The Critical Skills model of instruction builds powerful lessons in classrooms ranging from pre-K to post-graduate. The model combines experiential learning, problem based learning, and rigorous high standards within an intentionally created collaborative learning community, creating the classrooms that many educators imagine, but can’t quite put together. It is the “how” in answer to the “what” of powerful classroom practice. And it was created, continues to be created, by practicing classroom teachers.
The primary methodology in use is the challenge — a carefully crafted problem to solve which connects the curriculum to its real-world application. Challenges can be highly complex or quite simple, may take minutes or weeks to complete, and are driven by the state, local, or national subject area curricula as well as by the formative assessment gained via ongoing student reflection. Elementary students may grapple with the problem of selecting the largest apple to present to the principal following a field trip, secondary students might be seeking alternative energy transportation options for the district or creating a new grammar text using only a small set of short stories and newspaper articles. The exact challenges are as diverse as the teachers who create them and the students for whom they are created. But all share three components:
- The students engage
- The students exhibit their learning
- The students debrief their learning
Download sample challenges below (Word format).
Click here to view the Adirondack Challenges: student-centered, K-12 learning activities designed by classroom teachers to specifically help students learn about and develop appreciation for the human and natural history of the Adirondacks, as well as meet state and national learning standards.
Maximizing Math with Math Triath
Maryland Critical Skills Institute Participant Courtney Leard’s website dedicated to her Critical Skills math challenges.
| Title | Subject | Grade Level |
|---|---|---|
| Vermont Welcome Center Barn Replicas | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Barn Restoration Challenge | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Barns of Today and Long Ago | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Pictue Book Modeling | English | Elementary |
| Branches of US Government | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Building a School Model | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Name that Rock! | Science | Elementary |
| The trial of John Brown | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Biography of the Land | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Pattern Challeges | Math | Elementary |
| Science & Cooking | Science | Elementary |
| Oral History | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Recycling Challenge | Science | Elementary |
| Slavery | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Solar Power for Schools | Science | Elementary |
| Wool | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Creating wool baby hats | Social Studies | Elementary |
| Citizens in a Global Society | Social Studies | High School |
| Coffeehouse | English | High School |
| Elizabethan Sonnets | English | High School |
| Scenario Challenge: 11th grade English | English | High School |
| Creative Writing: Fiction Fondue | English | High School |
| Name That Grammar Skill! | English | High School |
| Vive le franVais! | Foreign Languages | High School |
| Garden Geometry | Math | High School |
| The Great Gatsby | English | High School |
| Introduction to Hand Tools | Carpentry | High School |
| Imperialism | Social Studies | High School |
| Of Mice and Men | English | High School |
| PE Muscle Challenge | PE | High School |
| Music as the Universal Language | Music | High School |
| Planning & Implementing Snack | FACS | High School |
| Introduction to Power Tools | Carpentry | High School |
| Government and Personal Liberties | Social Studies | High School |
| Mousetrap Cars | Science | High School |
| Senior Citizen Fitness | PE | High School |
| French Verb Tenses - Past tense | Foreign Languages | High School |
| Weightroom Challenge | PE | High School |
| Ancient Native Americans | Social Studies | Middle School |
| Animal Exhibits | Science | Middle School |
| Math Skills Basic | Math | Middle School |
| Amending the Bill of Rights | Social Studies | Middle School |
| Collaborative Writing | English | Middle School |
| Early Explorers of North America | Social Studies | Middle School |
| Fahrenheit 451 | English | Middle School |
| NH Geography | Social Studies | Middle School |
| South American Birthday Surprise | Math | Middle School |
| Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars, but how did they get there? | Social Studies | Middle School |
| Quilt Geometry | Math | Middle School |
| Local Field Trips | Social Studies | Middle School |
| Peterborough History | Social Studies | Middle School |
| Biography of the Land, 5th/6th grade | Social Studies | Middle School |
| Creating a field guide for macroinvertebrates | Science | Middle School |
| Narrative Writing | English | Middle School |
| Paleontology | Science | Middle School |
| Safety Procedures | Science | Middle School |
| Shakespeare | English | Middle School |
| Math Skill Building | Math | Middle School |
| Math Skills Multiplication | Math | Middle School |
| A Letter to the Editor | Foreign Languages | Middle School |
| A Bilingual Story Books | Foreign Languages | Middle School |
| Spanish Explorers | Foreign Languages | Middle School |
| Music Styles | Music | Middle School |
| Tornado Challenge | Science | Middle School |
| Vocabulary Challenge | English | Middle School |
| Salmon Brook Watershed | Science | Middle School |
| Wildlife Documentary | Science | Middle School |
