This week was 3 Way Conference week, a time when students, parents and teachers come together to reflect on Term 1’s progress reports and discuss some of the ways in which students can approach their learning in Term 2. In G8 MYP Support class, we spend a lot of time unpacking the AtL’s (Approaches to learning) and thinking critically about the role they play in being a successful learner. There are 5 AtL skills – Self-management, Communication, Thinking, Research and Collaboration.
Today we revisited students’ goal setting documents and discussed everyone’s AtL goal. Students had already identified what AtL skill they wanted to develop, so we built on those efforts by including the goal rationale (their why) and an action (their how). We reviewed the concept of SMART goals. A SMART goal is a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. As a class we first created an explicit model which students then used to guide their independent efforts. Some examples of these efforts can be seen below.
