1.3 – Integrating World Readiness Standards and 21st Century Skills
The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL (Links to an external site.)) is a major provider of support and resources for language teaching around the world. As we collaborate to develop synchronous activities for the final weeks of this program, we’ll integrate two sets of standards from ACTFL listed below.
Before You Read
You should download or bookmark each of the following links. You aren’t expected to read them as if you are going to teach them, but rather to be familiar with both and their application to your work as an online or future online instructor. You will use both in the following ways:
- For section 1.6, you’ll use both to inform your observation and reporting on a video Think Aloud Lesson Reflection by one of our Language Specialists.
- For section 2.1, you’ll use this information as we take a “Closer Look at the Three Modes of Communication.”
- At the end of this module, you will complete a five question quiz based on what you’ve learned from these documents.
- During Module 5 (Week 3) of the course, you’ll rely on these documents to inform a synchronous teaching “episode” known as “Peer Microteaching” with you Peer Microteaching group. Specifically, the documents will assist you to demonstrate the relationship between communication and culture, and integrate 21st century skills.
| World Readiness Standards for Learning Languages (Links to an external site.) – Pay particular attention to the “communication” and cultures” standards since they will be a required element in your synchronous lesson design. | |
| ACTFL 21st Century Skills (Links to an external site.) – While we can’t possibly address all of these skills in a one-hour activity, we should use this document as a checklist to guide our development of the final synchronous activities. |
After You Read
Now that read both documents, we’ll engage in a course-wide sharing activity related to the 21st Century Skills Map. This activity takes the form of a discussion forum posting in the homepage forum, “Tools, Tips, and Resources.” To complete this activity, click the following link to share your knowledge on 21st century tools in the discussion topic Sharing Tools and Techniques before 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, June 16. The forum where this is housed is one of our main forums on the homepage: Tools, Tips, and Resources