Preparing our children for the 21 st Century

1. Preparing our children for the 21st Century What does it mean to be a reader? Rochelle I. Mitlak, Ed.D. Director, Curriculum and Instruction Board of Education October 22, 2014

2. 21stCentury Skills • Students must be able to set personal learning goals, self-check for understanding, access tools and resources for enhancing their understanding, and use what they have learned in real-world contexts. These skills are vital for success in a post-industrial world where it is more important to now access information and be a self-motivated learner than it is to memorize content and processes. Teachers must move beyond “teaching content” to teaching students how to learn – that is, find and evaluate content, connect with prior knowledge, and use that knowledge to solve authentic problems. • Robert Marzano, 2012

3. Goals for our Students • set personal learning goals • self-check for understanding • access tools and resources for enhancing understanding • use what was learned in real-world contexts

4. Goals for instruction • teach students how to learn • find and evaluate content • connect with prior knowledge • use that knowledge to solve authentic problems

5. How did we learn? • Figured out what the teacher knew. • Came up with the “right” answer. • Kept our hands down unless we knew we were right. • Responded to teacher questions.

6. Learning Can be powerful • What do we want our students to learn? • How do we want our students to learn? • How do we help students become more powerful in their own learning? • How do we allow for an intrinsic desire to know?

7. Learner Active Technology Infused Classroom (LATI) • Learning is self-directed. • Environment offers opportunities to explore. • Activities require students to apply thinking and problem solving skills. • Innovation and creativity are valued and an integral part of student work.

8. Current thinking • Construct an understanding. • Support thinking with evidence. • Take risks. • Respond to questions from peers and teachers.

9. Readers have power • Where is meaning?

10. Read This Dessert

11. Constructing Meaning • Visualizing • Using background knowledge • Identifying critical elements • Making connections • Comparing and/or contrasting

12. Reading all texts • “The analysis of reader motivation used in the instructional episodes for the influential and noninfluential teachers revealed distintinctlydifferent patterns. …influential teachers relied on internal reader motivation during 89 percent (25 of 28) of the instructional episodes and used external motivation in only 11 percent (3 of 28) of their episodes.” (1994, Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading p. 290)

13. Constructing anUnderstanding 1/2

14. Comparing/contrasting 1/2 vs 1/3

15. Supporting our learners • Provide evidence. • Explain your thinking. • Make connections to real life. • Create or offer a visual description.