21st Century Skills

• The Environmental Literacy Council Framework  The Environmental Literacy Council is dedicated to helping teachers, students, policymakers, and the public find cross-disciplinary resources on the environment.
• Environmental Science.org This organization brings together hands-on information on the professional field of environmental science, including series of interivews with experts, lectures, information about scholarships, degrees, and more.
• The National Environmental Literacy Foundation:  The National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) provides knowledge to trusted professionals who, with their credibility, amplify messages to national audiences to solve everyday environmental problems.

• Choose to Save. Choose to Save is part of the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s education and research fund, and features tips for talking to kids as young as preschoolers to teenagers. The site also illustrates examples of opportunities for opening a conversation about money.
• Generational Wealth:  You've probably heard about the wealth gap and generational wealth, but here's a number for you: There's a $200 billion annual gap between Black and white recipients of inheritances, according to a 2021 McKinsey Global Institute report, The Economic State of Black America. According to the report, Black families are also less likely to receive an inheritance.
• High School Financial Planning Program. The National Endowment for Financial Education designed an in-school program to teach students to create personalized financial plans.
• How to Make Personal Finance "Connect" With Young Adults. The American Association of Individual Investors published an article by Paula Hogan, founder of Hogan Financial Management, that provides parents with a broad introduction to financial topics parents should talk over with their children.
• Live "Stock" Adventure. North American Securities Administrators Association offers a game for middle-schoolers that can be played with worksheets downloaded from the website and a standard deck of playing cards.
• Retirement Calculator:  Chelsey, a student of financial planning, recently shared this resource with us, via her instructor, M. Curry.
• Saving and Investing for Students. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s publication for students introduces older kids to financial planning and saving. 
• School Guide to Student Financial Literacy:  What to Teach and When  It’s crucial – for individuals and the larger community – that students and young adults develop a solid foundation of personal finance knowledge, skills and habits in order to thrive. Practicing good money habits means the difference between long-term financial security and serious financial straits.
• The Stock Market Game. The SIFMA Foundation, an affiliate of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, developed the Stock Market Game program in 1977 to teach students subjects like math, business education, economics and social studies. Students invest a hypothetical $100,000 in an online portfolio.
• Teach Investing. This website from the Investor Protection Trust offers articles, videos and Power Point presentations for adults and educators. The materials are designed for high school students or older.
• Teaching Your Teen About Money – The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants provides suggestions for parents to guide their children through getting a job to earn income, budgeting, saving and using credit wisely.
• Tips and Tricks for Retirement - High school student Chelsey shared this site as being extremely helpful in her financial planning studies.

• Asia Society  The Asia Society is an international organization dedicated to strengthening relationships and deepening understanding among the peoples of Asia and the United States.
• The Employability Skills Framework is a one-stop resource of the United States Department of Educations for information and tools to inform the instruction and assessment of employability skills.
• iEARN-USA: International Education and Resource Network  The VISION of iEARN-USA is that people engage in respectful dialogue and collaborative action to meet challenges of our world.
• Institute for International Studies  Brown University's Institute for International Studies evolved from Thomas J. Watson Jr.'s (class of 1937) vision for a research and teaching center that would address the most pressing problems of its time.  The Watson Institute's mission and scope today include support of multidisciplinary research, teaching, and public education on international affairs. The Institute promotes the work of students, faculty, visiting scholars, and policy practitioners who analyze and develop initiatives to address contemporary global problems.
• Primary Source  Primary Source promotes history and humanities education by connecting educators to people and cultures throughout the world. In partnership with teachers, scholars, and the broader community, Primary Source provides learning opportunities and curriculum resources for K-12 educators. By introducing global content, Primary Source shapes the way teachers and students learn, so that their knowledge is deeper and their thinking is flexible and open to inquiry.
• TeachUNICEF  TeachUNICEF (teachunicef.org) aims to support and create well-informed global citizens who understand interconnectedness, value diversity, and have the ability to take action in meaningful ways. TeachUNICEF provides educators and youth service professionals with global learning resources for grades PreK-12: in-person workshops, school-based programming, free web-based lesson plans, videos, multi-media resources and more. Using a rights-based framework, TeachUNICEF programs and materials engage students in a meaningful exploration of social, political and economic issues of global concern. TeachUNICEF lessons are interdisciplinary and aligned to state and national educational standards. They cover topics ranging from child labor to poverty to gender equality.
• VIF International Education  VIF International Education (www.vifprogram.com) partners with districts and schools around the world to prepare global-ready teachers and students. VIF has developed Global Gateway,  an integrated online platform with educator professional development, lesson plans and classroom resources, digital badging for achievements and a vibrant collaborative community of global educators. Through purposeful and ongoing Global Gateway professional development, teachers anywhere in the world can learn to effectively integrate global content into their core instruction. Schools and districts can go global using Gateway's Global Leader Roadmap to implement across entire schools and/or districts, ensuring global learning for all students and teachers. Anyone (educators 18 years and up) can join the social community for free and we offer free 30-day trials of PD and resources. After that, it is a subscription (individual) or site license (school).

• The Employability Skills Framework is a one-stop resource of the United States Department of Educations for information and tools to inform the instruction and assessment of employability skills.
• The Intellectual and Policy Foundations of the 21st Century Skills Framework This white paper provides a summary of the framework of the national focus on 21st century skills.
• P21:  P21's Framework for 21st Century Learning was developed with input from teachers, education experts, and business leaders to define and illustrate the skills and knowledge students need to succeed in work, life and citizenship, as well as the support systems necessary for 21st century learning outcomes. It has been used by thousands of educators and hundreds of schools in the U.S. and abroad to put 21st century skills at the center of learning.

Crosswalk with 21st Century Skills - Iowa Department of Education

Access: Iowa Core - 21st Century Skills

The mission of Battelle for Kids is to realize the power and promise of 21^st century learning for every student—in early learning, in school, and beyond school—across the country and around the globe.

As the pioneers in this movement, champions of the 4Cs (Critical Thinking, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity), and creators of the Framework for 21st Century Learning, P21 is the premier organization ensuring every child—without exception—experiences 21st century learning.

Access:  P21 - Battelle for Kids

To help practitioners integrate skills into the teaching of core academic subjects, the Partnership has developed a unified, collective vision for learning known as the Framework for 21st Century Learning. This Framework describes the skills, knowledge  and expertise students must master to succeed in work and life; it is a blend of content knowledge, specific skills, expertise and literacies.

Access: P21 Framework Definitions

The intention of this rubric is for it to be used to guide and assess the development or enhancement of assignments and projects that are used to demonstrate and acess student learning, while also providing some choice to students (to help encourage ownership of learning).  By creating assignments that earn high scores on this rubric, you can provide opportunities for student to develop and master the skills that are increasingly necessary to excel in today's increasingly digital world, while demonstrating acquisition of the required outcomes in many different types of courses.

Access:  21st Century Assessment Rubric

Access:  28+ Top Interpersonal Skills