And why go from a conventional activity to a competitive one? Among other reasons, because a competency activity fosters aspects as fundamental as the stimulation of curiosity, the interdisciplinary nature, contextualization, the importance of the challenge or challenge, or the search for personal autonomy.

Do you want to know what indicators make a competitive activity possible? Do you want to know a practical example of a task that promotes skills and abilities? If so, I will be delighted that you join me in reading this article. So, without further delay, we set sail ...

Characteristics of competence learning.

What environment or context makes it possible to work on classroom activities or tasks from a competence perspective? There are basically four characteristics created by educators from meowessay.com that make it possible to work in the classroom by competencies:

1. Transferable learning . Learning can be used in different contexts, that is, what is intended is a global treatment of the contents.

2. Meaningful and permanent learning . Apprenticeships should promote or seek that the knowledge and skills derived from said knowledge last over time and are not forgotten at the first change. Hence the importance of continually establishing connections and promoting activities that are not limited to subjects, but focus on areas.

3. Productive learning . Competency tasks should avoid, as far as possible, reproductive or repetitive activities. This is achieved with tasks focused on a challenge or problem situation.

4. Functional learning . Competency activities must allow solving problems in daily life and always starting from real contexts.

Characteristics of a competitive activity.

1. The starting point is a problem situation

2. The problem has to do with a current topic , if possible of interest to the student

3. The problems are related to aspects of daily life and close to their interests, concerns and sensitivities

4. It does not have a single result, but the task has a starting point, but the final result presents different manifestations depending on the student, if it is an individual task, or the group, if it is a group task (text, video, infographic, concept map, report, oral presentation ...)

5. It focuses on what is called deep learning, that is, the activity has to promote analysis, justification, prediction, argumentation, interpretation or revision, among other levels of cognitive complexity

6. The final recipient of the task is not the teacher, but transcends beyond the classroom

7. Is able to give an answer to the initial situation raised

8. Requires prior knowledge of certain aspects of one or more subjects or areas

9. There is not necessarily a single solution to the initial problem posed

10. They promote creativity and curiosity because they start from their interests, without giving up the curriculum

11. Not only is it an evaluable activity, but it is also self-evaluating and coevaluable

An example of non-competitive activity.

Imagine that you are working on the instructional text in the classroom. Well, take a look at these five questions that are planted as an activity related to this textual typology:

Answer the following questions related to the instructional text:

• Defines the textual mode of instructional text.
• Say the parts of an instructional text such as a cooking recipe.
• Say the most common text connectors in instructional text.
• Say the verbs used in an instructional text

Why can't this activity be considered as a competence?

• Not part of a troublesome situation.
• It is not motivating nor does it encourage creativity.
• It is not applicable to real life.
• It focuses exclusively on content and not on skills, that is, it focuses only on knowledge and excludes know-how.
• Deep learning does not work, that is, the activity only focuses on reproduction, memorization. There is no analysis, comparison or sequencing, to name a few examples of verbs that encourage deep learning .
• The recipient is the teacher.
• It is not transversal, that is, it does not require other subjects for its realization.
• It is a fundamentally individual task.
• The type of response is basically written and does not require other forms of representation (oral, audio, video, infographics, symbols ...)
• It doesn't make much sense for it to be self-assessed or coevaluable.

An example of competitive activity.

Now that you have been able to get a little idea of ​​a non-competence activity, I will try to teach you how to convert the activity of the instructional text of the cooking recipe into a competence activity.

First, it would try to contextualize the task. For this we would ask our students to choose a recipe that they would like to do (interests). In addition, they would also be asked to explain what nutritional benefits the chosen recipe provides.

The steps to follow to perform this task on a recipe would be:

• Write a written script with all the information that will be needed for the task: justification of the chosen recipe, story or anecdote related to the recipe, ingredients, nutritional value, necessary utensils, places where the ingredients will be purchased, cost calculation in euros of the recipe ...
• Transform the text into a short oral presentation to be made before the teacher and classmates.
• Collect the comments or aspects of improvement of the classmates after the oral presentation.
• Review the task incorporating any improvement and publish the recipe on an online platform (eg drive, google site, blog, YouTube ...)

Why is it a competence task?

Before pointing out why I consider the above activity as a competence, I would like to make it clear that for it to be competent it is not necessary that it comply with all the characteristics that I have indicated above. In the case of the cooking recipe, for example, the activity does not start from a problematic situation nor does it focus on a current issue.

But what does make it competent are the following characteristics:

• It proposes a task with which the student will face in real life and will do it from everyday life.
• It encourages the student to anticipate, plan, and investigate before carrying out the oral presentation in front of the group.
• It is interdisciplinary, because not only must you know the contents of an instructional text, but you must see the nutritional value that would be related to scientific matters and the cost of the recipe that would be related to the mathematical field.
• The recipient is not only the teacher, but colleagues and other potential readers in case you have published the recipe, for example, on a blog.
• Works not only on written expression, but also on oral expression.
• It promotes digital competence, since the final product must be shared on an online platform (the teacher can even give different options such as YouTube, blog, google site ...)
• Not only is it an assessable task for the teacher, but the student can self-evaluate and the peers co-evaluate through an assessment instrument such as the analytical rubric .
• The task requires prior knowledge about the instructional text, but it does not focus on the reproduction of said knowledge (superficial learning) but on skills such as the analysis of nutritional benefits, the non-verbal elements of an exhibition, the history behind it. said recipe (deep learning).
• Encourage feedback or feedback, based on the improvement of the final product.
• The activity could be planned both individually and in groups, for example, through base teams (cooperative learning)

Towards a competency learning. In conclusion.

The intention of this article has been none other than to reflect on the importance of promoting not only the content in the school, but the skills of our students. Some students who need us to transmit a competency curriculum that responds to the great challenges they will face in the near future.

We need an education that advocates for a global curriculum, that is, that focuses more on domains than subjects, that is able to connect formal and informal education, that recognizes diversity and advocates for inclusion, and that makes competences become learning objectives, always taking into account the content set by the curriculum.