Communication Skills
2/9/2018
Today's world demands more than Three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic), today's workplace looks for graduates that are also proficient in soft skills. These soft skills are also known as the 21st century skills: critical thinking, collaboration, creativity, and communication. These skills are essential for students to succeed in life. According to A. Owens (2015), communication tops the list of desired skills in the STEM workplace. Levy and Mundane, economists, wrote that today's workplace involves explanation, negotiation, and other forms of intense human interaction. Furthermore, global citizenship requires linguistically and culturally effective communication making it imperative for graduates to know how to communicate clearly and effectively.
PNA recognizes the importance of helping students develop these 21st century skills so our graduates are better prepared to meet the challenges of their future workforce. So, in the classroom, students are given opportunities to develop these soft skills. For example, third grade's speaking standards expect students to be able to engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions with diverse partners, building on other's ideas and expressing their own clearly. To help students develop communication skills, third and fourth graders are working collaboratively on a broadcasting project that will be live streamed as morning announcements. The videos below show students' first attempt on broadcasting.
Watch the next video and notice some improvements from the first to the second attempt.
This broadcasting project does not only help students develop communication skills but also their research and collaboration skills. Students work in a different team each day with a different broadcasting task. They also learned how to approach an adult or an older student for the interview segment. They apply what they learned in science to find information for weather report. In addition, they use their typing skills to type their script in a short span of time. At the end of every broadcasting attempt, students watch their video and reflect on how they could improve. Students evidently improve each day and we can't wait for the school community to watch the students broadcast live next week.
Stay tuned for live broadcasting!
Source:
Owens, A. 2015. Developing 21st century skills: communication. STEM Jobs. Retrieved from http://edu.stemjobs.com/developing-21st-century-skills-communication. Comments are closed.
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Jessica GrahamMs. Graham graduated from the University of Alabama with a BS in Early Childhood/Elementary Education, and is currently working on her master's in reading. She enjoys hiking, traveling, arts & crafts, and playing the ukulele. Archives
April 2021
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