Lesson 1

Building and Enhancing New Literacies Across the Curriculum

Literacy
- is critical in helping us make meaning of the world around us.
- Literacy includes reading, writing, viewing, listening and speaking, but it also
encompasses much more.
- the ability, confidence and willingness to engage with language to acquire, construct and
communicate meaning in all aspects of daily living. (Alberta Education, 2015).
- capacity to communicate using inscribed, printed, or electronic signs or symbols for
representing language. Literacy is customarily contrasted with orality (oral tradition),
which encompasses a broad set of strategies for communicating through oral and aural
media. In real world situations, however, literate and oral modes of communication
coexist and interact, not only within the same culture but also within the very same
individual. (Foley, 2019

Why is literacy so important?

- Literacy, along with numeracy, opens doors and opportunities for individuals to
acquire the knowledge they need to achieve personal goals and build a better quality
of life.
- It lays the foundation for lifelong learning and active participation in society.
- Literacy is essential for sharing histories, personal experiences and stories about
traditions and the past.

How do we use literacy throughout life?

Literacy is learned, applied, and developed throughout our lifetime and is nurtured through
families and communities.
• Babies communicate their needs and feelings to their parents through sound, gesture
and body language. Oral language development lays the foundation for later literacy learning.
• Young children develop literacy as they discover stories, songs and visual images. They
engage in literacy during make-believe play, when scribbling on paper and when reading
environmental print such as a stop sign.
• Older children actively communicate with their peers, often through digital media. They
use literacy as they explore their ideas or interests, seek entertainment, and investigate events
happening around the world using a variety of print and digital media.
 • Adults use literacy to read and understand directions, recipes, advertisements, manuals
and websites. Throughout their day, they may create reports, fill out forms, negotiate
transactions or analyze information.

Traditional Literacy
• the quality of being literate; knowledge of letters; condition in respect to education, esp.
ability to read and write" (OED Online, "literacy," 2nd ed.)
• Traditional literacy is the building block for all other literacies; without it, they would be
impossible to master.

Functional Literacy
• Person who can engage in all those activities in which literacy is required for effective function
of his or her group and community and also for enabling him or her to continue to use reading,
writing and calculation for his or her own and the community’s development.
• the phrase describes those approaches to literacy which stress the acquisition of appropriate
verbal, cognitive, and computational skills to accomplish practical ends in culturally specific
settings.

Early Literacy/ Emergent Literacy

• those behaviors shown by very young children as they begin to respond to and approximate
reading and writing acts." However, literacy goes beyond reading and writing. It encompasses
"the interrelatedness of language: speaking, listening, reading, writing, and viewing."
• Children start to learn language from the day they are born. As they grow and develop, their
speech and language skills become increasingly more complex. They learn to understand and use
language to express their ideas, thoughts, and feelings, and to communicate with others. During
early speech and language development, children learn skills that are important to the
development of literacy (reading and
writing)
Basic Literacy and skills
• Literacy skills are all the skills needed for reading and writing. They include such things as
awareness of the sounds of language, awareness of print, and the relationship between letters and
sounds. Other literacy skills include vocabulary, spelling, and comprehension.

Literacy and Human History

 In order for literacy to function, cultures must agree on institutionalized signs and sound or sign-
idea relationships that support writing and reading of knowledge, art, and ideas. Numeracy (the
ability to express quantities through numeric symbols) appeared about 8000 BCE, and literacy
followed about 3200 BCE. Both technologies, however, are extremely recent developments
when viewed in the context of human history. Today the extent of official literacy varies
enormously, even within a single region, depending not only on the area’s level of development
but also on factors such as social status, gender, vocation, and the various criteria by which a
given society understands and measures literacy.
Evidence from around the world has established that literacy is not defined by any single skill or
practice. Rather, it takes myriad forms, depending largely on the nature of the written symbols
(e.g., pictographs to depict concepts, or letters to denote specific sounds of a syllable) and the
physical material that is used to display the writing (e.g., stone, paper, or a computer screen).
Also important, however, is the particular cultural function that the written text performs for
readers. Ancient and medieval literacy, for instance, was restricted to very few and was at first
employed primarily for record keeping. It did not immediately displace oral tradition as the chief
mode of communication. By contrast, production of written texts in contemporary society is
widespread and indeed depends on broad general literacy, widely distributed printed materials,
and mass readership.

Writing Systems
Several types of writing systems evolved alongside the physical surfaces that accommodated
them.
The earliest of those systems included ideographic scripts - which use abstract symbols to
represent concepts rather than words, and;
pictographic symbols - which represent concepts by visually depicting them.
Logographic systems- use signs called logograms to represent either words or morphemes
(linguistically, the smallest units of semantic meaning); Egyptian hieroglyphics and the
cuneiform scripts of the ancient Middle East provide examples. Chinese characters are
logograms that can contain phonetic information and can stand for related or unrelated
concepts in other East Asian languages, including Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese.
Syllabaries, such as Japanese kana or the Cherokee orthography, map syllabic units to an
assortment of symbols.
More familiar, perhaps, are consonantal writing systems, in which symbols represent only
consonants (leaving vowels to be inserted by the reader, as in Arabic, Hebrew, and Phoenician,
the parent of Greek writing), and alphabets, where both consonants and vowels are matched to
unique signs (Greek, Latin, Cyrillic, Mongolian, and the rationalizing alphabet of the
International Phonetic Association, among scores more).
Writing systems appear to have arisen separately in various parts of the world as well as through
direct genetic influence. For example, Mesopotamian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics,
Chinese characters, the Cree syllabary, the Pahawh Hmong script, and the Vai syllabary have
distinct, entirely independent indigenous origins. This is not to say that the general idea of
writing was not paralleled by or imported from an adjoining culture but rather that the specific
symbols and systems of writing were in such cases formulated without explicit prior models. On
the other hand, the Latin alphabet, directly descended from Greek and ultimately Phoenician
letters, changed over time to become the conventional writing system not simply for the English,
Celtic, Romance, and other Indo-European languages but also for Turkish, Finnish, Basque,
Maltese, and Vietnamese. Some systems have an uncertain origin, such as the Germanic
orthography known as runes.

Methods for getting this inventory of different kinds of symbols onto available surfaces have
varied a great deal in strategy, in the time and energy required for the task, and in the
permanence of the product. Until the invention of moveable type, writing was often the job of
specialists who spent long periods generating singular, quite perishable texts. Paper books
proved to be rapidly and easily replicable with the printing press, making possible mass
readerships, but they too have faced problems of fragility, wear, and oxidation (relieved by acid-
free paper). The digital age has raised new opportunities and challenges associated with
sustainability, while it has also called copyright conventions into question by making
publication, replication, and distribution fast, simple, and individually driven.

Lesson 2
Definitions of 21st Century Literacies and Critical Attributes of 21st Century Education

21st century literacies and skills

1. Globalization and multi-cultural literacy
- Multicultural Literacy consists of the skills and ability to identify the creators of
knowledge and their interests (Banks, 1996), to uncover the assumptions of knowledge,
to view knowledge from diverse ethnic and cultural perspective, and to use knowledge to
guided action that will create a humane and just world (Boutte, 2008).
- Global Literacy aims to address issues of globalization, racism, diversity and social
justice (Guo, 2014). It requires awareness and action, consistent with a broad
understanding of humanity, the planet, and the impact of human decision on both. Global
Literacy also aims to empower students with knowledge and take action to make a
positive impact in the world and their local community (Guo, 2014).
2. Social Literacy - implies a level of skill in being able to form respectful relationships. It
implies learning about the give and take of interacting with others. It includes the delicate,
delightful and sometimes very painful dance of sharing with others and allowing them to be
‘real’ to us—beyond stereotypes and labels and beyond simply being a means to fulfill our own
needs.
3. Media Literacy - is the ability to identify different types of media and the messages they are
sending. When we speak of media, it encompasses print media, such as newspapers, magazines
and posters, and theatrical presentations, tweets, radio broadcasts, etc. Being able to understand
these various forms of information with an ability to make sense of what is presented is key.
4. Financial Literacy - Financial literacy is the ability to understand and effectively use various
financial skills, including personal financial management, budgeting, and investing. People who
are financially literate are generally less vulnerable to financial fraud. A strong foundation of
financial literacy can help support various life goals, such as saving for education or retirement,
using debt responsibly, and running a business.
5. Digital Literacy - means having the skills you need to live, learn, and work in a society where
communication and access to information is increasingly through digital technologies like
internet platforms, social media, and mobile devices.
6. Eco- Literacy - is the ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth
possible. To be ecoliterate means understanding the principles of organization of ecological
communities (i.e. ecosystems) and using those principles for creating sustainable human
communities. The term was coined by American educator David W. Orr and physicist Fritjof
Capra in the 1990s - thereby a new value entered education; the “well-being of the earth”.
7. Arts and Creativity Literacy - is a concept that looks beyond sitting with a book. It is a
“holistic” approach, in that it incorporates activities that can strengthen reading skills, but are
more focused on broader learning. In many cases it is an activity that on the surface doesn’t even
look like it’s related to literacy or learning to read.
The Critical Attributes of 21st Century Education The world of teachers and students is
expected to continue to change dramatically throughout the 21st century and beyond. There is a
paradigm shift in the way teaching and learning is delivered. As a 21st century teacher, you
need to develop essential knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values to be able to cope with
these changes and to help your students address them as well.

1. Integrated and Interdisciplinary

Nowadays, knowledge is no longer distinctly divided into clear-cut learning chunks or separate
subjects. Education in the 21st century is characterized by linkages among various subject areas
in an integrated manner. The new approach promotes the utilization of learning from various
disciplines.
This critical attribute implies that teachers need to review the school curriculum and identify
strategies or ways on how different subjects can be effectively linked to enhance the learning
experiences of students.
 For example, music and algebra can be linked together in the discussion of fractions. The time
signature of music uses fractions; as such, you, as a good teacher, can certainly apply this to both
your music or math classes.

2. Technologies and Multimedia

Education in the 21st century makes full use of available Information and Communication
Technology, or ICT (e.g., computers and the internet) as well as multimedia (e.g., using audio-
and video-based instruction) to improve teaching and learning activities. The ability to find,
evaluate, utilize, and create information using technologies and multimedia, or digital technology
in general, is referred to as digital literacy. As a teacher, some of your day-to-day activities –
writing reports, creating multimedia presentations, and communicating or exchanging
information with your colleagues and students online – require different levels of digital literacy.
As such, it is important for you to develop your digital literacy skills so that you can in turn pass
these on to your learners.
This critical attribute implies that your school will need to acquire and use computers and
various multimedia equipment to enhance learning to the best extent possible. Training is also
needed for teacher-users as part of a bigger “technology plan.”

3. Global Classrooms
Education in the 21st century aims to produce global citizens by exposing students to the
concerns of the region and other countries. They are encouraged to react and respond to issues as
part of their roles as global citizens.
This critical attribute implies that teachers need to include current global issues/concerns, such as
peace and respect for cultural diversity, climate change, and global warming, in classroom
discussions.
4. Creating/Adapting to Constant Personal and Social Change, and Lifelong Learning
Education in the 21st century subscribes to the belief that learning does not only happen inside
the school and during one’s schooling years. Learning can take place anywhere, anytime,
regardless of one’s age.
This means that teachers should facilitate students’ acquisition of KSAVs that go beyond
academics. Learning should take place not only for the purpose of passing exams, but also for
transferring knowledge to real life situations. The curriculum should be planned in such a way
that the students will continue to learn even outside the school’s portals.
5. Student-Centered
Education in the 21st century is focused on students as learners. It is tailor-fit to address the
individual learning needs of each student. Differentiated instruction is common in 21st century
classrooms, where diverse student factors are taken into account when planning and delivering
instruction. You, as a teacher, can structure learning environments that address the variety of
learning styles, interests, needs, and abilities found in your classroom.

This critical attribute implies that teachers should act as facilitators of learning — not as “sages
on the stage” but as “guides on the side.” Learners should be given opportunities to discover new
knowledge, learn with one another, and create their own learnings.
6. 21st Century Skills
Education in the 21st century promotes the skills needed to be productive members of today’s
society. It is not enough for students to learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and numeracy,
but should develop in themselves skills that would help them cope with life and work in 21st
century communities. These skills include, among others, critical and creative thinking skills,
problem solving and decision making, and ICT literacy and skills. As a teacher, you are expected
to possess these 21st century skills before you can help your students develop these skills.
7. Project-Based and Research-Driven
Among the critical attributes of 21st century education is the emphasis on data, information, and
evidence-based decision making. It relies heavily on student-driven activities to encourage active
learning. This implies that teachers of the 21st century need to be knowledgeable about research
to guide their students’ learning through self-directed activities, such as learning projects within
and outside their classrooms. Investigatory projects showcased in many science fairs across
Southeast Asia and in the world are examples of research-based activities of students.
8. Relevant, Rigorous and Real-world
Education in the 21st century is meaningful because it is rooted in real life day-to-day activities
of learners. It can be applied to the realities of the present and includes what students need to
develop to enable them to become productive members of the 21st century.
This critical attribute implies that topics are taught using current and relevant information and
linked to real-life situations and context. As a 21st century teacher, you need to be updated on
the current trends, developments, and issues in your school, community, and in the world, so that
your teaching will be relevant to the lives of your students. Newspapers, TV and radio news, and
the internet are good sources of relevant and up-to-date information that you can access.

Lesson 3
Basic Strategies for Developing Literacy

Literacy Strategies
 - Research on reading indicates that good readers use a variety of strategies to make
sense of what they read. This is often referred to as making meaning, or literacy
strategies. This same research has shown that effective readers use specific strategies
when reading that show they understand or comprehend what they are reading. Six such
strategies are: making connections, visualizing, inferring, questioning, determining
importance, and synthesizing. Let us take a closer look at how these six literacy strategies
affect reading comprehension.
- Making Connections & Visualizing The brain is a learning machine. Everything you
do, think, and wonder has the potential to be stored as a neuron, or a cell in your brain.
These neurons form communities by branching out and connecting to other neurons. The
neurons are grouped by similarities, forming memories that make sense. For example,
your understanding of the word 'round' helps you understand and make connections to
several objects, including the moon or a ball.
- Reading is no exception. When children read, they are reminded of previously stored
knowledge, or schema. The books they read can be connected in three ways: text to self,
reminding children of something that happened in their own lives; text to text, when a
book reminds them of another they've read; or text to world, when the text reminds them
of something they've seen in the world at large.
- Encourage readers to make connections first text to self, then text to text, then text
to world. All readers make mental pictures, or visualizations, of the words they read.
When readers visualize the text, they are then able to understand elements of the story,
such as plot, in a deeper way. To make learning visible, have children draw and talk
about mental pictures that a story prompt.

Questioning & Inferring

- All readers ask questions as they read. They wonder what will happen next, or what a
character is thinking, or when the story will shift. By asking questions, children engage
with the text and become more deeply involved, which allows them to understand and
comprehend in a rich, powerful way.
- Point out the natural questions being asked in your head as you read stories aloud to
children. Create a question chart for the books you read aloud, and begin questioning
pages in your students' reading notebooks.
- As books become more complex, the plot becomes less straight-forward. Not all
information is directly given to a reader, and we are left to connect the dots, or infer, on
our own. For example, in the story 'Little Red Riding Hood', we know the wolf is mean
and selfish because of the way he acts, not because the story tells us so. We have inferred
this important concept.
- Teachers should instruct inference by showing how students are already doing it on
their own. Reread some simple stories and talk about what is in the text and what has
been inferred.
Importance & Synthesizing
Books generally contain a lot of information! However, not all information is important to the
plot of the story. The description of what Little Red Riding Hood is wearing is fun to read but
does not matter when it comes time to make sense of the plot. Explain to students that authors
write to entertain and teach us. They use words to make the story interesting, but not all words
are critical to plot.
The most complex reading strategy, synthesizing, is the process of merging ideas over the
course of a text to further understanding. Like summarizing, synthesizing requires readers
to read the full story. However, synthesizing does not just happen at the end of the book; rather,
it happens as the reader gets new information. The reader pieces new insights together to
understand and make new predictions throughout the book.
This complex strategy can be taught at any age. By its nature, it should be taught after students
have had practice with the other five strategies.

Module 5
21ST Century Literacy Skills and Teaching Resources
1. Student led learning (Cooperative learning) is where students themselves facilitate
their learning, often by students in the year above guiding students in group activities to
discuss materials with their peers and solve problems. This helps them to think through
what they have previously been taught and encourages collaborative learning.
Creating a student-led classroom The benefits of student-led learning are clear.
However, adopting this approach to learning faces many challenges, particularly in the
context of international schools which are also required to navigate cultural differences
and beliefs, varying academic levels, and diverse backgrounds.
That said, there are some simple and effective ways to facilitate student-led learning and help
pupils take greater ownership of their education.

a. Rearrange the classroom One of the easiest ways to encourage greater

engagement from students in their learning is to change the physical learning
environment. If students are able to determine what their classroom looks like, they can
create a more enjoyable learning environment and can view teaching and learning in a
more positive light.
 - This could involve rearranging the layout of tables and chairs but could also involve
‘softer’ touches such as display boards and posters that motivate the class and highlight
key learning areas for the term.

b. Develop self-awareness- Flexible learning environments can also support students in

developing their confidence as this approach naturally lends itself to more peer group and
collaborative learning activities. This allows students to become more aware of their
personal strengths and weaknesses through which SMART goals can be developed to
extend and improve their approach to learning as much as possible.

c. Use individualised learning applications

- With the support of individualised learning applications, this selfawareness can be
further built upon through instantaneous feedback loops and reinforced learning.
Adaptive on-line resources used in the classroom or at home allow students to work
effectively at an appropriate level, receiving support or being challenged by the app,
depending on the way they interact with it. d. Aim for conceptual understanding As
mentioned previously, student-led learning is centred around the idea of students actively
participating in their education. With this in mind, students should focus their learning on
underlying concepts rather than simply memorizing facts as this deeper understanding
will invite more diverse and cross-curricular applications. To facilitate this, teachers can
encourage students to ask questions and demonstrate the links between different concepts
and subjects or even experiences beyond the classroom, which are more connected to
their personal sphere. e. Encourage reflection Importantly, in student-led learning much
of the success relies upon a student’s ability to be reflective and aware of their own
learning process and outcomes. After all, only if a student can leverage and address their
strengths and weaknesses respectively will success follow. A useful way of developing
critical reflection is by encouraging students to keep a class journal as part of their
homework routine. This can help them maintain and analyse their progress towards
achieving their goals and can also help inspire students to push themselves further.

2. Inquiry based classroom environment

- Adopting an inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach in classroom has been the most
meaningful change I have made in my teaching.
- The benefit of increased student agency in learning, the authentic connections we make to the
world around us, and the 21st-century skills IBL nurtures are great reasons to explore how
inquiry can enhance what you are doing in your classroom.
The Types of Student Inquiry
- are a scaffolded approach to inquiry in the classroom, one that gradually increases student
agency over learning while providing learners with the necessary skills, knowledge, and
understanding to be successful in their inquiry.
 • In the shallow end of the Types of Student Inquiry pool, Structured Inquiry gives the teacher
control of the essential question, the starting point— for example, “What defines a culture?” or
“What is the importance of the scientific method?” These questions are not answered in a single
lesson and do not have a single answer, and, in fact, our understanding of an essential question
may change over time as we research it.
• In Controlled Inquiry, the teacher provides several essential questions. Learners unpack
several resources predetermined by the teacher to provide valuable context and rich meaning
relative to the essential questions. All learners typically demonstrate their understanding using
the same summative assessment.
• In Guided Inquiry, the teacher further empowers student agency by providing several essential
questions, having the students select the resources they will use to research their answers, and
allowing them to choose how they will demonstrate understanding. Student agency over learning
comes through this selection of resources and the summative assessment.
• And finally, in the deep end of the inquiry pool, Free Inquiry allows learners, with the support
of the teacher, to construct their own essential question, research a wide array of resources,
customize their learning activities, and design their own summative assessment to demonstrate
their learning.

3. Collaborative Activities
Collaborative learning can occur peer-to-peer or in larger groups. Peer learning, or peer
instruction, is a type of collaborative learning that involves students working in pairs or small
groups to discuss concepts or find solutions to problems. Similar to the idea that two or three
heads are better than one, educational researchers have found that through peer instruction,
students teach each other by addressing misunderstandings and clarifying misconceptions.
Why Use Collaborative Learning?
Research shows that educational experiences that are active, social, contextual, engaging, and
student-owned lead to deeper learning. The benefits of collaborative learning include:
• Development of higher-level thinking, oral communication, self-management, and leadership
skills.
• Promotion of student-faculty interaction.
• Increase in student retention, self-esteem, and responsibility.
• Exposure to and an increase in understanding of diverse perspectives.
• Preparation for real life social and employment situations.

Considerations for Using Collaborative Learning

• Introduce group or peer work early in the semester to set clear student expectations.
• Establish ground rules for participation and contributions.
• Plan for each stage of group work.
• Carefully explain to your students how groups or peer discussion will operate and how students
will be graded.
• Help students develop the skills they need to succeed, such as using team-building exercises or
introducing self-reflection techniques.
• Consider using written contracts.
• Incorporate   self -assessment and  peer  assessment for group members to evaluate their own
and others' contributions.

Getting Started with Collaborative Learning

Shorter in-class collaborative learning activities generally involve a three-step process. This
process can be as short as five minutes, but can be longer, depending on the task at hand.
• Introduce the task. This can be as simple as instructing students to turn to their neighbor to
discuss or debate a topic.
• Provide students with enough time to engage with the task. Walk around and address any
questions as needed.
• Debrief. Call on a few students to share a summary of their conclusions. Address any
misconceptions or clarify any confusing points. Open the floor for questions.
For larger group work projects, here are some strategies to help ensure productive group
dynamics:
• Provide opportunities for students to develop rapport and group cohesion through icebreakers,
team-building, and reflection exercises.
• Give students time to create a group work plan allowing them to plan for deadlines and
divide up their responsibilities.
• Have students establish ground rules. Students can create a contract for each member to sign.
This contract can include agreed-upon penalties for those who fail to fulfill obligations.
• Assign roles to members of each group and change the roles periodically. For example, one
student can be the coordinator, another the note-taker, another the summarizer, and another the
planner of next steps.
• Allow students to rate each other’s quality and quantity of contributions. Use these
evaluations when giving individual grades, but do not let it weigh heavily on a student's final
grade. Communicate clearly how peer assessment will influence grades.
• Check in with groups intermittently but encourage students to handle their own issues before
coming to you for assistance.

4. Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) activities

5. Creative Learning
- Increasingly, learning and innovation skills are being recognised as the skills that separate
students who are prepared for increasingly complex life and work environments in the 21st
century, and those who are not.
A learning and teaching focus on the skills of creativity, critical thinking, communication and
collaboration is essential to prepare students for their futures.
Creative learning and creative teaching envelopes five key characteristics:
• Questioning and challenging: We want to encourage learners to ask “why”, “how” and “what
if”-type questions. We need to support learners who respond to questions or tasks in an unusual
or unexpected way, or ask unusual questions themselves. We need to teach learners to challenge
conventions and assumptions and to think independently. These areas are explored more fully in
my previous article on critical thinking and problem-solving.
• Making connections and seeing relationships: We should recognise the significance of
learners’ prior experience and the existing knowledge they bring to learning. We want them to be
able to generalise from information and experience, searching for trends and patterns, and
reinterpreting and applying learning in new contexts.
• Envisaging what might be: This involves learners being able to ask “what if?” questions,
imagining and seeing things in the mind’s eye, visualising alternatives and seeing possibilities,
problems and challenges.
• Exploring ideas and keeping options open: Learners that can play with ideas and experiment,
responding intuitively and trusting intuition will develop into creative and imaginative people
who are willing to try alternative and fresh approaches, anticipate and overcome difficulties; and
follow through ideas.
• Reflecting critically on ideas, actions and outcomes: With clear links to my previous article,
creative learners need to be critical thinkers that review their own progress, invite and act on
feedback from peers and teachers, understand what “good” might look like; and are able to put
forward constructive comments, ideas, explanations and ways of doing things. Ten tips to teach
for creative learning
• Open-ended projects: Teachers can encourage students to research a topic or question of their
choosing. The students will be responsible for coming up with the topics, researching them and
ultimately drawing their own educated conclusions.
• Classroom collaboration/team-building: This can spur creative thinking and encourage the
exchange of ideas. Putting students in groups for certain in-class assignments enables them to
experience different perspectives while working towards a common goal. Teachers can even add
a digital element to these groups by integrating social media.
• Implementing creative arts: Teachers can have students create graphs in order to solve math
problems or summarise historical events in poetic verse. Introducing the arts into the classroom
can breathe new creative life into subjects.
• Journals: To spark creativity, students can write down their thoughts in journals. They can use
their journals to jot down ideas during the school day. Teachers can even assign free writing
exercises in the beginning of class.
• Brainstorming sessions: As the flipped classroom model gains popularity, education is
becoming less about dictation and more about guided instruction. Teachers can encourage in-
class brainstorming sessions so that their students feel free to voice their opinions and ideas.
• Unconventional learning materials: TED Talks videos and podcasts are a great way to bring
outside voices into the classroom. Students can watch or listen to engaging 15-minute talks for
homework and then have a provocative discussion about them in class the next day. These talks
are bound to spark interesting insights from students, and they may be inspired to pursue a
particular subject as a result.
• Encourage risk-taking: Students need to familiarise themselves with failure. They need to
know not only that it is okay, but that failure is inevitable. Creativity takes courage and tenacity.
Not every idea will work out or be a good one. But that’s all part of the creative process. To
teach this important lesson, teachers can have students act out their own plays, or make short
films about an important concept.
• Involve students in the teaching: Teachers can have students come up with some of the
questions on quizzes or create captivating lesson plans to further involve them in the education
process. Pair up struggling students with students who excel. For the students who do the
teaching, the teaching fosters creativity as they develop new ways to present the material.
• Utilise visualisations: The use of infographics can help students better understand concepts,
while mind-mapping can optimise both the creative process and the learning process.
• Create a flexible classroom: Having flexible classroom layout breeds physical and mental
wiggle room – when your body can move, so does your mind. Elsewhere, digital classrooms and
flipped classrooms provide students access to internet-based learning within an educational
environment.
Module 6
21ST Century Skill Categories
21st Century skills
are 12 abilities that today’s students need to succeed in their careers during the Information Age.
These skills are intended to help students keep up with the lightning-pace of today’s modern
markets. Each skill is unique in how it helps students, but they all have one quality in common.
They’re essential in the age of the Internet.
Each 21st Century skill is broken into one of three categories:
• Learning skills
• Literacy skills
• Life skills
Altogether, these categories cover all 12 21st Century skills that contribute to a student’s future
career.
Learning skills (the four C’s)
- teaches students about the mental processes required to adapt and improve upon a
modern work environment.
Literacy skills (IMT)
- focuses on how students can discern facts, publishing outlets, and the technology behind
them. There’s a strong focus on determining trustworthy sources and factual information
to separate it from the misinformation that floods the Internet.
Life skills (FLIPS)
- take a look at intangible elements of a student’s everyday life. These intangibles focus on
both personal and professional qualities.

Learning Skills (4Cs)

• Critical thinking: Finding solutions to problems
- In business settings, critical thinking is essential to improvement. It’s the mechanism that
weeds out problems and replaces them with fruitful endeavors.
• Creativity: Thinking outside the box
- Creativity is equally important as a means of adaptation. This skill empowers students to
see concepts in a different light, which leads to innovation.
• Collaboration: Working with others
 - Collaboration means getting students to work together, achieve compromises, and get the
best possible results from solving a problem. The key element of collaboration is
willingness. All participants have to be willing to sacrifice parts of their own ideas and
adopt others to get results for the company.
• Communication: Talking to others
- Communication is a requirement for any company to maintain profitability. It’s crucial
for students to learn how to effectively convey ideas among different personality types.
That has the potential to eliminate confusion in a workplace, which makes your students
valuable parts of their teams, departments, and companies.

Literacy Skills (IMT)

• Information literacy: Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data
- It is the foundational skill. It helps students understand facts, especially data points, that
they’ll encounter online. More importantly, it teaches them how to separate fact from
fiction.
• Media literacy: Understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published
- It is the practice of identifying publishing methods, outlets, and sources while
distinguishing between the ones that are credible and the ones that aren’t. Just like the
previous skill, media literacy is helpful for finding truth in a world that’s saturated with
information.
• Technology literacy: Understanding the machines that make the Information Age possible
- It goes another step further to teach students about the machines involved in the
Information Age. As computers, cloud programming, and mobile devices become more
important to the world, the world needs more people to understand those concepts.
Technology literacy gives students the basic information they need to understand what
gadgets perform what tasks and why.
But to truly round out a student’s 21st Century skills, they need to learn from a third
category.

Life Skills (FLIPS)

• Flexibility: Deviating from plans as needed
- It is the expression of someone’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances. This is one
of the most challenging qualities to learn for students because it’s based on two
uncomfortable ideas: • Your way isn’t always the best way • You have to know and admit
when you’re wrong
Flexibility requires them to show humility and accept that they’ll always have a lot to learn —
even when they’re experienced. Still, flexibility is crucial to a student’s long-term success in a
career. Knowing when to change, how to change, and how to react to change is a skill that’ll pay
dividends for someone’s entire life.
• Leadership: Motivating a team to accomplish a goal
- It is someone’s penchant for setting goals, walking a team through the steps required, and
achieving those goals collaboratively. Whether someone’s a seasoned entrepreneur or a
fresh hire just starting their careers, leadership applies to career. Entry-level workers need
leadership skills for several reasons. The most important is that it helps them understand
the decisions that managers and business leaders make.
• Initiative: Starting projects, strategies, and plans on one’s own
- It only comes naturally to a handful of people. As a result, students need to learn it to
fully succeed. This is one of the hardest skills to learn and practice. Initiative often means
working on projects outside of regular working hours. The rewards for students with
extreme initiative vary from person to person. Sometimes they’re good grades. Other
times they’re new business ventures.
• Productivity: Maintaining efficiency in an age of distractions
- Along with initiative, 21st Century skills require students to learn about productivity.
That’s a student’s ability to complete work in an appropriate amount of time. In business
terms, it’s called “efficiency.” The common goal of any professional — from entry-level
employee to CEO — is to get more done in less time. By understanding productivity
strategies at every level, students discover the ways in which they work best while
gaining an appreciation for how others work as well.

• Social skills: Meeting and networking with others for mutual benefit
- are crucial to the ongoing success of a professional. Business is frequently done through
the connections one person makes with others around them. This concept of networking
is more active in some industries than others, but proper social skills are excellent tools
for forging long-lasting relationships. While these may have been implied in past
generations, the rise of social media and instant communications have changed the nature
of human interaction.