Future Ready Skills

What does it mean to prepare the students for the future?  According to the article written by Jon Phillis, 9 Steps to a Future-Ready Education, "we need to prepare the students for the future workforce" by allowing the learner to take ownership of the learning, provide time for collaboration, communication, and bring the world into the classroom setting.  By breaking apart the lesson to allow for future-ready skills the learners will be more prepared for college, career, and citizenship.  

I have spent a majority of my time working with teachers on how to generate future-ready skills that can be combined with the learning targets and objectives.  I start out every coaching conversation with one fundamental question. "How can the learners showcase what they have learned?"  Most of the time educators will say to me; I will give them a quiz or provide an exit ticket at the end of class.  Of course, those concepts will provide us with a quick glimpse of who has memorized the content but does it showcase who has an in-depth understanding of concepts?  
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In addition to providing a quiz or an exit ticket, could the teachers allow for time to input one of the key ingredients to a future-ready classroom?   Is there a way for the future ready skills of creativity, collaboration, communication, critical thinking, and connectedness to become a part of the everyday lesson?   Below I have generated few ideas of how to add in future ready skills to the lessons.  Feel free at that end of this blog to add in your future-ready skills or ask for help on generating ideas for an upcoming unit, lesson, or theme. ​

Future Ready Ideas

Dice as Variables:  Use dice to have the student graph different outcomes

Sorting Activities 

Jeopardylabs.org

Jenga

​Taboo

Interactive Panel Activities 

Group graphing activity 

Connect Four