21st Century Skills Website Review

The 21st Century Skills is a national organization that advocates students in K-12 classrooms to become prepared for the workforce and community they will be apart of. They have developed a framework for students that includes: Life and Career Skills, Learning and Innovation, and Information, Media and Technology Skills. The organization is sharing the important message that the traditional 3 R's that students learn in school will not be enough for them to be successful they must also know the 3 C's: critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity and innovation. These frameworks are integrated along with the school's core subjects already in place. The purpose is to get students ready for the 21st century world they will work in and become members of society. The organization is in partnership with many businesses, government agencies, school districts and educational companies. They currently have fourteen U.S. states that are members with the organization, sadly California is not yet one of them. I am surprised that I never heard of this organization before, yet so much has been published about this topic and organization. Many school administrations, educational magazines, journals, and even blogs have been discussing how to prepare our students for the workforce and community they will be apart of in the 21st century. Just think of all the problems and challenges these children will have to work with even more than we currently are dealing with; pollution, global warming, technology advances, and new state and U.S. policies. Many companies are updating the way they get work done and integrating technology into their businesses. Will our students be prepared to use computers every day to get their job done, will they be able to use social network media such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter to post job applications and promote their company?

I was surprised at how popular this topic of 21st century readiness is and how much work this organization has done creating their framework and promoting their cause. I was also surprised that the ever-changing and progressing state of California is not a member of this organization. For my students, I know I will have to prepare them with a focus on the 3 C's while integrating real life situations and problems. Integrating technology into the classroom and assignments will also help prepare them for the changes that will be taking place in the workforce.

Utilizing Blogs in the Classroom

I am currently teaching in a third grade classroom and would love to start a blog for our classroom. First I would need to find out how many of my students have Internet access at home and would utilize our class blog. I would use the blog as center for information on our class work, special events, homework postings, study guides, class calendar, and photos or videos of what we are doing in third grade. This would be a fun website for students and parents to visit to showcase work, gain access to materials for the class, and find out what we are studying that week. I would show students how to access and use the blog so they could then show their families. I would also encourage students to visit the blog once a week and maybe even give extra tickets to those that left a comment or found any mis-spellings. I could post flash cards for students using our vocabulary words, have crossword puzzles using spelling words, upload a video of the Native American tribe we are learning about, etc. I think my students would love to visit the classroom page because I would also have them be apart of creating it. I would have a blog writer chosen each week to write a short summary of events that happened or interesting facts they learned. I would review this summary and then post it with the student's first name or number as the author. I am not sure if it is too late in the year to set this up (we have 3 weeks remaining). What do you think?

New Opportunity

It has been a week since I have been in my new teaching position- long term teacher in third grade. The teacher I am replacing underwent a surgery and she was able to plan the whole year out for me! I was tutoring in her class since January every day for about an hour. I am relieved to say they are a great group of students and she has done a great job "training" them to be the students they are today. We get to do some fun projects the next few weeks, weaving and clay making for Mother's Day, Native American studies, animal reports, and of course the always fun FRACTIONS!! (sigh) I did try to make the fractions interesting by reading the Hershey Fractions book and bringing in some real Hershey candy bars (too bad I had didn't know that 2 students were allergic to chocolate). The students loved the book and the treat of course. It is such a hard concept to learn; 2/2, 1/1,12/12 equal 1 whole? During the lesson I was relieved to hear some students say "Oh, I get it" "oh, it's 12 pieces but 1 candy bar!" mission accomplished! Now if I can just get everyone's interest for their new story of the week and make decimals clear to them!