Skills for 21 st Century Learners: The Road to Self-Directed Learning

Skills for 21st Century Learners: The Road to Self-

Directed Learning

Why develop gifted education curriculum?

Consider skills needed by most gifted learners

To be able to develop a Credible, Consistent Gifted Curriculum

To ease Collaboration with various constituency groups (general education teachers, parents, other gifted teachers…

Provide a Continuum of Services for the students

Facilitate Communication and training K-12

Four Components of the Blue Valley Gifted Education Services

1. IEP Goals

2. Process Skills Development

3. Enrichment/Extension

4. Social-Emotional Skills Development

Individual Group

Why 21st Century Skills?

• Our children’s futures include:– Continued outsourcing of jobs– Continued automation of jobs– Knowledge doubling exponentially and in

increasingly shorter periods of time– Jobs/technologies of the future that have

not yet been invented– Dwindling global resources

» Thomas Friedman, “The World is Flat”

What are the Four Most Critical Skills for Gifted Students?

Critical/Creative Thinking Problem Solving Research Technology

These can be called MEGA SKILLS

Critical/Creative Thinking Problem Solving Research Technology

Basic Skills define the Mega Skill

For example…..Research skills can be subdivided into: Task Initiation Topic Selection Topic Exploration Focus Formulation Information Collection Presentation of Findings

Mini Skills make up Basic Skills

Information Collection (a basic skill) is made up of these mini skills:

Literature review Research methodology Data gathering/sampling Statistical analysis of data

Why this much detail?

Must be able to delineate the skills you teach!

If you don’t know where you are going…..You’ll probably end up somewhere else!

To have a credible curriculum, it must be detailed and defensible!

How will content be chosen to accompany skill development?

Student interest? District-wide activity? (robotics) Teacher passion area? (math) Area being studied in a content area?

Blank Scope & Sequence

Research Scope & Sequence

Research Scope & Sequence Continued

Critical & Creative Thinking Scope & Sequence

Critical & Creative Thinking Scope & Sequence Continued

Problem SolvingScope & Sequence

TechnologyScope & Sequence

TechnologyScope & Sequence Continued

Research Skills Rubric

Critical Thinking Skills Rubric

Critical Thinking Skills Worksheet

What’s Next???

Master Mastery for each child Assess number of units for each level

for each skill and encourage writing of units where needed

Evaluate and revise units

Are we preparing students for their futures, or for our pasts?

Willard Daggett

Dr. Sheri StewartDCT, Gifted Education

(913) 239-4333sstewart@bluevalleyk12.org

Briana DuffyGifted Education Teacher

(913) 239-6628bcduffy@bluevalleyk12.org