21st Century Skills
We live in a rapidly changing world and today's students need knowledge and skills that are more diverse, complex, and integrated than any previous generation. These 21st Century Skills are universal in Colorado's standards - applying to all content areas and all grade levels. Like Mathematical Practices, the expectations for the depth and complexity in which these skills are utilized increase with grade level.
Here are the 21st Century Skills integrated into the Colorado Mathematics Academic Standards:
Here are the 21st Century Skills integrated into the Colorado Mathematics Academic Standards:
- Critical Thinking and Reasoning. Mathematics is a discipline grounded in critical thinking and reasoning. Doing mathematics involves recognizing problematic aspects of situations, devising and carrying out strategies, evaluating the reasonableness of solutions, and justifying methods, strategies, and solutions. Mathematics provides the grammar and structure that make it possible to describe patterns that exist in nature and society.
- Information Literacy. The discipline of mathematics equips students with tools and habits of mind to organize and interpret quantitative data. Informationally literate mathematics students effectively use learning tools, including technology, and clearly communicate using mathematical language.
- Collaboration. Mathematics is a social discipline involving the exchange of ideas. In the course of doing mathematics, students offer ideas, strategies, solutions, justifications, and proofs for others to evaluate. In turn, the mathematics student interprets and evaluates the ideas, strategies, solutions, justifications and proofs of others.
- Self-Direction. Doing mathematics requires a productive disposition and self-direction. It involves monitoring and assessing one’s mathematical thinking and persistence in searching for patterns, relationships, and sensible solutions.
- Invention. Mathematics is a dynamic discipline, ever expanding as new ideas are contributed. Invention is the key element as students make and test conjectures, create mathematical models of real-world phenomena, generalize results, and make connections among ideas, strategies and solutions.