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Reading Like a Detective

6/17/2022

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Help students independently investigate and interpret unfamiliar words using context clues. 
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CRISTINA COMPTON
Elementary & Project-Based Learning Specialist
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​When it comes to reading, one of the most significant challenges students face is vocabulary. If students come across a word they don’t know while reading, it can have a substantial impact on their comprehension and their confidence. I witnessed this as a classroom teacher, and I’ve heard it from many of the teachers I now coach. 

​Searching for clues

One of my most tried and true strategies, which I used in my own classroom as an elementary teacher, and one I continue to offer to teachers, involves encouraging students to read texts like a detective who is searching for clues. Asking them to engage in this way encourages students to look for clues that can help unlock meaning, offer insights, and assist them in interpreting unknown words.

But these clues — often referred to as context clues — go beyond the language immediately surrounding unknown words. Clues might be found in the paragraph before or after an unknown word or phrase. Sometimes there are clues in the text features, including pictures, visuals, captions, or word boxes. We need to support students in treating the whole text as a series of clues that can help them become familiar with specific vocabulary words as they read independently. 

Monitoring for meaning

Our Monitoring for Meaning resource can support students with this process, particularly when it comes to identifying and investigating difficult words. It offers a helpful template that prompts students to: 
  • Write down unknown words as they come across them
  • Consider the larger context in which the words appear, and
  • Identify specific context clues they may find close to the words

This resource asks them to use their best guess and then either confirm or revise their thinking after using a dictionary. Furthermore, it prompts students to lean on their prior knowledge to help decipher new words.
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DOWNLOAD: MONITORING FOR MEANING

Literacy teachers have the demanding and important task of teaching reading, and while there is no single strategy that can guarantee success, encouraging curiosity and investigation while reading is a high leverage way to support students in becoming competent, confident readers. 

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DR. CRISTINA COMPTON
Elementary & Project-Based Learning Specialist

Cristina serves as the Director of Program Development at CPET, overseeing a wide range of school-based projects and the Student Press Initiative, which supports teachers and students in developing projects that culminate in professionally designed, print-based publications. In her school partnerships, she supports educators with curriculum design, unit planning, project-based learning, and developing literacy strategies that can bolster student achievement across the disciplines. ​​

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INFORMATION OVERLOAD
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MULTIMODAL READING
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LEVERAGING LITERACY AT HOME
LITERACY, READING, RESOURCES
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Tiered Vocabulary: Narrowing Your Instructional Focus

1/27/2022

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How do we decide which words to teach our students? 
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LAURA RIGOLOSI
Literacy & Special Education Specialist

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In Including All Learners, a course I co-teach with my colleague Jacqui Stolzer, we design our content based on the questions we wonder about as teachers. One that comes up often is: How do we decide which words to teach our students? Asking this question challenges us to think about how to focus our instructional time, and nudges us to be more purposeful in designing our curriculum. 

Understanding tiered vocabulary

One of the ways we decide which words to teach is by using the tiered vocabulary concept developed by Dr. Isabel Beck. Beck thinks of vocabulary words as belonging to one of three categories:
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  • Tier 1 words are basic words that students typically know, unless they are an ELL, and in that case they may need to be taught that word. Tier 1 words include: computer, sunlight, coffee, sleep, etc.
  • Tier 2 words are those that are often used in classrooms and extend beyond one particular subject area, including: analyze, tweak, estimate, determine — words in that academic arena.
  • Tier 3 words are highly specific for each content area, and are housed within a particular subject. Examples of Tier 3 words include: parabola, hypotenuse, simile, monarchy, osmosis, etc.

While it is interesting to group words into these three categories, how does this practice impact our instructional decisions? 

Narrowing your focus

When designing lessons and prioritizing instructional time, it may be helpful to consider which tiers and key terms are worthy of classroom instruction.

As we can see above, Tier 3 words are easy to identify; these are the words that we need to teach in order for students to understand a particular concept. For example, in an ecosystem unit of a Living Environment course, words such as ā€œabioticā€ and ā€œbioticā€ are Tier 3 words that are necessary terms in the unit; they are the specific words used to identify non-living or living parts of an ecosystem. In a sense, Tier 3 words are easy to determine in a curriculum because they are entwined with concepts in a particular unit. 

Tier 2 words, however, are often not taught explicitly since the assumption is that students already know what they mean. It’s the Tier 2 words that need extra attention in our classrooms. These are the words to spend time teaching and modeling for your students. What this looks like will vary depending on your grade level and content area. 

Modeling for your students

Consider a Tier 2 word such as analyze. Most students are familiar with that word by the time they reach middle school, but what does it really look like in math or science or English?

When students are asked to analyze a text, it’s helpful for teachers to model this work, demonstrating the pieces of a text analysis and sharing the tools students need to analyze a text on their own. Think about all the steps that are imperative for analyzing a text. If I were modeling how to analyze a passage, I might:

  • Demonstrate how I reword the passage in a way that makes sense to me, or paraphrase what the passage means
  • Consider any striking or interesting features of that passage that make me think or wonder a bit more. (Here I have to check myself that I don’t get too far off on a tangent! I have to script this or else it becomes a bit too unwieldy… ). 
  • Try to position that particular passage with another passage earlier in that text, or with another text
  • Synthesize my analysis by explaining what I find significant about the passage and why 

Analysis can change shape depending on the class — in science, analyzing lab data might look different from analyzing a passage in English. But in both cases, dedicating instructional time to demonstration of the term will help strengthen students’ skills, giving students access to academic thinking and language. 

Tiered vocabulary can help you classify key terms for your grade level and content area, and as a result, make instructional decisions that hone in on teaching new or unfamiliar words for your students. Finding a balance between content-specific, Tier 3 words and more general academic terms like those in Tier 2 can help narrow your focus and increase student comfort with the words they encounter in your classroom. 

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DR. LAURA RIGOLOSI
Literacy & Special Education Specialist


As part of her doctoral studies, Laura's research focused on the ways we teach reading in Title 1 high school classrooms, and she continues to research the best literacy practices at the secondary level. Her experience with teaching English sparked her interest in the most effective ways to teach reading and writing to diverse learners. For the past 15 years, Laura has worked with teachers in all disciplines and continues to help teachers increase their literacy practices in classrooms, thus increasing engagement and understanding within content area classes.

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TACKLING COMPLEX TEXTS
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DIFFERENTIATION FOR ELLS & SWD
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LISTEN: ENGAGING ALL LEARNERS
INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN, LITERACY
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Advancing Racial Literacy in Teacher Education

5/20/2021

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In this episode
Today’s students use their digital expertise and the power of their voice to respond to issues of inequity in society. Therefore, it is essential that teacher educators develop their own racial literacy skills — and those of their pre-service and classroom teachers — in order to support students' digital activism. Authors and Teachers College, Columbia University faculty Detra Price-Dennis and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz join us for a look at how educators can cultivate these skills, and how to promote equity in digital spaces. 
​LISTEN ON:    APPLE   ā€¢   SOUNDCLOUD   ā€¢   SPOTIFY
Final thoughts
How can educators have engaging and constructive conversations about race?
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Detra Price-Dennis
Associate Professor of Education; Teachers College, Columbia University

​Educators can help themselves and their students by learning how to hear someone else's experience, without feeling that their own is being invalidated.


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Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
Associate Professor of English Education; Teachers College, Columbia University

​As educators, we want to make it a point to really see our students, to pull out those things that they’re interested in and create spaces for conversation; even with the topics they’re struggling with and say, ā€œwell, how can I support you?ā€
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CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PEDAGOGY
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ARTS-INFUSED LITERACY INSTRUCTION
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LITERACY ACROSS CULTURES

TAGS: EQUITY, LITERACY, TEACHING TODAY
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Reflective Writing: Making Thinking and Learning Visible

4/30/2021

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BY LAURA RIGOLOSI

When we ask our students to write reflectively on a topic, we are asking them to think about the topic, and put that thinking on paper. This seemingly small ask can have big effects, including an increased awareness of one’s own thinking and learning. 

Why might you ask students to engage in this process? As Dr. Saundra McGuire, LSU chemistry professor and learning expert explains, ā€œlearning is about being able to explain something and apply it in other ways.ā€ Reflective writing, then, is a way for students to bring their knowledge to the forefront, creating space for them to explain their ideas and apply them in ways beyond the immediate context. For example, when we are reading a challenging class text in English, such as a Shakespearean play, we want our students to do more than read and interpret that particular Shakespearean text; instead, we want them to have an awareness of how they are reading that play in order to later apply those same reading dispositions to another challenging text. 

The more we can help our students understand their own metacognition when reading and learning, the more ownership they have over that learning. This is empowering for our students. Teaching students to be aware of their thinking is the first step in reflective writing — and with this awareness comes the ability to apply thinking patterns to other arenas. 

Introducing a double entry journal 

When we ask our students to engage in reflective writing, we are trying to peek inside their minds to check if they are understanding key concepts, but also we are trying to help them name their own thinking moves. This is why writing to learn is such an important practice in our teaching — we are using writing as a reflection tool to make students’ thinking visible.

In my two decades of teaching, I’ve seen more graphic organizers than I’d care to admit, and in the end, I always return to the double entry journal when I need students to respond to a text in a reflective way. The double entry journal is the most simple graphic organizer imaginable to help students focus on a particular text, and encourage their thinking around that text. 

The goal of the double entry journal, circling back to McGuire, is to be able to explain the text and apply it. Keep in mind, when we say ā€œtextā€ it could be a broad use of the term, including math problems, an historical event, a quote from a text, an image, etc. 

In an article I co-wrote with Jacqui Stolzer, a fellow K-12 coach, we discussed how ā€œdouble entry journals include two components: a column on the left, partially filled out with quotes from the text, and a column on the right, which is open for viewers to share their thoughts. Returning to the ideas presented in UDL [Universal Design for Learning], a double entry journal that includes specific lines from the text is useful for students who have central executive challenges, but in reality, everyone can benefit from the text references.ā€ 

While the double entry journal is a template for reflective writing, teachers can differentiate this tool by pulling out specific quotes for students, or by giving students free reign to respond to quotes that strike them. 

Modeling the double entry journal

Below is an example of a double entry journal that I wrote as a way to show my thinking about a text. In my entry here, I share a quote in the left column that I find provocative, and in the right column, I unpack what it means to me. A student reading this double entry journal might be surprised by all of the reading thoughts I have after reading Bateson’s brief line, but this is the point! We want students to see that my brain is active when I am reading, and in this example I am trying to name some of the thinking moves I am making as a reader. 
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Response
ā€‹ā€œInsight, I believe, refers to that depth of understanding that comes by setting experiences, yours and mine, familiar and exotic, new and old side by side, learning by letting them speak to one another.ā€ 

​— p. 14 Bateson, Mary Catherine, Peripheral Visions


































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​Sometimes when I am stuck in my head, in between projects, and wondering if I should grade, lesson plan, make tea, fold laundry, or stretch on the floor, I find myself drifting towards my bookshelf. The phone is an easier place to procrastinate — scrolling and mindlessly looking at the pretty things, but I know this isn’t healthy and leaves me feeling unfulfilled; it is a time suck that I regret. 

Today, I pull out Peripheral Visions, a book I first read years ago in graduate school. It gave me insight into how perspective matters, and how our perspectives are all idiosyncratic. I read it from time to time when I need to recalibrate my thinking. 

I reread the first chapter, and I am struck by this quote by Bateson. The idea that insight ā€œcomes by setting experiences, new and old...letting them speak to one anotherā€ is a complex concept, and I reread the sentence several times. What a perfect way to explain insight — it is not the experience alone that teaches us, it is pairing the experience with a lived moment we have already had. It’s learning layered with experience, and the realization of it all. 

As I’m beginning to gather these crumbs of ideas and write my response, I think about earlier today, when my nine-year old daughter asked me to review a math problem with her: Is 6/8 greater than 4/8? Explain.

She told me, yes, she knows 6/8 is greater than 4/8. When I ask her to explain it, she draws pies made up of eight slices and colors in four slices, and on the other pie colors in six slices. 6/8 is more than 4/8 she shows me; more slices are shaded in the picture of 6/8. When we talk about the denominator, she builds on her understanding and begins to realize with the same denominator, the numerator really matters in terms of value, or which fraction is bigger. She layers her understanding by building on what she knows. We agree that we would rather eat 6/8 of a cookie than 4/8 of a cookie. 6/8 is more cookie than 4/8 of a cookie! 

Whether we realize it or not, we lean on our prior experiences to help us sort out the present. It reminds me what we recommend as a way to teach content-area literacy; we suggest helping students build prior knowledge before beginning a new text. The prior knowledge mixed with the new knowledge can make for powerful learning moments. 
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​After sharing a double entry model like this with students, I would ask questions such as: What do you notice I am doing as a writer in my double entry response? What moves am I making? My example is a bit of a stream of consciousness, and this shows students how I can engage with a text in complex and somewhat messy ways. And that is okay! Writing, learning, and reflecting tend to be messy and nonlinear paths. While students may not write as much as I do in the example above, offering them an advanced model can demonstrate the possibilities and multiple ways in which they can respond to a text using this format. 

Writing your own model for your students and asking them to notice and name the different ways you responded to the text can be instructive in two ways: students are able to see what we mean by ā€œreflective writing,ā€ and they will glean more understanding of the text through your reflective writing. 

When students are asked to write a response to a quote, an equation, an historical event, or a math problem, they have to find something to say. They have to breathe life into that text — both to help themselves understand it more, and to realize how it changes and influences their perspective. This is how reflective writing is a useful tool; it is a type of writing that nudges students to notice what they are thinking, and to document it for others to see. By naming what they think, students are also teaching themselves what they know, and owning their own questions.
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RAISE THE BAR FOR STUDENT WRITING
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THE POWER OF PERSONAL WRITING
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CELEBRATE STUDENT VOICE

TAGS: LAURA RIGOLOSI, LITERACY, WRITING
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Information Overload: Combating misinformation with critical thinking

4/27/2021

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​Simple steps to support students as they assess the validity and intentions behind informational sources.
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BY COURTNEY BROWN & SHERRISH HOLLOMAN

​Once upon a time, being literate was as simple as being able to read, write, and do arithmetic. As educators, we also know literacy is a social construction, and being literate implies that an individual has the ability to interpret, produce, understand, and interrogate language appropriately. However, our understanding of what it means to be literate in the 21st century has been further complicated by the myriad of ā€œliteraciesā€ we’ve come to recognize, including:
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  • Civic & ethical literacy
  • Coding & computational literacy
  • Media literacy
  • Data literacy
  • Digital literacy
  • Foundational literacy
  • Game literacy
  • Health & financial literacy
  • News literacy
  • Visual literacy
 
As the definition of literacy has broadened, so have the modes for finding and sharing information. This has increased exponentially with advances in technology, and is indicative of the natural shift in our understanding of 21st century literacy. The need to use multiple literacies to unpack information is tied to the need to interpret the many formats, sources, or media through which we obtain information. For educators, the challenge becomes more about how we need to teach students to interpret and assess information — not simply how to gain access to it. 

The trouble with technology
 
Literacy development that includes technology can both support traditional literacies, and introduce new forms in the classroom. Technology can support each literacy type listed above by helping students gather a range of sources that will support them in discussing their ideas. Between smartphones, tablets, voice commands, and even Alexa, information is readily available everywhere. This is great, right? Yes, except that we are finding more and more examples of misinformation and disinformation in our daily diet. Recent articles in the New York Times and other educational sites such as Teaching Kids News further explore this topic, and emphasize the importance of understanding what it means to be literate within the context of this information-heavy era.

Even if accessible information is every educator’s dream, we should not simply be giving fish to our students but rather, teaching them to fish — bolstering their literacy skills by helping them to make sense of the information around them by means other than traditional reading and writing. By teaching them how to assess the validity and intentions behind informational sources, we can empower them to raise concerns, and to verify unfamiliar or questionable sources.

Understanding misinformation & disinformation

According to Business Insider, the term misinformation refers to information that is false or inaccurate, and is often spread widely with others, regardless of an intent to deceive. Some of us may have done this ourselves and later realized that we misunderstood what we were sharing. Remember the game of telephone? One person would talk to the person next to them, and their words would travel from person to person around the room. At the end, we would often laugh at how distorted the original message had become from between the first person and the last. That is misinformation.

Misinformation can turn into disinformation when it's shared by individuals or groups who know it's wrong, yet continue to intentionally spread it to cast doubt or stir divisiveness. Often, disinformation — or what some may call ā€œfake newsā€ — is generated to be deliberately deceptive. As educators become clearer about the distinction, it can be better communicated to students. 

Emphasize how, not what to think
 
To combat misinformation and disinformation, it is essential that we teach our students to become critical thinkers. Learning critical thinking skills can also enhance academic performance by developing judgement, evaluation, and problem-solving abilities. This skill also transcends into practical aspects of daily life, and ultimately into college and career readiness. We can promote these skills by letting students know that we do not have all the answers, and instead offer them opportunities to unpack and understand information on their own.
Critical thinking skills
Recommended actions
Questioning
Encourage students to wonder and imagine; ā€œIf this is the case, I wonder whyā€¦ā€
​ Decision-making
​Empower students to make data-informed decisions by starting with: ā€œI think this, because...ā€
Incorporating different points of view
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​Foster different perspectives by encouraging students share: ā€œWhat does each person think, and why?ā€
Connecting different ideas
Challenge students to consider multiple perspectives such as, ā€œIf this is the one way of thinking about it...what else can be learned?ā€
Creativity
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Support the exploration of various modes of literacy, beyond traditional reading and writing. Ideally, students will begin to say: ā€œI used to think...but now...ā€

​With so much information at our fingertips each day, the importance of critical thinking skills cannot be overstated — it is imperative that we teach students how to interpret facts and assess the validity of informational sources. These skills will allow them to investigate the information they’re receiving, and identify misinformation in the process, helping them to become truly literate for the modern world. 
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21st CENTURY BOOK CLUBS
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DIFFERENTIATION: DIVERSIFYING READING
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TACKLING COMPLEX TEXTS

TAGS: COURTNEY BROWN, LITERACY, SHERRISH HOLLOMAN
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Book clubs that build 21st century skills

4/13/2021

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Breathe new life into book clubs and place students at the center of their reading experience.
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G. FAITH LITTLE
21st Century Learning & SEL Specialist
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Time moves forward, as it always does. We can take this time to reflect on lessons learned when we unexpectedly and quickly shifted from teaching in the classroom, to teaching remotely, and then into a next normal of blended in-person and virtual learning spaces. One big takeaway from this time of critical reflection is that we aren’t starting with a blank page. Whatever the season, we can adapt tools we already have to meet the challenges we’re facing.

Breathing new life into book clubs 

New tools can breathe new life into our planning and our teaching, and creating a new tool doesn’t need to be done from scratch. By connecting Ten Tips for Successful Book Clubs with our Global Mindset Framework, we can quickly create a new resource that integrates teaching 21st century skills into each reading opportunity we plan for our students. 
 
Book clubs offer many benefits to student readers, including:
  • Promoting a love for literature and a positive attitude toward reading
  • Reflecting a student-centered model of literacy (employing a gradual release of responsibility)
  • Encouraging extensive and intensive reading
  • Inviting natural discussions that lead to student inquiry and critical thinking
  • Supporting diverse responses to text
  • Fostering interaction, cooperation, and collaboration
  • Providing choice and encourage responsibility
  • Exposing students to literature from multiple perspectives
  • Nurturing reflection and self-evaluation

A successful book club for your students will:
  • Generate excitement
  • Create opportunities for shared decision-making
  • Communicate expectations
  • Establish ground rules
  • Offer opportunities to lead by example
  • Gather tools
  • Anticipate tough conversations
  • Be student-centered
  • Celebrate completion
  • Tweak what you’ve already tried

Understanding the Global Mindset Framework
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​Now that we’ve framed some of the characteristics of book clubs, we can connect each facet to our Global Mindset Framework. This will help us streamline our work when planning for our next book club iteration, or beginning a book club community with our students.

The Global Mindset Framework is the articulation of 21st century skills students need to navigate their present and their future, sorted into five categories of capacities: caring, collaborative, creative, critical, and global. The framework addresses key questions that teachers and school leaders struggle with as they attempt to make key concepts relevant to children in a changing world. 

To understand the Global Mindset Framework, we can look to the Global Learning Alliance (GLA). The GLA is the outgrowth of our groundbreaking research on the features and practices surrounding 21st century teaching and learning. It has evolved from the seeds of a research project and is now a consortium of schools and universities around the world dedicated to understanding, defining, applying, and sharing the principles and practices of a world-class education within a wide range of educational contexts. 

21st century capacities
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​Global capacity: The capacity for students to step outside the confines of their own familiar social world to understand distant realities in order to engage productively with the world. 

Critical capacity: The capacity for students to develop their full critical cognitive capacities in order to be discerning and informed citizens of the world.

Collaborative capacity: The capacity for students to develop habits of observation, reflection, and collaboration, and to be able to communicate in multiple modalities such as through images, words, sounds, gestures, or an integration of these modes in order to actively contribute to various discourses in the world. 

Creative capacity: The capacity for students to follow their curiosity by questioning or imagining in order to contribute positive improvements or inventions to their world.

Caring capacity: The capacity for students to explore compassion, empathy, and self-awareness in order to develop caring partnerships with themselves, their communities, countries, and world. 

Activating 21st century skills

​Using the template below, we can imagine how we might combine various capacities from the Global Mindset Framework with our tips for success to generate a profile of a book club that integrates 21st century skills into student learning. We want to keep moving our teaching forward to meet the needs of today’s students, but we don’t often feel we have the time we need to recreate our plans. By layering the Global Mindset Framework over our book club planning, we can revise what we’ve already got going for us instead of starting from a blank page.
Book club component
21st century skills
Generate excitement
Global: Students engage in multiple perspectives by writing about what life might be like in [setting] for [characters].
Shared decision-making
Global: Students engage in real-world problem-solving by choosing from a list of short stories about bias.
Communicate expectations
Collaborative: Students generate effective and varied ways for expectations to be communicated so that all participants can be reached.

​Caring: Students consider the needs of each group member as they work.
Establish ground rules
Critical: Students write a response to established ground rules, sharing how they think each one supports a positive experience for themselves or their classmates and/or how a rule might be improved.
Lead by example
Caring: Students develop self-awareness by observing their teacher’s model of a transparent reading practice and making a personal connection.
Gather tools
Critical: Students evaluate which reading tools, templates, or conversation guides were most effective for them in the past.

Collaborative: Book club groups agree upon which tools to use or how to use all tools to benefit all members.
Anticipate tough conversations
Creative: Student facilitators imagine some issues that might come up during their conversations. Facilitators share their issues on a Google doc and comment on one another’s issue, jotting down questions or comments they might have ready to share.
Keep it student-centered
Collaborative: Students collaborate strategically by rotating roles during book club conversations. Teachers observe and provide an opportunity for students to reflect on their group’s progress and challenges.
Celebrate completion
Caring: Students develop self-confidence by sharing something that they learned and want to build on.
Sharing ideas
​Global: With teachers from all over the world connecting more easily and more often than ever, consider how you can share your ideas and get ideas from your colleagues in other communities, near and far.

Connecting skills to next steps

​Using the template above, we can customize our profile to fit a specific book — in this case, we'll use Malala Yousafzai's I Am Malala: How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World. In this model, we start with our to-do list; we imagine some of our options, and what we need to collect to complete our plan.
21st century skills (from above)
Next steps
Global: Students engage in multiple perspectives by writing about what life might be like in [setting] for [characters].
Students write on the following prompt: An announcement is made today that all girls will no longer be able to attend school, starting tomorrow. What does the day after tomorrow look like? Who is impacted, and how are they affected?
Global: Students engage in real-world problem-solving by choosing from a list of short stories about bias.
Compile 3-5 short stories. Distribute packet. Students choose one story to read prior to starting the book.
Collaborative: Students generate effective and varied ways for expectations to be communicated so that all participants can be reached.

​Caring: Students consider the needs of each group member as they work.
Students create a Google Doc for discussion roles & expectations. Within the doc, each student comments on at least one expectation, noting one benefit and identifying who is affected. Students are invited to suggest improvements to the list.
Critical: Students write a response to established ground rules, sharing how they think each one supports a positive experience for themselves or their classmates and/or how a rule might be improved.
Students create a Google Doc for ground rules. Within the doc, each student comments on at least one ground rule, noting an advantage and a potential challenge. Students are invited to suggest improvements to the list.
Caring: Students develop self-awareness by observing their teacher’s model of a transparent reading practice and making a personal connection.
Read aloud a short story on bias, showing how you annotate as you read. Write, in real time, on the prompt above and invite students to share low-inference observations about what you did.
Critical: Students evaluate which reading tools, templates, or conversation guides were most effective for them in the past.

Collaborative: Book club groups agree upon which tools to use or how to use all tools to benefit all members.
Students review the tools they’ve collected in their virtual binders over the past few months. Groups use a decision-making protocol to agree upon the tool or tools they will use for this book club.
Creative: Student facilitators imagine some issues that might come up during their conversations. Facilitators share their issues on a Google doc and comment on one another’s issue, jotting down questions or comments they might have ready to share.
​Build in time for facilitators to meet together for this step, and provide feedback on their ideas to support possible tough conversations.
Collaborative: Students collaborate strategically by rotating roles during book club conversations. Teachers observe and provide an opportunity for students to reflect on their group’s progress and challenges
Utilize a sticky note protocol for student reflection. Do this more than once during the unit — consider a pre- and post-reading reflection.
Caring: Students develop self-confidence by sharing something that they learned and want to build on.
Broadcast / forecast share-out using the prompts: one thing I learned while reading this book and one thing I want to do based on what I learned.
​Global: With teachers from all over the world connecting more easily and more often than ever, consider how you can share your ideas and get ideas from your colleagues in other communities, near and far.
Reach out to colleagues — within your school community, those you've met through PD opportunities, or those you've connected with virtually over the past year — and share how you're each dealing with challenging conversations.

The task before us all is to educate students today for the world they’re poised to lead tomorrow, and as we recognize that we can no longer sustain a 20th century in a 21st century world, we must remain flexible in order to meet the dynamic needs of our students. As we look for ways to build upon the expertise and techniques already alive in our classrooms, we can easily create opportunities for students to build 21st century skills, shifting from teacher-centered instruction to an environment that puts students at the center of their reading and writing experiences. 
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UNPACK CHALLENGING TEXTS
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GLOBAL MINDSET FRAMEWORK
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LEVERAGING LITERACY AT HOME


TAGS: 21st CENTURY SKILLS, G. FAITH LITTLE, LITERACY, READING, RESOURCES
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The Center for Professional Education of Teachers (CPET) at Teachers College, Columbia University is devoted to advancing global capacities in teacher education, research, and whole school reform. CPET advocates for excellence and equity in education through direct service to youth and educators, innovative school projects, international research that examines and advocates the highest quality instructional and assessment practices today, and sustainable school partnerships that leverage current policy and mandates to raise literacy levels and embed collaborative communities of learning. Uniting theory and practice, CPET promotes rigorous and relevant scholarship and is committed to making excellent education accessible worldwide.
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Center for Professional Education of Teachers 
525 West 120th Street, Box 182 New York, NY 10027
416 Zankel Hall
Phone: (212) 678-3161 | Fax: (212) 678-6631
Email: cpet@tc.edu
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