Sometimes, it’s the scope of cognition that changes how we behave as individuals and groups.
“We will have to learn our way into understanding.”– Eleanor Drago-Severson I asked a question this morning to my Twitter PLN of educators engaged in implementing IB programmes. It was a simple question, “What might be some questions you’d have liked answered when you first became an IB Coordinator?” Perhaps the intention for posting this […]
Now that another academic year is drawing to a close, it’s a worthwhile reflection to think about how we have used our time to focus on learning. It’s about time. A school year for an international school runs for an average of 180 days. That’s only 420 minutes of learning opportunities structured in a day, […]
In our classrooms, we know that not all students are at the same place in their learning. Some have more background knowledge than others, maybe because they read regularly and read a variety of material. Some have more developed skills than other students, and each student has had more or less rehearsal of one or […]
When faced with the challenge of implementing new practices, often organizations go through an implementation dip because previous expertise no longer suffices in the new programme. The organization can support teachers through some processes, which when combined provide what Drago-Seversen (2009) calls “holding environments” for professional learning. Holding environments are specific structures and processes, which help […]
As we develop Approaches to Learning skills in our students, we are essentially presenting them with this question (rephrased from Costa & Kallick, 2014) to ask themselves: When the solution to this unfamiliar problem is not readily apparent, what do I do to learn? For MYP Year 5, we ask the question of our students […]
Part 1, ATL development in the classroom and subject The MYP faculty meeting yesterday yielded a lot of shared understanding about ATL skills implementation. Making connections was a big part of the engagements. As we made connections, we began to see how these connections made ATL skills the “bones of the MYP”–they may be invisible as […]
