A district wants your product to help students become stronger collaborators and critical thinkers. Your team needs to translate those goals into activities, feedback, and evidence that teachers can use. Where do you start?
Durable skills are capabilities students use across school, work, and life. Broad goals such as “effective communication” need more detail before a developer can build around them: what students should practice, what teachers can observe, and how performance develops.
Learning Commons makes the XQ Competencies and Carnegie Skills Progressions available as structured datasets in Knowledge Graph. Developers can use these research-grounded frameworks to build skill goals into learning experiences.
Build on the lessons teachers already use
Your product can help teachers incorporate durable skills into existing lessons, projects, and curriculum. Start with the academic task, identify a relevant skill, and suggest specific moments to practice it.
For example, imagine an existing math lesson where students compare percentage discounts and explain which offer is the better deal. A lesson-planning tool could use XQ’s Making Meaning competency, which includes synthesizing information, formulating questions, and evaluating information, to add intentional practice within that activity.
Using the lesson content and the selected skill description, the tool could suggest prompts at three points:
- Before solving: “What do you need to know to decide which offer is better?” Students identify questions about the original prices and discounts.
- During discussion: “What question could you ask to better understand a classmate’s approach?” Students practice asking for clarification.
- After comparing answers: “Would you revise your original question? What would you ask differently?” Students reflect on how their questions helped them understand the problem.
These additions give students deliberate practice in formulating questions while preserving the lesson’s math goals. Your product could surface the prompts at the relevant points in the lesson and help teachers connect student responses to the selected skill descriptions.
The same approach can support projects. An existing history project might address history and ELA standards while also developing communication and critical thinking. A portfolio or feedback tool could organize evidence against each goal, helping students understand what their work demonstrates and what to practice next.
Choose a framework for your use case
XQ Competencies covers grades 9–12 and is organized around five learner outcomes, such as Original Thinkers for an Uncertain World and Learners for Life. Each breaks down into competencies like Critical Thinking and Self-Directed Learning, then component skills, then four progression levels: Emerging, Developing, Proficient, and Applying. Use these when the goal is broader or focused on self-direction, creativity, or self-awareness. Explore XQ
Carnegie Skills Progressions from the Carnegie Foundation focuses on collaboration, communication, and critical thinking for grades 9–12. It includes observable indicators and four levels: Exploring, Analyzing, Integrating, and Extending. Use this framework to identify specific collaboration, communication, or critical thinking behaviors an activity can help students practice and teachers can observe and assess. Explore Carnegie
Both datasets provide descriptions of skill development. Keep each framework’s definitions and progression levels intact when building with them. That keeps your product consistent with how districts and other tools use the same framework, so educators see familiar language.
Add durable skills to an existing workflow
Start with an existing lesson or project and one skill that fits its academic goals.
- Identify a relevant skill. Review the lesson’s objectives and activities. Use the durable skills API to find related descriptions, then select the framework items that fit the task.
- Suggest targeted additions. Provide the existing lesson and selected skill descriptions to your AI workflow. Ask it to identify specific places for questions, discussion, or reflection while preserving the academic objectives.
- Connect practice to evidence. Suggest what students could produce or explain to demonstrate the skill. Keep the framework references attached so teachers can review the criteria.
- Review the fit. Have educators check that the additions support the lesson, fit the available time, and create meaningful opportunities to practice the skill.
These activity supports are illustrative, not official rubric language. See the durable skills search reference for request parameters and sample responses.
Explore more features
If you’re building:
Lesson and project generators
Design activities around specific skills and observable behaviors.
Products supporting district graduate goals
Aligning products to a district’s portrait of a graduate
Feedback tools
Build criteria and feedback from skill descriptions and progression levels.
Student portfolios
Connect work samples to specific skills for educator review.
Tutors and learning companions
Guide practice toward a selected skill.
Discussion and peer-learning tools
Structure opportunities to practice communication and collaboration.
Start with one skill and one feature
Start with a lesson or activity your product already supports. Choose a relevant durable skill and use the dataset’s descriptions to add a question, discussion prompt, or reflection that helps students practice it. Review the addition with educators: does it fit the lesson, and what could students say or do to demonstrate the skill?
Explore XQ Competencies and Carnegie Skills Progressions in the Learning Commons Dataset Catalog to find a starting point for your product.