The 4 C's of Teaching & Learning
College and Career Readiness for the 21st Century
I'm calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test, but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking and entrepreneurship and creativity.
Are we focusing our teaching and learning in ways that place ALL students on a trajectory for college and career ready outcomes?
What do the 4 C's look like in school? Practical Implementation of Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, and Creatvity
Communication
Students choose an area of Westward expansion , organizes a storyboard on person/place/event and use digital tools to create a presentation that teaches their topic to the remainder of the class.
Page 15 of http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf
Collaboration
Two classes work together. Each class chooses a country to study. Students work together to identify and compare and contrast endangered species in both countries. Students collaborate to produce a multimedia informational presentation for their peers.
Adapted from page 20 of http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf
Critical Thinking
Students compare and contrast the same balance in different types of bank accounts to determine which is better for what circumstances (e.g. is a saving account better than a checking account?).
Students determine the difference that interest rates make in each account (compound vs. simple interest), compare short and long term costs of borrowing money.
Students use mathematical arguments to answer questions like, "Which is more: one million dollars, or one penny the first day, double that penny the next day, then double the previous day's pennies and so on for a month?"
Page 25 of http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/P21CommonCoreToolkit.pdf
Creativity
Students collect a variety of newspaper and magazine articles on a social or environmental issue. In small groups, they decide on an issue and a theme and style for a poem. They use words and phrases cut from the articles to create a "found poem" on their topic.
Page 26 of http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf
Using open-ended inspiration for writing such as Chris Van Allsburg's, Mysteries of Harris Burdick, each student writes the beginning of a story and records it as a podcast. Student in other classes listen to the story, create ensuring episodes, and record them as podcasts until final group writes and records the conclusion.
Page 18 of http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/P21CommonCoreToolkit.pdf