Superheroes and Skills for Success
by Debbie Yonke, Coordinator of Professional Learning Integration

   Remember back to early elementary school days?  The days when many of us dreamed about what we might want to be when we grow up?  An airline stewardess was always high on my list (until I discovered you had to be able to swim to be on transatlantic flights)!  Children today still dream of what they might become and the dream jobs that await them.  According to Forbes, being a superhero is “the single most popular career for kindergarteners”—with Spider-Man being number one!  Other students want to be princesses and one even hopes “to grow up to be SpongeBob SquarePants.” 

   As our students are dreaming of what they might become, the job market is continuing to change--right along with the competitive needs of a global economy.  According to the American Management Association, business leaders and executives are saying they need a workforce fully equipped with skills well beyond the basics of the traditional three Rs.  Instead “skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, and creativity, and innovation will become even more important.”   We are realizing that these important C’s are replacing the three R’s and that we are preparing our students for a future and for jobs that we can only predict and imagine.
   
   So what does that mean to us as educators?  How can we embed the critical capabilities of Communication, Collaboration, and Critical Thinking into our everyday practice?  How can those critical components of the Springfield Learning Model take life in our classrooms?  One venue for embedding these skills is the use of Cooperative Learning structures. 

   There are over 250 different Cooperative Learning structures which serve ten different functions.  The structure I would like to highlight today is a basic structure which can help us accomplish many goals at one time. Think-Write-RoundRobin can serve as a classbuilder or teambuilder.  It also works well for decision-making, procedure learning, processing information, and thinking skills.  Think-Write-Round Robin revolves around a basic structure which is well-known to many of us--Round Robin. What differs with this structure is the opportunity for students to have individual think time and increased accountability by recording their answers before sharing their learning/answers with their team mates. 

Think-Write-Round Robin

1.     Teacher poses a problem/question to which there are multiple possible responses or solutions, and provides think time. 
2.    Students think about their response, then independently write it down.
3.    Students take turns stating responses or solutions going around the team until time is called.

   As we look to the challenge of preparing our students for the 21^st Century, Cooperative Learning structures can help us respond to the need for “more complex and demanding instructional strategies” while embedding the critical components of the 3Cs within our content areas (Kagan, 2004). 

   If you are interested in learning more about Cooperative Learning opportunities in our district, please feel free to contact me at dyonke@spsmail.org.  Best wishes for a successful second semester!

Resources:
When I Grow Up:  Kids’ Dream Jobs by David M Ewalt (2009) www.forbes.com
Executives Say the 21^st Century Requires More Skilled Workers (2010) available at www.p21.org
From Lessons to Structures-A Paradigm Shift for 21^st Century Education by Dr. Spencer Kagan (2004) www.kaganonline.com