21st Century Skills

Whenever I have some free time (thank God, I just finished marking all the papers on my desk and finally found some time to do some reading), I love reading some stuff about 21st Century skills... Such resources help me reflect on what I do in class. Does it really help my students? Or will it help them in the future?

Today I'd like to share with you what I've just read... Below is Proffessor Lawrence Jones' Foundation skills, which are the essential jobs skills for the 21st century. I believe these skills are not limited to business life only; we, as 21st century teachers, can benefit from nearly all of them while designing our courses and facilitating learning :)

Foundation skills:

• Basic Skills
• Thinking Skills
• People Skills
• Personal Qualities

The Basic Skills

• Reading: Identify relevant details, facts, and specification; locate information in books/manuals, from graphs; find meaning of unknown words; judge accuracy of reports; use computer to find information.
• Writing: Write ideas completely and accurately in letters and reports with proper grammar, spelling, and punctuation; check, edit, and revise for accuracy and emphasis, use computer to communicate information.
• Mathematics: Use numbers, fractions, and percentages to solve problems; use tables, graphs, diagrams, and charts; use computer to enter, retrieve, change, and communicate numerical information.
• Speaking: Organize and communicate ideas clearly; speak clearly; select language, tone of voice, and gestures appropriate to audience.
• Listening: Listen carefully to what person says, noting tone of voice, and other body language; respond in a way that shows understanding of what is said.

The Thinking Skills

• Creative Thinking: Use imagination freely, combining ideas or information in new ways; make connections between ideas that seem unrelated.
• Problem-Solving Skills: Recognize problem; identify why it is a problem; create and implement a solution; watch to see how well solution works; revise as needed.
• Decision Making Skills: Identify goal; generate alternatives and gather information about them; weigh pros and cons; choose best alternative; plan how to carry out choice.
• Visualization: See a building or object by looking at a blueprint, drawing, or sketch; imagine how a system works by looking at a schematic drawing

The People Skills

• Social: Show understanding, friendliness, and respect for feelings; assert oneself when appropriate; take an interest in what people say and why they think and act as they do.
• Negotiation: Identify common goals among different parties in conflict; clearly present the facts and arguments of your position; listen to and understand other party's position; create possible ways to resolve conflict; make reasonable compromises.
• Leadership: Communicate thoughts and feelings to justify a position; encourage or convince others; make positive use of rules or values; demonstrate ability to have others believe in and trust you because of your competence and honesty.
• Teamwork: Work cooperatively with others; contribute to group with ideas and effort; do own share of work; encourage team members; resolve differences for the benefit of the team; responsibly challenge existing procedures, policies, or authorities.
• Cultural Diversity: Work well with people having different ethnic, social, or educational backgrounds; understand the concerns of members of other ethnic and gender groups; base impressions on a person's behavior, not stereotypes; understand one's own culture and those of others and how they differ; respectfully help people in these groups make cultural adjustments when necessary.

Personal Qualities

• Self-Esteem: Understand how beliefs affect how a person feels and acts; "listen" to and identify irrational or harmful beliefs you may have; and understand how to change these negative beliefs when they occur.
• Self-Management: Assess your knowledge and skills accurately; set specific, realistic personal goals; monitor progress toward your goal.
• Responsibility: Work hard to reach goals, even if task is unpleasant; do quality work; display high standard of attendance, honesty, energy, and optimism.

Source: http://education-2020.wikispaces.com/21st%20Century%20Learning

Thesis Statement Partners

Level: Intermediate and above

Materials Needed: paper

Preparation: 

o   To teach students the rules of writing successful thesis statements, prepare a pair of good and bad thesis statements, each of which exemplifies a rule (see the sample thesis statements below). Put each thesis statement on a slip of paper. Make sure there is a slip for each student. You may need to increase the number of sample thesis statements according to the number of students you have.

o   Make copies of the rules and sample thesis statements for all students.     

Time: 20 minutes

Procedures:

-   Shuffle the slips of paper. Give the instructions:

“Here I have some sample thesis statements. Each thesis statement has a pair or two pairs, which are either the improved or the poor version.
 
Your task is to pick one thesis statement first. Then, you will find the pair or pairs of that thesis statement. When you find your partner, you will analyse them and decide which one is the good one and which one is the bad one. Then, you will come up with a rule explaining your sample thesis statements.”
 
-   Students pick a slip of paper and then mingle to find the student who has the pair of that thesis statement.  

-   When students find the pairs, they analyse their statements and decide which one is good and why.

-   Closely monitor the students at this stage and provide support if necessary.

-   When students come up with the rule, they write it on the board.

-   When all the rules are put on the board, go over them together with the class and make corrections if necessary.

-   Distribute each student the handout on which you have both the rules and the examples.

Variation:

-   If your students are not kinesthetic, you may prefer to ask students to do the same task on a worksheet.

Personal Comment:

-   Asking students figure out the rules of thesis statements rather than providing them with the rules is always much more helpful. What I have witnessed is that students tend not to forget the rules when they themselves figure them out.


This activity is from my book, The Activist. 

Using Word Clouds on the 1st Day...

Word clouds have been quite popular in ELT classrooms for some time and I also like using them for different purposes (which I will be writing about in my coming posts) since most students find them fun. 

In this post, I will be sharing with you “Me in a Cloud”, an icebreaker in which you can use a word cloud to introduce yourself. There are many FREE online word cloud generators such as Wordle, and ABCya, but my favorite one is Word it Out since you can easily download or print your word cloud and then use it in your classes in the way you like.

To play “Me in a Cloud”, you need to first generate a word cloud similar to the one below. The following word cloud is generated on Wordit Out. I just typed some words/phrases that describe me and thus play an important role in my life and the following cloud was created the moment I clicked on Word it Out button. You may click on “random settings” or “redraw” to change how your cloud looks, if you like. You may then save, download, e-mail or print the word cloud.

After the word cloud is ready, photocopy the word cloud or take a print-out which is large enough for all students to see. Ask students to make predictions about yourself, looking at the words and phrases on the word cloud, and then tell if their predictions are true or false. At this point, for example, you might have a dialogue similar to the one below:  

Students: “You can speak Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch.”

Teacher:  “I can speak German and Dutch but I cannot speak Spanish and Italian.”

Students: “You have cats and dogs at home.”

Teacher: “I don’t have any pets but I love them all.”

After you introduce yourself, you might want to ask students to create a word cloud similar to yours (either a hand-written one in the same lesson or one prepared on Word it Out to be brought to class later).

Coloured Candies

And here we are at the beginning of a brand new semester... Interested in colouring your 1st day with an icebreaker your students might enjoy?

Here is Coloured Candies, which I believe students at any age like playing on the 1st day:

Level: All
Materials Needed:  Lollipops in different coloured packs (it is a good idea to have as many colours as possible.)
Preparation: None
Interaction Patterns: Whole-class activity
Time: 30 minutes

Procedure:
- Ask students if they like candies and distribute the lollipops you have brought. Students take as many as they want; encourage them to choose different colours.
- Tell students that they will not eat the lollipops yet because they will be using them in the ice-breaker activity.
- Write on the board what each colour represents:
E.g.
Yellow: Favourite hobbies
Red: How they feel on the very first day of class
Blue: Favourite city
Green: Favourite movie
Pink: Anything you want to say about yourself

- Students, one by one, introduce themselves by giving their name first and then briefly talking about themselves according to the colour of the lollipops they have.

Variation:

·  Instead of candies, you may use M&Ms, strips of paper or any other type of candy in different colours.
·  You may prefer to do this activity in groups rather than a whole-class activity, depending on the size of your class.
·  You may change what each colour represents according to the level of your students. 

Personal Comment:
- Students generally enjoy this activity and the associated reward.

- As they select the candies themselves, they are more motivated while introducing themselves according to the colour of the candy.

For more icebreakers, you may read the chapter on first day activities in my activity book, The Activist.

A Reading Activity: Painted Texts

Level: All
Materials: A set of blue, black, green and red coloured-pens / pencils for each pair / for each group of four students (you may use different colours instead; but whichever four colours you use, make sure you give the same four colours to students)
Preparation: Make copies of the reading text for all students
Interaction Patterns: Individual work, group work
Time: 50 minutes

Procedure:
-    Hand out the reading text.
-    Students silently read the text to underline the main idea (s) using the BLUE pen.
-    Next, students highlight the supporting ideas with the BLACK pen.
-    Then, using the GREEN pen, they mark the areas they found interesting or surprising.
-    Finally, with the RED pen, students circle the unknown words or phrases / sentences they have found confusing.
-    After colour coding the text (their texts will look like the one below), students work in groups of four.
-    They compare their texts with those of the other students.
o    They check if they all have underlined the same main idea (s).
o    They compare the supporting ideas they have identified.
o    They discuss which idea (s) they have found interesting and why.
o    Students compare the parts in red: they ask each other the meaning of the unknown words they have underlined.
-    Closely monitor the groups and visit each one to listen to their discussion and provide help when necessary.

Variation:
•    After reading the text on their own, students might decide on the parts to be underlined together in groups. They may then post their colour coded reading text on the walls of the classroom and compare their text with the other groups’. They may ask questions to the other groups or discuss their opinions.
•    If you cannot obtain an adequate number of coloured pens for your students, you may ask students to share the same pens. They may first read and select the parts they plan to highlight with a different coloured pen. Then, they may share the pens with others.

Personal Comment:

• Colour coding a text aids especially visual learners’ comprehension of a text. It helps them to practice identifying main and supporting ideas, reflecting on these ideas and dealing with unknown words in a cooperative task, which makes it easier for them to deal with challenging texts. 
• Colour coding makes monitoring and checking students’ work teacher-friendly.

For more reading activities, you may read the chapter on Reading Activities in my activity book, The Activist.

A Writing Activity: Big Numbers

The following is an activity from my activity book, The Activist, again (in the future, I will be sharing with you some activities other than the ones in my book). This game-like activity aims to raise students' awareness of the mistakes they commonly make in writing. I have benefited a lot from this activity whenever I conducted it in my classes. I hope you'll enjoy it...


Level: Pre-intermediate and above
Materials Needed: None
Preparation:
a.    Find two sample student paragraphs, which have both strong and weak points.Make sure these points are relevant to your students’ writing; for example, the mistakes in these paragraphs must be similar to those your students keep on making.
b.    Give feedback on these paragraphs with numbers instead of words; each number will signify a different point (see the sample paragraph in the attached worksheet below).
c.    Photocopy these paragraphs for each group before class.
Interaction Patterns: Group work, whole-class activity, individual work
Time: 50 minutes

Procedure:
-    Students work in groups of four.
-    Give each group a copy of the paragraphs.
-    Students read the paragraphs and try to figure out what each number signifies in terms of feedback.
-    After the groups decipher the coded feedback, elicit what each number signifies from the groups.
-    Ask students to select one of the paragraphs and improve it in the light of the numbered feedback.  

Variation:
•    For weaker students, you may give the list in the answer key in a jumbled order and ask students to match the answers with the numbers.

Personal Comment:
- Numbered feedback was something I was introduced to when I first started teaching at Bilkent University, School of English Language. I then adapted this useful feedback style into such a classroom activity and noticed that students enjoy decoding such feedback and learn a lot from giving feedback to these sample student paragraphs.

A Pronunciation Activity: Missing Boxes

This activity is designed to raise students' awareness of the silent letters in English. If you believe your students tend to mispronounce words with these letters, why don't you try out this activity in your classes?

Level: All
Materials Needed:  None
Preparation: Photocopy the student cards below or prepare a 4×4 grid for student A’s and B’s similar to the ones below.
Interaction Patterns: Pair work, whole-class activity
Time: 20 minutes

Procedures:
-    Students work in pairs.
-    Hand student A’s the student A card and B’s the student B card.
-    This is an information gap activity. Student A’s card is different from that of Student B. Thus, they need to ask each other questions to fill in the missing boxes on their cards.
-    Students in turn ask each other “What is number …?” and fill in their tables.
-    Remind students not to show each other their cards but to say those words so that they practice pronunciation.
-    Closely monitor the pairs to check they pronounce the words correctly. Provide help when necessary.
-    At the end of the pair-work activity, elicit each word and provide the correct pronunciation if needed.
-    Then, attract students’ attention to the boxes at the top of their tables.
-    Ask pairs to label the columns A, B, C and D according to common characteristics of the words in that column.
-    If students cannot find that common characteristic, highlight the silent letters in the words in that column.
-    Students give a title to each column (KEY: Column A will be titled SILENT B; column B will be named SILENT H; column C will be titled SILENT C and column D will be labelled SILENT W).
-    After giving a title to each column, check the pronunciation of a couple of words from the box to make sure students have understood the concept of silent letters in English.  

Personal Comment: 
- Turkish students tend to have difficulty in the pronunciation of words with silent letters and this activity is a fun way of raising awareness of this important issue.

For more pronunciation activities, you may read the chapter on Pronunciation Activities in my activity book, The Activist.