My Preparation for 21st Century Teaching/Learning
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| Kids will always cheer on your effort for improvement! |
While on my journey of exploration into 21st Century Teaching/Learning, I came across a website that I find to be extremely teacher friendly. This website includes resources from other web pages, and even includes templates/tip sheets for implementation into your own classroom. The authors, Nicole and Donna, give their permission to use these tip sheets freely, and even allow a place for comments for improvement to their site. It is a must read!
When creating lessons it is important to embed critical thinking skills and problem solving skills. Begin with something simple that your students can relate to their own personal life. Building the ability to make self connections to content can only occur when a strong foundation is layed.
I began the introduction of this by creating a discussion circle format. We identified the "laws" of an effective discussion; listen to the speaker, respond to their comment before creating a new idea, wait to speak until someone else finishes, praise each other for quality responses, just to name a few. Having the students define these "laws" will help them take ownership and responsibilities for following them. After practicing this whole group for several weeks you can trust that the students can follow the laws in small group, less supervised problem solving groups.
I begin and end many lessons with this strategies, and we talk about out strengths and concerns (YAYS, and NAYS). This is very helpful when implementing cooperative learning structures, and follows closely with the responsive classroom model. Using these problem solving/critical thinking skills will build an environment where students feel safe to ask for help from the teacher, but mostly each other. This is easily demonstrated when using our personal laptops. They share with each other more and more than raising their hand to ask the teacher.
It is down to the last month and a half of school, and with that being said it is my relief that my class will carry these skills on to the third grade. Luckily enough next year I will be faced with the same challenges of receiving new students who may or may not have had these skills introduced in their classrooms. So I will continue to reteach the wheel in the hopes that more and more teachers begin taking baby steps to teaching these skills, so future teachers can focus on implementing this structure vs. teaching this structure. I am eager to share these ideas with my team because I found out I will be in second grade again next year! Yahoo, finally a year when I teach the same grade instead of jumping up a grade, and down a grade...No more yo-yo for me...I give that a YAY!
References:
Nicole & Donna. 21st Century School Teacher. Retrieved from:
eHow Family. How to Teach Critical Thinking Skills. (2011) Article Retrieved From:
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