Staff Presentations on ATLs

 Staff Presentations on ATLs

I have worked with the MYP and Assistant MYP coordinators to introduce ATL training into staff meetings.

Every other week a department gives a presentation on teaching activities they have done which are connected to an agreed approach to teaching or learning. The department can present by way of getting staff to do the activity that students had to do, explain activities and their outcomes, bring examples of student work, discuss research they have done / read on the subject.

After the presentations staff have a discussion in group about the issues that have been raised—the presenting team can create questions for them to discuss. Staff can also create questions based on what they have seen.

The presentations are designed to be cross-programme and cross-curricular, and teachers are purposely put in cross programme and curricular groups as far as possible to give them a wider understanding of the different learning experiences happening across the MYP and DP and within different subject areas. Indeed, after taking up his position as MYP Assistant Coordinator, my college, Aidan Leach took these presentations into MYP meetings with great success.

 As DP coordinator I volunteered to present first, focusing on the ATL of Self-Management. Before the meeting I created an overview of the work I had been doing with Year 11s based on homework and peer assessment, which can be seen in the document below.

After presenting, teachers put their resources into a Approaches to Teaching and Learning folder on the DP Library to share good practice.

As well as this initiative, I have used whole staff meetings to go through the new Approaches to Teaching and Learning website. I have led activities which included examples from mine and other teachers` lessons (that I had observed) and watching videos from the IBO Approaches to Teaching and Learning website, with teachers having pre-read the website`s information on the approach to teaching or learning we were studying and commenting on the video using the IBOs Approaches to Teaching and Learning self-reflection tool. Before teachers watched the video they looked at the this tool, which was used as a point of discussion when working in their groups after watching the video.

I have also used staff meetings to give teachers time work work on the other ways we incorporate Approaches to Teaching and Learning at our school through: Teacher Trios, Lesson Observations, Sharing good practice in meetings, ATL Target Setting and Reporting the ATLS.