What are the Approaches to Learning (ATL)?
- ATL are deliberate strategies, skills, and attitudes that permeate the IB teaching and learning environment.
- ATL supports the IB belief that a student’s education is largely influenced not only by what is learned but how learning occurs.
- Teaching students how to learn has always been a part of the IB approach, but now the IB is providing more explicit support for teaching these skills, aligning the Diploma Program (DP) with the Primary Years Program (PYP) and the Middle Years Program (MYP).
- Focusing on ATL will improve the quality of teaching and learning across the Programs and may result in more engaged teachers and students.
Research skills
Students throughout the school use many primary and secondary sources to research information. The library is often central to this research and students make use of many online sources, learning to correctly cite the sources that they use. The DP experience culminates in an intense research project called the Extended Essay. In this image, students are engaging with a parent guest speaker as they inquire into why people explore! The students asked questions, took notes, and collected data as part of this inquiry.
Social skills
Accepting responsibility, respecting others, cooperating, and resolving conflict are key traits of the development of social skills at Dwight. Students are often asked to work in groups to tackle a challenging task or work together to solve a problem. In this picture, our Middle School students showed development of their social skills when working in a group as part of their Performing Arts class. They needed all of their social skills to plan, rehearse, and perform a play about constellation myths.
Thinking skills
Students in fifth and sixth grade came together to learn about lab safety and how to carry out an experiment showing chemical changes. Thinking skills were certainly developed in this collaborative group project as students acquired knowledge, applied their understanding, and reflected on their learning. Additionally, the sixth grade students developed the ability to synthesize information as they taught the fifth graders all about the MYP science lab!
Self-management skills
The development of gross/fine motor skills, organization, time management, codes of behavior, and safe and healthy lifestyles are integral to student success at Dwight. Our students have many opportunities in their classes to develop self-management skills with an increased focus on certain traits within this skill as they mature. In this image, our 4-year-old students are participating in an activity as part of the "How We Express Ourselves" unit. Self-management skills of organization and fine motor skills are being promoted as students cut and stick elements of stories onto a graphic organizer and make props to tell a story.
Communication skills
Our students' communication skills are nurtured on a daily basis through a combination of oral presentations, written tasks, and reading for both pleasure and purpose. Confidence in speaking and presenting in front of a group is a key trait of an IB student at Dwight School. Recently, our tenth grade students took part in a series of Constitutional debates. These were based on real cases coming in front of the Supreme Court in the next few months and concluded an interdisciplinary English and History unit. Passionate oral presentation of arguments, exceptional listening skills, and recording information were all showcased in this activity!
Learning How to Learn
“What is of paramount importance in the pre-university stage is not what is learned but learning how to learn … What matters is not the absorption and regurgitation either of fact or predigested interpretations of facts, but the development of powers of the mind or ways of thinking which can be applied to new situations and new presentations of facts as they arise.”
—Alec Peterson Peterson, A. 1972. The International Baccalaureate: An experiment in International Education. London. George Harrap
IB Coordinators Contact Information
Email: coordinators@dwight.edu
Website: dwight.edu
Location: 291 Central Park West
Phone: 212 724 6360
