Partnership for 21st Century Skills Website

This week we were to spend some time exploring the website of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills.  From my understanding this is an organization to promote change in the educational field by building partnerships between education, business, community, and government entities.  They feel there is a need for specific skills to be concentrated on to close a gap between the knowledge and skills in today’s schools and the knowledge and skills of the typical community and workplace of our current society.  In order for this to be successful they must align classroom environments with actual environments by bringing together the core subject (3R’s) and the skills needed for success in college and careers which include critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity (4C’s).  The website itself appears to be very organized with links to resources they use to support their mission. They have a well thought out framework and additional resources for educators, policy makers and the community.  They have a blog with resident writers and that stays current to communicate with those interested in their operation.  I like the extent of the core subjects they included.  It seems to be well rounded and aligned to more traditional education.  It seems they do not want to take out what is being taught, but add to it. They added what they call 21^st Century themes to their list of subjects.  These themes include global awareness, financial literacy, civic literacy, health literacy, and environmental literacy.

    

While the framework is fairly extensive, I wonder how to allocate time for the additional lessons while still trying to teach the standards that are to be tested by the end of the year.  You can always add a little on a plate to make the meal look more appetizing, but the plate can overflow and you are left with more that it can hold and you have a mess to deal with.  Much of our curriculum is dictated by the district.  We do have some freedoms of how to present it, but with constant observations and new programs that are being implemented, this would have to be a decision the higher-ups have to agree with before we can fully commit to this model of education.  That means removing some of the restrictions or expectations of what they consider conventional teaching.

Even though I created a vigorous curriculum for my students and have a technology component to foster some of the skills that are mentioned in the website, I still feel I need to do some more research with the 21^st century skills in mind and refine how I present the information as well as the expectations of my students’ work.  I may not be able to hit all the components the Partnership addresses, but I can try to implement a few to get them started. 

Reference

Partnership for 21st Century Skills. (n.d.). Parntership for 21st century skills. Washington DC: Author. Retrieved from http://www.p21.org/

Utilizing Blogs in the Classroom

Being a sixth grade teacher presents many challenges to get students to think outside the box.  When there is more than one mind thinking at one time, it makes it easier for students to understand a concept or idea and learn from each other through collaboration or thought insights from others.  Having a class blog can offer both higher achievers opportunities to express themselves somewhat freely while lower achieving students develop ideas on how to respond properly by viewing examples from other students.  

One way I would use a blog in my class for language arts is to have the students compare and contrast two novels we read in class.  This would be an ongoing blog the students can add to anytime they have an idea they would like to share.  The two novels we would compare are The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien and Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer.  On the surface both stories doesn’t seem very similar, but as we read, discuss, and analyze, we find out they have a lot more in common than what was first expected.  We would read The Hobbit first and start with Artemis Fowl before presenting the blog assignment.  The idea is that one could contribute with an idea of a similarity or a difference as it comes up as we read the second novel.  Others are welcome to comment in support of the student’s idea or refute the claim using supporting details on either account. 

                

       
This blog would be a good tool to use in the classroom because it causes the students to think about their answer before they present it because they know that someone else is either going to agree or disagree with their response. It also allows other who has not thought about a satisfactory response to respond to others to participate in the discussion.  Using this blog also allows the discussion to be presented in one voice. There are no students cutting each other off in mid-sentence and complete thoughts are presented before they are commented on.  This is just one of the ways I can use a blog in my class.

Smarter Balanced Field Test Part 1

Welcome to the Smarter Balance Encounter.  My name is Steven Santiago and I am a sixth grade teacher with 16 years of teaching experience in an elementary school setting. This blog will follow the experience I gain with the new testing structure for the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).  The company in California decided to align its testing obligations with is the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium.  With the new standards comes new testing procedures.  Pencil and paper state testing is part of the past and now starts a new era of measuring student achievement and teacher accountability.

This week my 6th grade students were part of a district wide stress test to ensure the infrastructure within the district can handle the load of a many computers on the network at once.  Every school in the district participated in this pre-field test of the Smarter Balanced online test of the CCSS.  The field test is a trial run of the assessment system that helps ensure the assessments are valid, reliable, and fair for all students. It also gives teachers and schools a chance to gauge their readiness in advance of the first operational assessment in spring 2015.

The stress test actually provided my students and me with a good preview of what to expect for the field test as well as any issues we may had with the mobile computer lab we are using for the actual field test. We discovered, first hand, students now have to contend with three issues. 

The first issue is the understanding how to use the new laptops and understanding the sign in procedures.  While this not too much of an issue at 6th grade, I can only imagine the time management issues 3rd graders will have.  Hopefully, now that we have two mobile labs to share throughout the school,  teachers will make the task of logging into a computer a common practice like knowing how to use a cell phone to call a friend or home.  When using the computers to answer the essay questions, we fount that the touchpads on the laptops were accidentally tapped by some students moving the curser to a different part of their answer resulting in an incoherent answer or accidentally highlighting their answer only to erase a portion of it when they continue to type.  Many of the student are not proficient in typing and they do not look at the screen to see what they are typing, rather look at the keyboard to find the appropriate keys to type.  When they look up to see what they have typed it was not what they had hoped.  When examining the new laptops it was discovered there was not an easy way to turn off the touchpad for the test.  We supplied every computer with a mouse because it is easier to manipulate the pointer with it than the touchpad.

The next issue has to do with the format of the test.  The design of the test is not to difficult for the students to learn, but there is a learning curve involved.  The best way to explain this is comparing it to a new video game kids begin to play.  At first it is difficult, and they play at the easy setting, soon after they understand the controls and the objective of the game, they become more proficient and they increase the difficulty to gain a better gamming experience.  This test is like a new game to the students.  Once they understand the controls they can concentrate on the objective and the format will soon not be an issue.  When we did the stress test, they took the Language Arts practice test.  The first four questions required for different ways of answering a question.  First, they were to select the sentence to answer the question, next a short essay answer, then a multiple choice question, finally they were to select three sentences tat apply.  End of page one. There are other forms of answering questions as well as responding to content they are to listen to.

The third issue is remembering what they have learned throughout the year.  This is an issue students have to deal with no matter what kind of test is administered.  When all three concerns are addressed we hope to make the students will be more comfortable with the new assessment process.

We are now in the works to get the teachers involved in getting the students familiar with the equipment and the format of the test before the official field testing begins... I'll let you know how it goes.