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.