DHS Critical Skills

Critical Academic Skills: The 4Cs Link to this section

These academic requirements are embedded across all projects.

Students will…

1. Work Collaboratively

  • Engage in team building activities that promote cooperation, understanding and respect.
  • Participate in collaborative, curriculum-based, academic experiences such as partner work and working in groups of three or more, with designated roles.
  • Complete ongoing and culminating group projects with individual roles and responsibilities that require consensus building and group problem solving.

2. Think Critically

  • Create original work requiring analysis and evaluation of multiple sources including, but not limited to, text, data, and media.
  • Solve problems that require the application of high school level math concepts to real world situations that are integrated with other subject areas.
  • Utilize inquiry methods as a component of the scientific process and as a strategy to explore other subject areas.

3. Communicate Effectively

  • Engage in a creative process to produce work in the visual, media, performing, or literary arts.
  • Produce analytical writing, including persuasive paragraphs and a five-paragraph, thesis-driven essay that utilizes a writing process to brainstorm, write, revise and edit.
  • Prepare and deliver formal and informal oral presentations to peers and/or community members. 

4. Contribute Socially

  • Examine, analyze, and apply understanding of social justice issues.
  • Engage productively and meaningfully in curriculum-based, community-oriented experiences, in class or in the field, that involve people or organizations from outside the school.
  • Identify, articulate, and implement actions that can lead to positive personal and social change.

Critical Behavioral Skills: The 4Cs Link to this section

These behavioral skills are embedded across all projects.

Students will…

1. Work Collaboratively

  • Be supportive of your peers and encourage them to succeed.
  • Turn in your cell phone so you can work with others without interruption.

2. Think Critically

  • Do the right thing because it's the right thing to do
  • Make choices considering the impact of your actions on the community.

3. Communicate Effectively

  • Communicate with peers and staff respectfully.
  • Listen to others with empathy, care, and understanding.

4. Contribute Socially

  • Respect the space and everyone in it.
  • Arrive at school substance-free so you are ready to be on task.

This page was last updated on September 4, 2022