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21st Century Skills are a new way of thinking and teaching that can adapt to the new and creative way of this century. They utilize the tools and technology that students of this century are familiar with. According The Glossary of the Education Reform, 21st Century Skills are considered the broad set of knowledge, skills, work habits, and character traits that are known to be the essential part of success in today's education and careers. It incorporates creativity, critical thinking skills, planning, self-discipline, leadership as well as teamwork. It is divided into three categories including: Learning and Innovation, Information, Media, and Technology, and Life and Career. Each category includes ways in which education and career routines and thinking skills can be innovated by utilizing these 21st century skills.

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Applied Educational Systems, Inc. (n.d.). What Are 21st Century Skills? Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.aeseducation.com/career-readiness/what-are-21st-century-skills

ELA State Standards. (2017). ELA Standards for Students. Retrieved January 27, 2019, from https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/stateboardofeducation/documents/massivemeetingsfolder/meetingfiles4/10-20-17_III_J_Non-Substantive_

https://sites.google.com/site/robpractice123/home/information-media-and-technology-skills [Accessed 25 Mar. 2019].

ISTE. (2019). ISTE Standards for Students. Retrieved January 31, 201, from https://www.iste.org/standards/standards/for-students

P21. (n.d.). Framework for 21st Century Learning. Retrieved June 25, 2017, from http://www.p21.org/our-work/p21-framework

Partnership, G. (2019). 21st Century Skills Definition. [online] The Glossary of Education Reform. Available at: https://www.edglossary.org/21st-century-skills/ [Accessed 25 Mar. 2019].

Social Studies State Standards. (2013). Social Studies Standards for Students. Retrieved January 27, 2019, from https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/education/standards/ss/std_ss_gr_5.pdf

Wiley. (2011, July 22). Retrieved March 24, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQTYcZf40ag&index=3&list=PLw02tZ1F4zEDxJTB9U64rFJcnqDgBAHMc

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21st Century Skills are important because they allow educators to teach students in an efficient and effective way that reflects on the tools and resources that students are familiar with. These skills help schools prioritize their teaching and helps teachers to teach students with the most useful, high-demanding, relevant, and universal applicable skills. It is important to utilize these skills because students should learn how to be more complex and be able to effectively solve problems with today's adoption of technology use. Schools and teachers should facilitate these skills because it incorporates the strategy of authentic learning, multiple technologies, project-based learning, such as research projects from various content areas.

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Learning skills teaches students to mentally process, adapt, and improve their way of learning and work environment. It adapts the critical thinking, creativity and problem-solving, collaboration, and communication aspect of 21st century skills.

All of these aspects are a necessary part of learning and innovation. If students are taught the skills necessary to assess a and analyze the problem and solve it in new and creative ways using communication and collaboration, they will be able to take control of their learning and be more effective and efficient in a work environment.

Content Standard: TNDOE.ELA.5.W.RBPK.9 Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research, applying grade 5 standards for reading.

Students can reflect on information they read by creating their own Google Slides presentation or Flipgrid video. Students will analyze content material and creatively share their reflection with teachers and peers.

Link to more information:

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The partnership for 21 st Century Learning, or "P21," was founded in 2002, intending to bring together the business community, education leaders, and policy makers in order to, "position 21st century readiness at the center of US K-12 education and to kick-start a national conversation on the importance of 21st century skills for all students." A key piece of work put forth by the partnership is The Framework for 21 st Century Learning, a set of skills that all stakeholders agree are essential for success. For more than a decade, this framework has informed much of my thinking related to teaching and learning, assessment, the power in the college and career ready standards, and rethinking learning organizations to meet the demands of preparing young people to succeed in the 21 st century. And as a friend recently reminded me, "We're already well into the 21 st century," so we'd better get a move on!

My clear favorite among the sets of skills included in the Framework are the "4Cs" that make up Learning and Innovation Skills: Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity. Why are these most compelling to me? Because I believe if we intentionally incorporate opportunities for practicing these skills, they have the power to transform the quality of teaching and learning in all classrooms, and across all subject areas. Moreover, when embedded into our Core Instructional Model, they hold particular promise for promoting and achieving Academic Learning Time (ALT) by providing several powerful means to "actively manipulate content." (Fisher, C. W., & Berliner, D. C. (Eds.), 1985) And according to a 2014 article by Susan Adams in Forbes ¹, among the most sought after skills by employers were the ability to work on a team, make decisions, solve problems, and communicate effectively. Let's take a closer look at each of these essential skills highlighted in the P21 Framework.
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
The process of critical thinking and problem solving can be activated by asking students to reason, either inductively, by moving from specific observations to broader generalizations, or deductively, using a "top down" approach to move from the general to more specific. Most notably, students will use deductive reasoning while testing or confirming a hypothesis. ² Students can also be engaged in systems thinking, or analyzing how the parts of a whole interact with each other to produce a certain set of outcomes or result. Opportunities to ignite higher order thinking, like analysis, evaluation, or synthesis, can be achieved by asking students to make judgments or decisions based upon evidence, arguments, claims or beliefs. Lastly, problem-based learning grounded in finding both conventional and creative solutions to unfamiliar problems can be a powerful way to incorporate teamwork and collaboration into any lesson.
Communication and Collaboration
Think about the necessity of these two skills in the successful navigation of your daily life, whether at work or at home. The authors of the college and career ready standards (CCRS) 3 had the foresight to include anchor standards for speaking and listening, encompassing comprehension and collaboration, along with the presentation of knowledge and ideas. With just modest attention to these standards across the curriculum, teaching and learning could be transformed into a series of events where students are given opportunities to participate in lively conversations, express their opinions, build upon others' ideas, present information, and evaluate another speaker's point of view. These skills are built up over time, ranging from a kindergartner's ability to describe people, places, things and events, all the way through the twelfth grade where students are asked to present information, findings and evidence, conveying themselves clearly and logically. The obvious connection between successful communication and collaboration is underscored be perhaps another less often noted, albeit essential "C" - compromise - which is a skill that must be continually coached and practiced if students are to become successful team players.
Creativity and Innovation
Closely connected with the other Cs, creativity includes both thinking creatively, as well as working creatively with others. Related skills that foster creative thinking include adaptability, leadership, and teamwork. Building in opportunities for students to practice idea generation techniques, such as brainstorming or brainwriting, mindmapping, storyboarding, or visualization, 4 to mention a few, will bolster their abilities to create and innovate, while at the same time promote communication, collaboration, and problem solving. You can easily see how these processes interconnect, building exponentially the more students are encouraged to practice.

If you're interested in exploring the ways that these skills can further be integrated into your instruction, you may want to check out the NEA's Educator's Guide to the "Four Cs" - Preparing 21st Century Students for a Global Society. 5 It includes grade and subject specific examples that can help you achieve academic learning time with your students through the careful integration of the 4 Cs.

1 http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/11/12/the-10-skills-employers-most-want-in-2015-graduates/#4b5a339519f6

2 http://library.royalroads.ca/writing-centre/writing/argumentation/building-argument/types-reasoning-deductive-vs-inductive

3 http://www.corestandards.org/ELA-Literacy/CCRA/SL/

4 https://www.cleverism.com/18-best-idea-generation-techniques/

5 http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/A-Guide-to-Four-Cs.pdf

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The partnership for 21st Century Learning, or "P21," was founded in 2002, intending to bring together the business community, education leaders, and policy makers in order to, "position 21st century readiness at the center of US K-12 education and to kick-start a national conversation on the importance of 21st century skills for all students."

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The life skills examine the difficult elements of a student's life, in both the personal and professional life. It takes a look at the flexibility, leadership, initiative, productivity, and social skills. Knowing when to look at solutions that aren't always your idea. It examines the efficiency of using the 21st century skills.

Employers want these 21st century skills to teach students to be able to adapt to change effectively and efficiently. They want students to be able to quickly discover the best way to run their businesses socially and productively.

Content Standard: TNDOE.ELA.5.RI.KID.3 Explain the relationships and interactions among two or more individuals, events, and/or ideas in a text.

This could be used by having students examine the relationships and interactions in nonfiction text. The text could include information about the problems people experienced during the war or Great Depression and how they could solve the problems in a more efficient way.

Link to more information:

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21st Century skills are 12 abilities that today's students need to succeed in their careers during the Information Age.
The twelve 21st Century skills are:

1. Critical thinking

2. Creativity

3. Collaboration

4. Communication

5. Information literacy

6. Media literacy

7. Technology literacy

8. Flexibility

9. Leadership

10. Initiative

11. Productivity

12. Social skills

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.
On this page, we'll take a look at what's included in 21st Century skills, how they help students, and why they're so important.
You'll also be able to download a free guide on how you can teach 21st Century skills in middle or high school courses.

To start, let's dive into the three categories that 21st Century skills fall into.

The Three 21st Century Skill Categories

Each 21st Century skill is broken into one of three categories:

1. Learning skills

2. Literacy skills

3. Life skills

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.

Altogether, these categories cover all 12 21st Century skills that contribute to a student's future career.

This is not an exhaustive checklist of career readiness skills - but they're the career readiness skills that overlap with 21st Century skills!

Let's take a closer look at each category.

Category 1. Learning Skills (The Four C's)

The four C'sare by far the most popular 21st Century skills. These skills are also called learning skills.

More educators know about these skills because they're universal needs for any career. They also vary in terms of importance, depending on an individual's career aspirations.
The 4 C's of 21st Century Skills are:

Critical thinking: Findingsolutions to problems

Creativity: Thinking outside the box

Collaboration: Working with others

Communication: Talking to others

Arguably, critical thinking is the most important quality for someone to have in health sciences.
In business settings, critical thinking is essential to improvement. It's the mechanism that weeds out problems and replaces them with fruitful endeavors.

It's what helps students figure stuff out for themselves when they don't have a teacher at their disposal.
Related Resources:
Bonus Resource: Free Critical Thinking Lesson Download
Creativity is equally important as a means of adaptation. This skill empowers students to see concepts in a different light, which leads to innovation.
In any field, innovation is key to the adaptability and overall success of a company.

Learning creativity as a skill requires someone to understand that "the way things have always been done" may have been best 10 years ago - but someday, that has to change.
Collaboration means getting students to work together, achieve compromises, and get the best possible results from solving a problem.
Collaboration may be the most difficult concept in the four C's. But once it's mastered, it can bring companies back from the brink of bankruptcy.

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.

That means understanding the idea of a "greater good," which in this case tends to be company-wide success.
Related Resources: Finally, communication is the glue that brings all of these educational qualities together.
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.

Effective communication is also one of the most underrated soft skills in the United States. For many, it's viewed as a "given," and some companies may even take good communication for granted.

But when employees communicate poorly, whole projects fall apart. No one can clearly see the objectives they want to achieve. No one can take responsibility because nobody's claimed it.

Without understanding proper communication, students in the 21st Century will lack a pivotal skill to progress their careers.
Related Resources:
But the four C's are only the beginning. 21st Century skills also require students to understand the information that's around them.

Category 2. Literacy Skills (IMT)
Literacy skills are the next category of 21st Century skills.
They're sometimes called IMT skills, and they're each concerned with a different element in digital comprehension.
The three 21st Century literacy skills are:

Information literacy: Understanding facts, figures, statistics, and data

Media literacy: Understanding the methods and outlets in which information is published

Technology literacy: Understanding the machines that make the Information Age possible

Information literacy 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.

In an age of chronic misinformation, finding truth online has become a job all on its own. It's crucial that students can identify honesty on their own.
Related Resources: Media literacy is the practice of identifying publishing methods, outlets, and sources while distinguishing between the ones that are credible and the ones that aren't.
Otherwise, they can fall prey to myths, misconceptions, and outright lies.

Just like the previous skill, media literacy is helpful for finding truth in a world that's saturated with information.

This is how students find trustworthy sources of information in their lives. Without it, anything that lookscredible becomes credible.

But with it, they can learn which media outlets or formats to ignore. They also learn which ones to embrace, which is equally important.

Last, technology literacy 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.

This understanding removes the intimidating feeling that technology tends to have. After all, if you don't understand how technology works, it might as well be magic.

But technology literacy unmasks the high-powered tools that run today's world.

As a result, students can adapt to the world more effectively. They can play an important role in its evolution.

They might even guide its future.

But to truly round out a student's 21st Century skills, they need to learn from a third category.

Category 3. Life Skills (FLIPS)
The five 21st Century life skills are:
Life skills is the final category. Also called FLIPS, these skills all pertain to someone's personal life, but they also bleed into professional settings.
Flexibility is the expression of someone's ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Flexibility: Deviating from plans as needed

Leadership: Motivating a team to accomplish a goal

Initiative: Starting projects, strategies, and plans on one's own

Productivity: Maintaining efficiency in an age of distractions

Social skills: Meeting and networking with others for mutual benefit

This is one of the most challenging qualities to learn for students because it's based on two uncomfortable ideas:

1. Your way isn't always the best way

2. You have to know and admit when you're wrong

That's a struggle for a lot of students, especially in an age when you can know any bit of information at the drop of a hat.

Flexibility requires them to show humility and accept that they'll always have a lot to learn - even when they're experienced.
Leadership is someone's penchant for setting goals, walking a team through the steps required, and achieving those goals collaboratively.
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.

It also plays a big role in the next skill in this category.

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.
Related Resources: True success also requires initiative, requiring students to be self-starters.
Then, those entry-level employees canapply their leadership skills when they're promoted to middle management (or the equivalent). This is where 21st Century skill learners can apply the previous skills they've learned.

It's also where they get the real-world experience they need to lead entire companies.

As they lead individual departments, they can learn the ins and outs of their specific careers. That gives ambitious students the expertise they need to grow professionally and lead whole corporations.

Initiative 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.
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.
Sometimes, it's spending an extra 30 minutes at their jobs wrapping something up before the weekend.

Regardless, initiative is an attribute that earns rewards. It's especially indicative of someone's character in terms of work ethic and professional progress.

That goes double when initiative is practiced with qualities like flexibility and leadership.

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.

That equips them with the practical means to carry out the ideas they determine through flexibility, leadership, and initiative.

Still, there's one last skill that ties all other 21st Century skills together.

Social skills 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.

As a result, today's students possess a wide range of social skills. Some are more socially adept than others. Some are far behind their peers. And some lucky few may be far ahead, as socializing comes naturally to them.

But most students need a crash course in social skills at least. Etiquette, manners, politeness, and small talk still play major roles in today's world.

That means some students need to learn them in an educational setting instead of a social setting.

For them, it's another skill to add to their lives.

Now that we've established what 21st Century skills are, let's answer the next big question.

Do employers actually want people with 21st Century skills?

What's the Demand for 21st Century Skills?

While 21st Century skills have always been important, they've become essential in a worldwide market that moves faster by the day.

These skills all double back to one key focus.

Someone's ability to enact and / or adapt to change.

This is because any industry is capable of changing at a moment's notice. Industries are now regularly disrupted with new ideas and methodologies.

Those industries that haven't been disrupted aren't immune though. They just haven't been disruptedyet.

With that in mind, the world has entered an era where nothing is guaranteed.

As a result, students need to learn to guide the change that'll inundate their lives. At the very least, they need to learn how to react to it.

Otherwise, they'll be left behind.

This is especially true as customer demand accelerates in all industries along with expectations for newer features, higher-level capabilities, and lower prices.

In today's marketplace, falling behind means becoming obsolete.

That's a familiar concept to all of today's students as tomorrow's advancements make today's miracles quaint or unimpressive.

Today, the only consistency from year to year is change.

That's why many teachers like you are incorporating the 21st Century Skills Assessment into their career readiness courses.

With 21st Century skills, your students will have the adaptive qualities they need to keep up with a business environment that's constantly evolving.

How Do You Teach 21st Century Skills?
While these skills can be taught at any grade level, we find it's most important to teach 21st Century skills in middle or early high school.
Now you know what 21st Century skills are and why employers want new hires to have them.

So how do you teach them in your daily classes?

Before getting into the details, it's important to identify who should teach 21st Century skills.

This is the time when your students need to hone their career readiness skills before they enter the workforce!

So how can middle and high school teachers teach 21st Century skills effectively?

Click below to download the Ultimate Guide to Teaching 21st Century Skills in Secondary Schools and find out!

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21st Century skills are 12 abilities that today's students need to succeed in their careers during the Information Age. The twelve 21st Century skills are: Critical thinking Creativity Collaboration Communication Information literacy Media literacy Technology literacy Flexibility Leadership Initiative Productivity Social skills These skills are intended to help students keep up with the lightning-pace of today's modern markets.

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Information, Media, and Technology focuses on how their learning and innovative ideas are pushed out through various 21st century tools. This category represents the way technology is utilized to publish and share information and how to separate it from the misinformation that is all over the internet.

Teachers and students can use these various tools to share information, documents, and allow peers to express a variety of thoughts and opinions on a topic. It also helps them learn how to use the creative tools that technology provides in a useful way that doesn't appear to be cluttered or overbearing, (i.e., flyers, advertisements, etc.).

Content Standard:
TNDOE.SS.5.47 Make connections with the growth of popular culture of the “Roaring Twenties”.

ISTE*S.3.D Students build knowledge by actively exploring real-world issues and problems, developing ideas and theories and pursuing answers and solutions.

This could be used to share information about the Roaring 20s' by creating a video using Wevideo. The students will work together to research and share information about the 20s with their peers and teacher.

Link to more information:

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Information, Media, and Technology Skills - robpractice123

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To acquire information literacy, one must actively participate in accessing information in a timely and effective manner. One must evaluate information in a timely and effective manner. One must evaluate information critically and adequately. In order to resolve the issue/problem, information must be used accurately.