Business leaders are calling for workers who can solve problems and innovate solutions, but how can educators teach such abstract skills? After all, isn't every problem unique? Doesn't every solution differ? Yes. But the fundamental tools of problems solving are common to all situations, and they can be taught. The two most important mental tools are critical thinking and creative thinking. Critical thinking is convergent. It focuses intently on a topic, paying careful attention to logic and rules.

Ollyy, 2014 / Shutterstock.com Social-Emotional Intelligence refers to your ability to understand and manage your own emotions and recognize the emotions of others. A few free, quick online quizzes can give you a beginning insight into your Social-Emotional Intelligence. The first two quizzes listed below connect to university research projects, and both measure your ability to recognize emotions and facial expressions.

VLADGRIN, 2014 / Shutterstock.com Social-Emotional Intelligence allows us to negotiate our own and others’ emotions and feelings. No wonder it is vital to success in relationships, academics, jobs, sports, and other life activities. Employers, for example, have discovered that 67 percent of the skills they are looking for in new employees are directly related to Social-Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence).

We can't accomplish much in a second. Blink. Breathe. Take a step forward. We can do 60 times as much in a minute, and 3,600 times as much in an hour. Our truly great accomplishments come from combining the little things we do in seconds into long, complex processes that take days or weeks or months. Learning is one such process. None of us is born walking, but one of us became Usain Bolt. None of us is born writing, but one of us became J.K. Rowling. They learned how to do what they do through a long, involved process.

All teachers teach basic literacy: students learn any subject by reading, writing, speaking, and listening. These days, we also need to teach more advanced literacies, such as knowing how to use technology and manage information. But how can we teach all of those literacies? Is there a simple approach that makes sense of literacy in science, history, art, literature, computers, math, drama, and media? The Communication Situation Yes. The communication situation is the key to unlocking any form of communication in any subject.

We’ve gathered five fun creative writing activities you can assign to spark a love for writing. Our hope is that these activities will create a workshop-like environment that fosters feedback and collaboration in your writing classroom. You’ll notice that none of the activities focuses on the technical aspects of writing. Instead, the activities encourage creativity, reflection, and self-expression—hallmarks of meaningful writing. Minilesson 1: InstaMemory Imagine a favorite memory as a cellphone picture. Finish this sentence starter: My memory snapshot shows . .

Writing is a game of show and tell. “Telling” is the most common move. It conveys information to a reader. Your students probably feel most comfortable telling with their writing. “Showing” is a trickier move, but when done skillfully, its effect is magical. Your students can bring descriptions to life by showing through sensory details. Understanding how and when to show and tell will help your students use both strategies more effectively in their writing. Telling Students most often tell when they write explanatory texts such as reports and news stories.

In a teachable moment in To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch provides his daughter Scout with these words of wisdom: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.” This passage is quoted often in the context of teaching empathy, as is the adage “standing in someone else’s shoes.” Indeed, both frames of mind can help your students understand and sympathize with others. They are also at the root of a deep-thinking strategy called perspective shifting.

smit, 2015 / Shutterstock.com We all want students to think critically about the subjects we teach, but how can we make it happen? What does deeper thinking look like in English language arts, science, social studies, and math? One way to see students' thinking is to have them create graphic organizers. Each graphic organizer that follows requires your students to use different critical thinking skills (in parentheses).

How can we motivate our students? Rewards? Punishments? Brownie points? Rules? What works for one student may not work for another. That's why teacher-centered strategies often fail to create student engagement. Not surprisingly, student-centered classrooms tend to have greater engagement. One method we can use to build a student-centered classroom is project-based learning (PBL).