10/05/2021
Are you teaching POWER SKILLS to your students? 💪🏽
I despise that the skills students need to be successful and competitive in the workplace are called "soft skills."
So we renamed soft skills POWER SKILLS at my site. Once a month, our teachers do mini-lessons focusing on a power skill or an executive function skill. So far, students have learned about EFFORT, GOAL SETTING, and TASK MONITORING, and after each lesson, students complete one activity.
The key to making these lessons successful is to transfer the mini-lesson into everyday conversation with students. So often, S.E.L. lessons are only taught in isolation and are not discussed again until the next S.E.L lesson. Blending the power skill with daily lessons will make the most significant impact.
So instead of saying, "Today, we are learning how to solve a quadratic equation by completing the square." You can say, "Solving a quadratic equation by completing the square can be challenging, today we are going to work on perseverance, the idea that we work hard on something and not give up on the challenge."
So when a student says, "Why are we learning this?" Your response is easy..... "Because we are learning PERSEVERANCE or EFFORT, or PROBLEM-SOLVING, or whatever the POWER SKILL you are focusing on for the month.
Every lesson you teach can include a skill that will improve your students' achievement. Teaching these skills in isolation can make it difficult for students to understand their application, and they can be time-consuming. By teaching these specific skills before, during, and after a lesson, you will start seeing positive changes in your students.
