This example from Grade 1 teacher, Shaila Mallik, shows how she has made this a part of her classroom routines. Give the children the opportunity to make those connections throughout the school year, by keeping a record of the books read. The key to making those books a success however, is to make sure that you are referring back to them. You can find a list of brilliant books for developing the Learner Profile in this article here. Childern can make connections with how the attributes look when out into action. Books provide us with beautiful examples of the attributes in action within characters that can be relatable. There are many ways to do this, including the following:īooks: We begin with books. This is why we embed the Learner Profile into our day-to-day routines. But before we get to DOING we have to have this awareness of BEING. This is about BECOMING an active learner. This is active learning versus passive learning. The descriptors of each attribute share what it means to be-do-feel-say-have all of those attributes. This article shares some of the strategies I have used over the years, together with ideas from our global community, shared via Instagram.Įmbed the Learner Profile: We want to be embedding the language of the Learner Profile into every single day. There are many ways to do this and it will vary depending on the age of your students. There will be times we want to plan for explicitly learning of these attributes, modelling and demonstrating as well as planned implicit practice. When we are making the Learner Profile an authentic part of our daily routines, we are bringing the attributes to life and putting them into action directly and indirectly. What do you notice? Consider how the attributes of a learner fit within the whole child. Consider how each attribute would fit within the coloured circles of the whole child approach. Comparing this with the Learner Profile, we can see that the ten attributes fit into those circles. When we consider the whole child, we need to begin with developing a child’s basic awareness of who they are as learners on all levels, striving to meet their social, emotional and physical needs before academic learning can be fully embraced.Īs we look more closely at the whole child, notice that there are fewer academic aspects to a learner than there are basic human fulfillments. And so we begin with the Learner Profile, understanding the attributes behind the learner: the very centre of the the IB PYP philosophy. This excerpt from my online course, Essentials for Inquiry: Getting Started with Student-Led Inquiry, shares how the philosophy of a student-centred, inquiry-based approach has endured across time and is spreading more than ever for a reason. You may prefer to go more slowly or dive into all ten attributes at once. This way we can dive into them over the course of a few weeks at the beginning of the year. Having taught upper grades, I have found it best to present only a few attributes at a time. By recording our thoughts throughout, the children are then able to monitor their own progress as it shifts and changes across the programme of inquiry. We have also focused on the profile traits within our units of inquiry in a similar way. This simple and fun reflection, allows the children to begin to discern who they are as learners in a way that brings it to life in relation to their identity as a whole. Ask them: Are you more of a lion when it comes to learning, or are you more like the hamsters? Do you stand bravely and courageously step into the unknown or do you prefer to work with others, caring about your own feelings as well as those of others? etc. I have done it both ways, depending on the students abilities with language, the vocabulary of the PYP and their thinking skills etc. You can choose to use words or simply begin with only the images. With a simple question and fun images, the children are asked to relate themselves to the pictures. Let’s begin with an inquiry into who we are as learners. And that, as we know, all stems from the IB Learner Profile. As I am building this community of learners, I want them to have a greater understanding of who they are as learners and to recognise and appreciate our diversity. Are you more of the lion type of learner or perhaps you’re more of the hamster? This is a simple activity that I use at the beginning of the school year, as we are getting to know, not only our class community but also ourselves. What kind of a learner are you? Consider the question.
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