Thoughts on Partnership for 21st Century Skills

I spent some time looking over the Parnership for 21st Century Skills (www.p21.org) and I found it very interesting. I clicked on Ohio's link and read, which is referred to as Route 21. I think the idea behind it is beneficial to students. I remember hearing and learning a little about P21 when I was working towards earning my bachelor's degree, but I had never visited the website. I think the concept is a smart idea and find that even though P21 is rarely mentioned in my school district, we are expected to fuse our academics with the 4 C's (critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativty/innovation). We as educators must help students close the gap between the classroom and real worldby preparing students by aligning the two enviroments. Educators are expected to this by fusing the 3 R's and 4 C's together. For educators, this means creating lessons that hit the content standards, but also teach the students real world skills. This calls upon teachers to be creative in their lesson planning. After visiting the website, I was suprised by all the resources and online tools provided. This could be very beneficial, but also time consuming for teachers to look through and find different activities that they could use in their classrooms.

I am a high school special education teacher. I am currently teaching a high school Read180 class. I teach a wide variety of students including autism, learning disabilities, and emotionally disturbed children.

I would like to use a blog in my classroom as a common place to hold a book discussion. The blogs purpose would be a place for students to ask/answer each others questions, aid in comprehension, and a common place to make comments/connections. I would lead the discussion by asking the students to make an initial post answering my question(s) regarding the novel we are reading as a class. I would then require the students to respond to s specific number of posts made by their peers. The blog would act as a tool for me to assess their understanding of the book and grade their participation. It would also be a wonderful way for the students to work on their typing, writing, and editing skills.

The use of a blog would be a more interactive and engaging way for students to interact and answer comprehension questions. I think my students would enjoy typing their responses and having a discussion with their classmate using the Internet. It is a great way to keep the classroom discussion going outside of the classroom setting.