21st Century Learning (continued)

So, I shared my thoughts from the first posting on this topic with the bright, inteligent teachers in my graduate class. My query for them was how do you promote the development of skills/knowledge/dispositions necessary for 21st Century Learning among your students? Their answers are as follows:

Provide lots of opportunities for structured cooperative learning experiences-- and be sure to directly teach and assess social skills.
Encourage students to ask for help- ask them to hold up green, yellow, red cards demonstrating understanding.
Use flexible grouping so you can specialize the types and nature of learning tasks,
Time to reflect on their performance individually and within groups
Using 21st Century Pedagogies such as concept attainment, concept development, inquiry, etc.
Enabling students to do great tasks that motivate them,
Explain why skills/knowlege to learn is important and how it fits into their lives,
Giving students real-life problems to solve,
Break things into manageable pieces and model for them how to do this- use "to do" lists, create time limits
Provide proper encouragement during the learning process-- encourage practice, risk-taking and self-appraisal,
Use technology in the classroom,
Encourage and reward persistence, diligence and stick-to-itiveness,

21st Century Learner

This week, I analyzed the types of "real world" learning I engaged in to do my job. I suggest that if we're really going to help prepare our students for life in the 21st Century, we need to figure out how to incorporate some of these "real world" 21st Century Learning behaviors into learning experiences. See what you think . . . .

21st Century Learning Skills

• Knowing how to learning as needed
• Knowing how to learn to learn (how to find information/ get support)
• Knowing how to advocate and ask for help
• knowing how to "trouble shoot" and solve problems with technology
• Applying knowledge to real-world tasks
  Thinking strategies- figuring out how to think through a process, brainstorm, manage projects,
• Analyzing the quality of materials/ information
• Determine how to use available resources
• Strategies for learning and working with others
• Strategies to consider how to figure out what we don’t know/ identify words that help us learn better
  Learning to deal with uncertainty
• Not giving up
• Being motivated to accomplish tasks