Week One Implement Soft Skills into Your Lesson Plans Plans are nothing; planning is everything. --Dwight D. Eisenhower To make the Future-Ready Challenge a success, you must start at the beginning, in the planning stages, because when changes aren't structured, you can't measure their growth. In other words, you have to know what you're aiming for. And to do this, you must mindfully begin to implement digital age skills into your everyday lessons. Challenge Your challenge is to add a line to your lesson plans that includes the digital age skill(s) being developed. Aim to do this for every class you teach, every day you teach. Your awareness of incorporating digital age skills into your everyday lessons is simply the most effective way to impact your students' understanding and learning of these skills.

This simple addition to your daily lesson plans will benefit your students for years to come. Example Consider creating a lesson where students must collaborate in order to solve a problem. In other words, go beyond memorization and dive into problem solving. Design a problem that includes multiple parts in order to solve the problem or multiple ways to solve the problem. A great example for the social studies teacher is Countable  (countable.us), a government website and app that allows kids to look at active bills in Congress and choose a position. You choose an active bill and ask the students to debate whether the bill should be passed or opposed. Encourage them to choose a position, research it, and present their argument to the class.

Using the Countable app, allow the students to write directly to their congressperson. This is, by far, one of the most important weeks in the challenge, as you will begin building an awareness of digital age skills and ISTE standards and how implementing these standards will bring about positive change. Future-Ready DETAILS Digital Age Skills Used     ISTE Standards Addressed Global Collaborator Empowered Learner Digital Citizen Creative Communicator Digital Literacy Critical Thinking/Problem Solving Remember: The digital age skills you use will be what you want your students to adopt, and the ISTE standards are who you want your students to become. Suggestions Create a spot in your lesson plan where you can physically write down the digital age skills you will be touching on. You can then refer to these skills as you write out your lesson plan, even marking the areas in the lesson plan where each skill will be incorporated. Reflection After completing this challenge, ask yourself the following questions. This is an excellent opportunity to share with a peer who is undertaking the challenge as well.   In what ways did this challenge change/influence my teaching style? How have my students and I benefited from this change? In what ways did the challenge change the way my classroom functions? How did this improve the learning process? How did the use of technology and digital resources facilitate the implementation of this challenge in my classroom? Which resources were the most effective? How can I use these resources to further develop and advance my curriculum?.