The answer is simple: be deliberate.
We can't teach every skill, in every content, in every lesson, every single time. But, we can plan ahead to ensure that we are providing instruction, formative assessments, and feedback on those skills in our day to day interactions with students.
Collaboration is a great example, since many schools highlight this particular skill as crucial. Oftentimes though the emphasis is simply on allowing students to do group work. How does that look different in 9th grade vs. 12th grade? Is there a progression of how students demonstrate their ability to work in a group? Or to resolve conflict? Or to hold themselves and each other accountable? Just putting them in groups, or letting them choose their own, is not an effective instructional strategy and it doesn't provide feedback or allow for self-reflection. In short, it doesn't explicitly teach collaboration, nor does it provide growth opportunities over time.
So we have 2 challenges:
1. Align vertical progression of skills
2. Decide how they are taught and assessed along the way.
Here is an example of what that looks like for collaboration focus at each grade level at STEM.
9th Grade - Divserity
10th Grade - Accountability
11th Grade - Time management
12th Grade - Networking
At each of those 4 grade levels we also break it down further to determine which activities match that focus area and work on a quarterly progression of modeling the lesson for students, guiding them in applying it, monitoring their success in using it, and releasing them to practice independently. Fo us, PBL's fit this model nicely. So for instance, in 10th grade where the collaboration focus is on holding self and others accountable, teachers participate in helping the students write group contracts. Initially they are members of the group itself, gradually working to remove themselves from the group and allowing students to report out as group leaders and enforce the contracts on their own.
Likewise, the other focus areas at each grade level are explicitly taught/modeled, students are guided in the acquisition process, and monitored before being expected to utilize the skill independently. At the end of 4 years, what you see is that students have progressed throughout the year, and throughout high school, in their understanding of and use of collaboration skills.
It does take effort to create and embed these systems of skill building, but with countless schools recognizing the value of skills based education, we need to implement programs of learning that actually teach them. We as teachers evaluated our 3 focus areas: collaboration, critical thinking, innovation, and came up with the following focus areas for all three at each grade level.
Each one of those grid cells is also attached to a quarterly progression just like in the example above. For further info and a handy reference, check here for a full list of the activities and lessons that teach those skills explicitly, provide feedback, and informally assess whether students are learning them in order to provide additional support as needed.
The truth is, it did require some effort and planning time, and modifications along the way, but ultimately there was high buy-in because we as teachers analyzed what we were already doing, what our students needed, and how to approach embedding it in meaningful ways. It isn't "another thing" we do on top of high quality instruction...it's part of HOW we provide high quality instruction, that we believe our students truly need in order to be successful. What do YOUR students need to be successful? Communication skills? Problem solving skills? Empathy? How can you create a system of teaching them in your classroom? What do you and your teams need to be able to teach them? Start with the simple grid structure above and work from there! Or email me, I am happy to help. brockelbank_b@hcde.org.
We can't teach every skill, in every content, in every lesson, every single time. But, we can plan ahead to ensure that we are providing instruction, formative assessments, and feedback on those skills in our day to day interactions with students.
Collaboration is a great example, since many schools highlight this particular skill as crucial. Oftentimes though the emphasis is simply on allowing students to do group work. How does that look different in 9th grade vs. 12th grade? Is there a progression of how students demonstrate their ability to work in a group? Or to resolve conflict? Or to hold themselves and each other accountable? Just putting them in groups, or letting them choose their own, is not an effective instructional strategy and it doesn't provide feedback or allow for self-reflection. In short, it doesn't explicitly teach collaboration, nor does it provide growth opportunities over time.
So we have 2 challenges:
1. Align vertical progression of skills
2. Decide how they are taught and assessed along the way.
Here is an example of what that looks like for collaboration focus at each grade level at STEM.
10th Grade - Accountability
11th Grade - Time management
12th Grade - Networking
At each of those 4 grade levels we also break it down further to determine which activities match that focus area and work on a quarterly progression of modeling the lesson for students, guiding them in applying it, monitoring their success in using it, and releasing them to practice independently. Fo us, PBL's fit this model nicely. So for instance, in 10th grade where the collaboration focus is on holding self and others accountable, teachers participate in helping the students write group contracts. Initially they are members of the group itself, gradually working to remove themselves from the group and allowing students to report out as group leaders and enforce the contracts on their own.
Likewise, the other focus areas at each grade level are explicitly taught/modeled, students are guided in the acquisition process, and monitored before being expected to utilize the skill independently. At the end of 4 years, what you see is that students have progressed throughout the year, and throughout high school, in their understanding of and use of collaboration skills.
It does take effort to create and embed these systems of skill building, but with countless schools recognizing the value of skills based education, we need to implement programs of learning that actually teach them. We as teachers evaluated our 3 focus areas: collaboration, critical thinking, innovation, and came up with the following focus areas for all three at each grade level.
Collaboration
|
Critical Thinking
|
Innovation
| |
9
|
Diversity
|
Ownership
|
Originality
|
10
|
Accountability
|
Evaluation
|
Failure redefined
|
11
|
Time management
|
Prototyping
|
Desirability
|
12
|
Networking
|
Expert knowledge
|
Invent
|
Each one of those grid cells is also attached to a quarterly progression just like in the example above. For further info and a handy reference, check here for a full list of the activities and lessons that teach those skills explicitly, provide feedback, and informally assess whether students are learning them in order to provide additional support as needed.
The truth is, it did require some effort and planning time, and modifications along the way, but ultimately there was high buy-in because we as teachers analyzed what we were already doing, what our students needed, and how to approach embedding it in meaningful ways. It isn't "another thing" we do on top of high quality instruction...it's part of HOW we provide high quality instruction, that we believe our students truly need in order to be successful. What do YOUR students need to be successful? Communication skills? Problem solving skills? Empathy? How can you create a system of teaching them in your classroom? What do you and your teams need to be able to teach them? Start with the simple grid structure above and work from there! Or email me, I am happy to help. brockelbank_b@hcde.org.
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