Subscribe to the blogs

Triple A Learning IB Blogs

November 3, 2010

Lifesaving: Communication is the Key

I am on an aquatics tip, as I am just finishing six week long units in the pool for each year of the MYP. The third year have done lifesaving, which also included developing freestyle and breaststroke, lifesaving backstroke and sidestroke. The students also looked at the 4 As of rescue: awareness, assessment, action and aftercare and developed their rescue skills and then applied them in various scenarios. Community and Service was the AOI: How can I serve my community?

Communication is the key to a strong performance. We worked on scripts and rehearsing what we would say in different situations. For each rescue scenario for the performance rescue, the students were assessed on their effective communication throughout the whole rescue. Is this criterion C or D or both? I left it in C as it is a part of the performance, and focused on the communication in the group learning activities for their assessment against criterion D.

Read more…

May 25, 2010

Communities of Trust

I’ve recently read an excerpt from this book: In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization by Deborah Meier. The excerpt I read, Chapter Four, was for a course I’m taking as part of my graduate studies. Chapter Four is about teachers trusting teachers. I loved it, and I daresay I’m intrigued to read more of this book (I’ve added it to my ever-growing wish list!).

In this chapter, Meier talks about the different types of trust — trust in personal relationships, trust in professional relationships, friends versus colleagues, and how trust as colleagues ultimately makes us better teachers, and makes our schools better places of learning. If you don’t already know who Meier is, you’ll find her examples quite heavily American but that is because of her context — she is an experienced educator, administrator, and academic in American education. However, the details and specific aspects of her examples are easily transferable to any school because what she gets at is why community is so important to learning.

Read more…