GT Back to School Planning: The 4 C’s
The past two blog posts in this series have explored depth of knowledge and critical thinking. 2 ways to go about planning the thinking levels of objectives and activities. Today we are going to move backwards and talk about the 4 C’s of 21st century learning and innovation skills:
- Critical Thinking – thinking deeper about topics
- Creativity – the ability to think in new and unique ways
- Communication – the ability to speak and share ideas with others
- Collaboration – the ability to work with others
From a quick google search, you can find many incredible resources on the 4 C’s – from lessons to rubrics, it has been created. Therefore, in hopes of not recreating anything already created, I want to write more about the benefits of using the 4 C’s. I will link many great resources and websites at the end to find more information!
Why do we use the 4 C’s?
When we think about gifted learners, we know they are able to think in unique ways and develop deep background knowledge. If given a multiple choice test in their strength areas, many times they will ace it before they even are “taught” it.
So how do we teach kids that already know the information? This is where the 4 C’s come in.
Take this situation: A student in your class already knows a LOT about the Civil War… as teachers, when we plan, we can ask ourselves how we can support continued development in the 4 C areas. Rather than supporting growth of knowledge, we can support the growth of learning skills.
What do the 4 C’s look like in action?
Critical Thinking
The previous two blog posts went into detail about how to deepen the thinking and develop critical thinking skills. Rather than teaching the student basic facts about the Civil War, can we have them analyze the most important events of the Civil War? Can we have the student write “generalizations” of the Civil War. Can we have students identify and argue the top 3 turning points of the Civil War?
Read more in the Depth of Knowledge Blog Post here.
Creativity
Rather than supporting student development of knowledge, we can support their abilities to think creatively and uniquely. Maybe this looks like exploring the Civil War from multiple perspectives and writing diary entries. Could the students create a new timeline of events in the Civil War and argue how it might have changed war? Can you implement a creative thinking strategy such as:
- Scamper
- Six Thinking Hats
- Attribute Listing
- Mind Mapping/Visualization
Check out my 2 favorite books for developing creativity in the classroom:
- Creativity in the Classroom by Alane Jordan Starko
- Creative Acts for Curious People by Sarah Stein Greenberg
Communication
Communication can be one of the most difficult areas for gifted children. I have found that gifted children can have INCREDIBLE thinking, but struggle communicating their ideas. The important thing to remember about communication is that it is not always speaking – it can include listening, choosing a medium to deliver a message, analyzing the importance of what information delivered, following conventions of turn taking, and more.
As teachers, one of the most important things we can help gifted children with is communicating their ideas. Using the child’s strengths to teach communication is imperative. If they are strong at digital tools, how can they use those to communicate? If their strength is speaking, how can we support their delivery and organization of sentences? Do they enjoy argumentation; how can we teach them to respectfully listen and develop positive messages?
One of my favorite ways to differentiate lessons for gifted students is through how they communicate their information. This chart below can be used to help differentiate the communication for any unit/topic.
Collaboration
Much like communication, gifted children can have difficulties with collaboration. Planning opportunities for collaboration as well as explicitly teaching collaboration skills can be supportive to gifted students as well as all students. One of my favorite ways to support collaboration is to help students recognize their strengths and how they can contribute to groups.
Additionally, at the beginning of the year, I love to play a collaboration game with Legos. Through this game, students recognize how difficult it can be to communicate with others in a teamwork environment. Though they may think they are being incredibly clear when trying to help someone else, they may actually be struggling to look at the situation from someone else’s perspective.
Check out the Lego Collaboration Activity here.
Resources for the 4 C’s:
As I mentioned above, there are some incredible websites, resources, and blog posts already created about the 4 C’s. Through this post, I wanted to highlight it as a great resource for planning units and lessons at the beginning of the year.
Overall, I highly recommend using a 4 C rubric to grade students’ growth, rather than a multiple choice test identifying knowledge. These can be incredibly beneficial for student goal setting, cross curricular development/growth, and parent/teacher communication in areas for development.
Here you can find more information:
3 Steps to Implementing the 4 C’s to your Content
What are the 4 Learning Skills – Videos
4 C’s Rubrics – Separated by grade levels K-12
4 C’s Rubrics Examples – Who, What, Why, How
