Study Skills for 21st Century Learners by Tracie Belt Why Study Skills • According to Daniel Pink if you want to engage learners they must be selfdirected. • Our students need fine tuned study skills. 21st century teachers will need to help develop, and enhance the study skills that students need to collaborate, communicate, and create. What Skills do they need • Time Management • material organization • research skills • deep reading • expository writing • Automaticity of skills like math facts, grammar rules, etc that ensure students can use these skills automatically. Students who know these skills have greater success and are better prepared to work independently in later grades. Why? Students can use all of their brain power for critical thinking, planning. Students who don’t have a strong foundation of skills and strategies do not know which strategy to use or have to try and remember how to do a basic skill so they are not able to give their full attention to more advanced learning. • Executive function skills are higher level thinking skills, students with a strong foundation of skills can use these skills effortlessly so their brain can concentrate on the organization, persistence, self- confidence, motivation, visualization, working memory, focus, and emotional control that they need to complete and plan projects, etc on their own. Why Teach study skills? • Number one reason students have trouble academically are poor study skills. • Executive function skills are essential to students being effective with project based learning, blended learning or teaching strategies like the flipped classroom or teaching digitally. Teach study skills? When? • Embed the study skills in to your regular curriculum just by the way you structure your lesson and your directions. • Model study skills and involve children in planning out assignments, projects, studying for tests, etc. Tools that help promote study skills • I pad apps for note taking, researching and collaborating • Teaching study skills explicitly • Model, Practice, and grade the study skill being taught • Provide specific feed back to students and show examples of what and how the student should be using the study skill. Make connections of how the study strategy can be used in more than one subject. We don’t want to be enablers we want to be scaffolders • Why a teacher’s best intentions can lead students to have poor study skills • What are some ways we can encourage students to think and plan on their own. • The importance of scaffolding our projects and assignments so students learn to plan, create, and think critically on their own helps students develop and improve their ability to use executive functioning skills independently. Closure • Students of the 21st century are like managers who have to produce a product with scant resources, time and energy, • Teachers of the 21st century have to incorporate study skills so that the student practices and improves at using study strategies independently. Study skills need to be taught at every grade level. Each grade level reinforces past study strategies but takes the same study skill to a more advanced level. Also, they teach and help students learn new study skills appropriate for the grade level they teach. • Teaching and learning are rapidly evolving to meet the demands of new technology and career paths that require new skill sets that will require strong executive function skills if they are to collaborate, create and communicate in a global economy. Students have facts at their finger tips so the days of teachers just teaching content are over. Teaching students how to learn is important.