21st Century Skills: The 4 C's

21st century skills have become the hot topic in the world of education.  The Elizabethtown Area School District, in particular, has put a much bigger emphasis this school year on the importance of 21st century skills to the future of our students.  When most people hear "21st century skills" their immediate thought goes to technology, however, they are much more than that!  As an educator, my main task is to prepare students to become productive members of the community.  With technology and information changing at such a fast pace, how can I ready students for jobs that may not even exist yet?  21st century skills are identified as essential skills for any job, even those that we can't imagine!

In my classroom, I focus on what is known as the "4 C's": Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking.  As a music educator, these skills show up in many of the activities that we do on a daily basis in music class.  

Take, for example, an activity that we did during 3rd grade music class last week.  It was the first time I had seen the kids this school year, so I planned to do a few team building games to get to know them.  One activity focused on learning each others' names and using two of the 4 C's: Creativity and Critical Thinking (problem solving).  I had the students say their name as they went around the circle, but they were challenged to come up with a unique way to say their name (i.e. high vs. low, fast vs. slow, etc...).  This activity also reviewed the idea of question/answer form.  I was the question asking "What's your name?" and the students gave their name as the answer.   

After they shared their unique sounding names, they were then challenged to create movement or body percussion that matched their name.  I gave them few instructions and allowed the students to time to experiment.  After we performed our name and motion we talked about how some names matched better because you could hear or see the syllables in the motions or because they followed the contour of their voice.  

Student were encouraged to "edit" their responses if they wanted to and we performed our names one final time.  This time, we only performed the movement portion of our name.  Without the ability to use our voice, the students honed their communication and listening skills as they waited for their turn. 

Here is Mrs. Stough's class from Bainbridge Elementary performing their version of "What's your Name?":

Thanks to Susan Riley, Founder of Educationcloset.com for the great name game idea! This was a quick activity, but there were so many lessons that we could learn from it!