AOI+-+Approaches+to+Learning

// How do I learn best? // // How do I know? // // How do I communicate my understanding? // Approaches to learning (ATL) are central to all MYP subject groups and the personal project. Through ATL, schools provide students with the tools to enable them to take responsibility for their own learning. This involves articulating, organizing and teaching the skills, attitudes and practices that students require to become successful learners. The MYP has identified seven groups of skills that encompass ATL: organization, collaboration, communication, information literacy, reflection, thinking, and transfer. The school community will need to spend time defining the ATL attitudes, skills and practices that they consider important within these groups, both for an individual subject group and across subject groups. As this area is concerned with the development of effective study skills, of critical, coherent and independent thought, and of the capacity for solving problems and making decisions, it prepares students for the completion of independent work in the last year of the programme, in the form of the personal project. In their individual work, students should develop: • organizational skills, study practices and positive attitudes towards work • collaborative skills - learning to work in groups and to consider each others’ strengths and different points of view • communication skills of essay, analytical and creative writing, as well as other appropriate forms of expression to suit various contexts • information literacy, that is, knowing how to access information and use it wisely, and understanding the research process (from finding and selecting information to judging it critically) • reflection, developing the ability to appraise work and evaluate performance realistically, and using this evaluation to adapt behaviour and learning strategies • thinking skills, building a higher thought process using convergent and divergent thinking, making a p.o.v. coherent, creatively generating new ideas and considering issues from multiple viewpoints • transfer skills, including the ability to make connections across subjects and apply skills and knowledge in unfamiliar situations.
 * Approaches to learning **