Approaches to Learning Workshop
- IB Coordinators
- My role as pedagogical leader
- Approaches to Learning Workshop
Approaches to Learning underpin the IB understanding of how students learn. This page provides you with a scaffold to deliver a workshop on Approaches to Learning to colleagues in your school.
The pedagogical approach of the workshop is based on inquiry based learning. Inquiry learning emphasizes constructivist ideas of learning, where knowledge is built from experience and process, especially socially based collaborative experience. In the workshop colleagues will develop their understanding of the IB Diploma Programme by reflecting on their own and others’ work, researching and carrying out individual and group activities.
An introductory note
In my experience of facilitating workshops teachers find it easier to understand the approaches to teaching than they do the approaches to learning. This may be because the approaches to teaching provide a clear rationale for how a teacher should teach (by framing inquiries, identifying key concepts, applying what is being taught to real-life contexts etc.). The approaches to learning are the result of how you teach - they are the skills that students develop as a result of how they are taught and how they learn.
My advice is for teachers to have a clear understanding of what these skills look like when they are being practiced, and then plan how they are going to develop these skills using learning scaffolds. Throughtout it is helpful if teachers apply a metacognitive approach, always making visible which skills are being practiced and developed.
Days before the workshop is to take place I ask participants to post their expectations and questions on an online platform such as Padlet. They can do this anonymously. This provides each participant with an opportunity to start to focus on what they know and don't know, and you, the workshop leader, with benchmark information for leading the workshop and to establish meaningful and relevant professional inquiries for the workshop.
Comment:
I have found that sometimes there is a range of understandings about how the IB expects the Approaches to Learning to be embedded in the written curriculum. Diploma Programme teachers can have different understandings from MYP teachers, especially in relation to how explicitly the skills are to be taught and recorded.
Some of the questions which are raised are:#
- How are we to apply the ATL skills in lessons?
- Should the skills be taught explicitly or implicitly?
- How do we balance the teaching of content with the teaching of skills?
- How do we monitor the teaching of the learning skills? Do we need to record them in our unit planners or scope and sequence charts?
- To what extent do specific lessons need to target specific skills?
- How do we develop a culture of teaching in a way that develops the skills when our national system of education is heavily focused on knowledge acquisition?
- What is the role of the teacher when developing approaches to learning in students? How should a teacher model the learning skills in their own teaching?
- Are there specific teaching tools that we can use which will help develop the learning skills in students?
When facilitating workshops on Approaches to Teaching and Learning for adults I start by working collaboratively with the group to establish an essential agreement of how we are going to work together. This is important in establishing a culture - namely an agreed way of doing things.
Example
Here is an example from a group of teachers in Prague:
We will:
- Show respect by inviting perspectives.
- Pay attention to eah other so we can learn from each other.
- Share what we have - and what we create together.
- Honour each other with our confidences.
The term “skill” is used in a broad sense in the Diploma Programme to encompass:
- cognitive skills: mental skills - the core skills your brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, reason, and pay attention.
- metacognitive skills: being able to understand, control, and manipulate one’s cognitive processes. For example, planning how to approach a learning task, using appropriate skills and strategies to solve a problem, monitoring one's own comprehension of text, self-assessing and self-correcting in response to the self-assessment, evaluating progress toward the completion of a task etc.
- affective skills: the ability to manage emotions and state of mind, self-motivation, resilience, mindfulness.
In groups assign the five approaches to learning to groups.
- As a group read about your learning skill.
- Select a sentence from the document that sums up what the skill is, a phrase that challenged your thinking, and a word this is powerful within the context of the skill.
- In plenary each group reads their sentence, phrase and word.
This collaborative activity enables the whole group to have a deeper understanding of this seminal IB document.
Extension:
- In groups choose an image to visually represent your skill. You could do this as a whole group or you could collect multiple images from individuals within the group on the skill you are inquiring into.
- Share using a collaborative online tool, such as padlet.
By asking people to communicate using an image we are encouraging the learning to be understood at a conceptual level. Images also allow for different understrandings and perpsectives, and thus encourage a richnes o discussion.
Aim: for transdisciplinary groups of teaching staff to create '3 minute reminders' for students on common skill development areas. By identifying some of the core skills that students need across a number of subjects staff can prepare their 'school way' of developing these skills in the form of 3 minute reminders that can be used where appropriate within their subject. These 3 minute reminders could be in the form of a Powerpoint or youtube video - whatever medium would work best for you and your students.
Three-minute reminders for cognitive skills such as:
- How to make an oral presentation
- A scaffold for how to take notes
- How to paraphrase
- Which roles to take in a group
- What is the methodology for my subject?
- How to cite and reference
Three-minute reminders for metacognitive skills such as reflection:
- What am I being asked to do? How to break down a rubric.
- Was there a process I can use again?
- How can I transfer this?
- What did I learn today? For example, using a routine such as 'I used to think ... now I think'
- How could I have done better? A selection of reflection strategies.
- Did I self-assess?
Three-minute reminders for affective skills such as:
- Resilience—What did I do well? What did I not do well? What can I learn for next time? Mistakes are a good opportunity to learn.
- Self-motivation—What do I want to achieve with this unit? What challenges will I face? How can I overcome them? What is my learning journey? What is my goal?
- Mindfulness—How do I feel today? How can I manage the demands of today? What will help me right now? I can’t control the past or the future but I can make a good choice right now.
Here is an example of one such mini-presentation. It is written in the form of an aide-memoir which students can use to help them give positive critique to each others' work. Such a generic template can be used across all subjects. These templates form the learning culture of your school - the way you do things in your school.
Topic: How can students effectively critique each others' work?
In introducing this topic show them the video of Austin's butterfly which shows how students effectively critique Austin's attempt to draw a butterfly in order to help him produce an excellent piece of work.
I recognise that teachers do not necessarily like 'doing homework'. However, this is a good activity to ask them to do if you are running a workshop over two days. Some people need time to think about which resource they would like to provide.
Choose a film trailer (ideally on You Tube) in which a central character demonstrates one of the approaches to learning.
Now consider how you are going to introduces your approaches to learning skill using this video. You may find it useful to use the followng scaffold:
Activator: an introductory statement, quote or inquiry question which identifies the learning skill and its relevance.
Learning Engagement: structured reflections / questions around the video you have chosen.
Reflection: concluding quote or questions which helps staff take their learning further and apply it to their work. This could be in the form of top tips for implementing or embedding the learning skill.
The following pages also explore the IB Approaches to Learning in the form of mini workshops:
- IB Approaches to Learning is an introduction to each of the approaches to learning. The IB approaches to learning are a set of strategies and skills. They pay especial attention on how students learn as opposed to merely the content of the learning.
- Which skills are important? is a discussion piece to help school leaders and staff faculty think through the skills they are trying to develop and nurture in their students and how we create the environment for skill development. Our professional inquiry will consider why learning to learn skills are important, and which particular life skills are valued by different stakeholder groups.
Communication Skills is written in the form of a reflective thought piece to help school leaders think through the communication skills they are trying to develop and nurture in their students. Our professional inquiry will consider why communication skills are important, which particular skills are we trying to develop, and strategies to develop them throughout the curriculum.
Self-Management is written in the form of a reflective thought piece to help school leaders think through the personal skills they are trying to develop and nurture in their students. Our professional inquiry will consider why self-management skills are important, which particular skills are we trying to develop, a model to help formulate a shared vocabulary within the school community and an initial exploration about how these skills can be assessed and reported on.
- Thinking Skills are key to content mastery or deep understanding (higher skills & scores), lifelong learning skills (growth mindset, higher transfer, etc.), IQ-type skills (synthesis, analytics, and problem solving), and EQ-type skills (emotional intelligence, pro-social behavior, grit, compassion).