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Planning

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Supporting Our Students Manage Their Timeplanning

The development of self-management skills are crucial to help our students achieve success.  At AISB we work to ensure that students’ calendars are not overloaded with major assessment tasks (these would be tests or performances). This has still been a busy week for many of our students and this has highlighted those needs.

Here are some specific skills that we promote and additional guidance help:

Keep and use a weekly planner for assignments – This helps a student visualize what is expected and identify in advance busy times in advance. This should include not only the summative assessment tasks which are shown in Managebac but also homework tasks or service learning requirements or sporting trips.

Plan short- and long-term assignments – The Personal Project is a great example of a truly long-term assignment.  Deadlines for every stage of the project have been identified for the year and adequate time provided for these to be met.  These deadlines should be considered with respect to the other shorter term assignment deadlines.  By grade 10 we expect our students to be able to plan to make the best use of their time and not leave work to the last moment.

Meeting deadlines – Formative tasks are designed to help students be prepared for summative tasks and the feedback students receive from these is crucial.  By meeting these deadlines students provide teachers with the opportunity to give advice on what is required to move forward

Create plans to prepare for summative assessments – Breaking any assignment into achievable stages and planning these out over time is always preferential to leaving everything to the last minute.  This is often reflected by teachers whose lessons will reflect the research stage, or supporting writing a specific section of the task.

So if you get the chance talk to your son and daughter about organization skills and help them be prepared.

Supporting MYP students

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During this week’s “Understanding the MYP” PTO workshops we have had a chance to discuss the skills which our students will need to be successful in the 21st century.  The presentations can now be found in the files section of the IB parents association groups’ files section on Managebac within the “Other documents” folder.

In his book, “Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing our kids in the innovation era” Tony Wagner identifies the skills our students will need to be successful in the 21st century.  These skills reassuringly align with the approaches to learning skills which we explicitly teach here AISB (and shown in the diagram below).

atl-cats

Mastering any of these skill sets will have a positive impact across a number of subjects and so should certainly be a focus for the personal growth of all students.  To support this growth, at present specifically for the grade 9 students, an AISB Approaches to Learning website has been constructed.  It has been built to provide tools which students can use to independently develop these skills and will continue to grow in response to the needs of our students.  By all means take a look – http://atlskills.aisb.ro/.

Mr. Neil Commons – MYP Coordinator

A day in the life of a Cambodian teacher

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This is the article I wrote for the Times Education Supplement about a typical day in my life whilst teaching in Cambodia

 


 

How does access to an after school learning space impact students

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As the final part of my masters course completed action research considering the effect of an after-school “learning space” on student academic achievement and their confidence in MYP Science. If you want to read the whole report please do go to my last post. This post is the abridged version.

I compared two classes studying science; one which did not have access to an after school learning space and the other which did. I looked at how this impacted academic progression and student confidence in science. Although the findings showed a positive response to the intervention this was not statistically significant. However, when considering the sub-sample of english as second language students it did reveal a statistically significant improvement in confidence in Science. A prior literature review and my own data however also highlighted that with irregular/ low attendance the impact of a learning space in negligible.

Upon reflecting on these findings this year I am working on the involvement of more teachers and a stronger promotion of students to attend regularly. I hope that this will have a positive impact. I will just have to wait and see. Please review the presentation supporting my action research below.

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