do most if not all of the work. This in most cases would not be a problem but with my teacher's rubric and the need for students to show what they have learned and apply it--this is a huge problem.
My break so far has been looking at different ways student can take these ideas and run with them.
For the record I do everything in google. I put student work in Drive. I take the photos and upload the work. To be fair this is because I don't have local control of the iPads in my room. Yes, I know but I have had to create work arounds for everything we do. I came across Seesaw and was impressed with the idea that it is student and time friendly. I only have my groups for about 30 minutes. This means I either need to do it when I have a 2 minutes or they need to do the up-loading and creating within that 30 minutes. I love the app options that can be uploaded into the platform. My hope is this is REALLY student friendly and will become a place students can create and show off their app-smashing.
My district is big on redefinition--this is seen in the teacher rubric to score highly effective I have to create opportunities for students to "Create and Evaluate" what they have learned.
I have two groups that are working on Non-Fiction Text Features. This will be the first Aurasma, I'm going to show my students. I've been working on how to do this because let's be honest I have no idea and if I'm going to share and have them do the same I better figure it out. Crossing my fingers it works! More coming on this soon.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Letter-Sound Correspondence
What are letter-sound correspondences?
Letter-sound correspondences involve knowledge of:
- the sounds represented by the letters of the alphabet
- the letters used to represent the sounds
Why is knowledge of letter-sound correspondences important?
Knowledge of letter-sound correspondences is essential in reading and writing
- In order to read a word:
- the student must recognize the letters in the word and associate each letter with its sound
- In order the student must break the word into its component sounds and know the letters that represent these sounds.
What sequence should be used to teach letter-sound correspondence?
Letter-sound correspondences should be taught one at a time. As soon as the student acquires one letter sound correspondence, introduce a new one.
I tend to teaching the letters and sounds in this sequence
- a, m, t, p, o, n, c, d, u, s, g, h, i, f, b, l, e, r, w, k, x, v, y, z, j, q
- Letters that occur frequently in simple words (e.g., a, m, t) are taught first.
- Letters that look similar and have similar sounds (b and d) are separated in the instructional sequence to avoid confusion.
- Short vowels are taught before long vowels.
- I tend to teach lower case letters first before upper case letters. Pick one and stick to it.
- prior knowledge
- interests
- hearing
Start by teaching the sounds of the letters, not their names. Knowing the names of letters is not necessary to read or write. Knowledge of letter names can interfere with successful decoding.
- For example, the student looks at a word and thinks of the names of the letters instead of the sounds.
The student will:
- listen to a target sound presented orally
- identify the letter that represents the sound
- select the appropriate letter from a group of letter cards, an alphabet board, or a keyboard with at least 80% accuracy
Instructional Task
Here is an example of instruction to teach letter-sound correspondences
Teacher
- introduces the new letter and its sound
- shows a card with the letter m and says the sound “mmmm”
After practice with this letter sound, the instructor provides review
Teacher
- says a letter sound
- listens to the sound
- looks at each of the letters provided as response options
- selects the correct letter
- from a group of letter cards,
- from an alphabet board, or
- from a keyboard.
Instructional Materials
Various materials can be used to teach letter-sound correspondences
- cards with lower case letters
- an alphabet board that includes lower case letters
- a keyboard adapted to include lower case letters
- listen to the target sound – “mmmm”
- select the letter – m – from the keyboard
Instructional Procedure
The teacher teaches letter-sound correspondences using these procedures:
- Model
- The teacher demonstrates the letter-sound correspondence for the student.
- Guided practice
- The teacher provides scaffolding support or prompting to help the student match the letter and sound correctly.
- Independent practice
- The student listens to the target sound and selects the letter independently.
- The teacher monitors the student’s responses and provides appropriate feedback.
Pointers
There are a wide range of fonts. These fonts use different forms of letters, especially the letter a.
- Initially use a consistent font in all instructional materials (I use one that have the capital I and lower case q-I want.)
- Later, I introduce variations in font.
What is Effective Comprehension Instruction?
It is Explicit, Intensive, persistent instruction. I do mine in small and large groups. Small groups allow me to focus in on the specific skill the groups needs. I find this is a great easy way to differenate students because each student does not need to be in the same reading material--they are grouuped to practice the specific comprehension skill.
To become good readers, most students require explicit, intensive, and persistent instruction. In explicit comprehension strategy instruction, the teacher chooses strategies that are closely aligned with the text students are reading. The teacher models and "thinks aloud" about what a given strategy is and why it is important, helps students learn how, when, and where to use the strategy, and gives students opportunities to apply the strategy on their own.
Modeling is followed by practice, guided by the teacher, who works with students to help them figure out how and when to use the strategy themselves. As students read, the teacher provides feedback and engages them in discussion. In subsequent lessons, the teacher asks students to apply the strategy on their own to other texts.
Students are encouraged to plan before reading so that reading has a clear goal or purpose, to continually monitor their understanding during reading, and to apply repair strategies when breakdowns in understanding occur. To improve self-monitoring, the teacher may model for students how to do one or all of the following:
· think about what they already know before they start reading and during reading;
· be aware of whether they understand what they are reading;
· employ strategies to identify difficult words, concepts, and ideas;
· ask themselves: "Does this make sense?"; and
· be aware of how a particular text is organized.
One of the most important features of explicit instruction is the teacher's gradual release to students of responsibility for strategy use, with the goal that students apply strategies independently. However, teachers do not ask students to work on their own until the students have demonstrated that they understand a strategy and how and when to use it.
The Primary Comprehension Toolkit from Heinemann (grade K-2) allows me to teach specific comprehension skills in a sequence that makes sense to the reader. The student does the work--I have to listen to how they are applying the strategies to text.
My students LOVE expository text (non-fiction). Most of the reading students do throughout their schooling — indeed, throughout their lives — will involve expository text. Without an understanding of the organization of such text, students often have difficulty understanding what they read. Unlike a narrative, an expository text has no familiar story line to guide students' reading. To read expository texts successfully, students must learn that authors may use a variety of structures to organize their ideas, including cause-and-effect or compare and contrast relationships, time-and-order sequences, and problem-solution patterns. Indeed, students need to know that authors may use some or all of these structures in any given chapter or section of a text.
They need to learn that expository text can differ from narrative text in the way it is presented on a page. For example, expository text may be organized by means of text headings and subheadings, and may contain extensive graphics, such as tables, charts, diagrams, and illustrations. Instructional practices that facilitate students' understanding of expository text include helping them learn how to:
· chunk information in a text by grouping related ideas and concepts;
· summarize important information in a text by grouping related ideas and concepts;
· integrate information in a text with existing knowledge;
· apply information in a text to real-world situations;
· interpret and construct graphics such as charts, tables, and figures;
· synthesize information from different texts; and
· develop presentations about the text
and this one show two examples of the sentence stems.
My hope in using the Primary Comprehension Toolkit is to have student's think more critically about what they have read to in turn create new works that show how they created meaning strategically in reading and writing. This set of strategies being tied to their Personalized Learning Plans. I hoping to see great products but I'll have to wait until next week to see what students do.
Teachers pay Teachers Gift Card Give Away
So exciting! TPT is having a site wide sale! Save up to 28% off in my store and others by entering code, "CYBER2016"at checkout! Now is a great time to stock up on your favorite resources! Here's the link to my store: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Toad-ally-Exceptional-Learners
And after the turkey and special time together draws to a close, please join in throwing a great, big, magnificent Cyber Monday Sale. Earlier this week, I was sent a Teachers pay Teachers $10 gift card for the Cyber Monday and Tuesday sale. To help with the shopping, you have a chance to win a gift card. With 4 chances and a winner picked before the sale gets going-all you have to do is shop.
I will notify a winner by 7am tomorrow morning (11/28). So 4 chances, 24 hours GO!
Happy Cyber Monday!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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