2009, Block 5: Saturday 1:30-2:45

Three former IB Diploma students, one who also completed the MYP, will come together to reflect on their IB experiences. These three individuals are from very different backgrounds, and are at different places in their ongoing education.

In this session, participants will be introduced to the ideas and strategies of teaching for understanding. Planning a course usually leads us to consider our aims, objectives, assessments, and the knowledge we wish our students to learn. Clarifying these ideas will help us prepare a more meaningful experience for our students.

The session will detail techniques for a multi-faceted approach to building the IB in your local school, community, and state. Included will be techniques for approaching state departments of education, organizations of university presidents, chief academic officers, and state legislators.

Learn about how to engage students in the classroom by drawing from practices of recent brain-based conference research. Join Wanda Bibb to explore these methods and learn how to implement them so that they are appropriate and are effective for all levels and students.

Hélène Tremblay is a world traveler, author, photographer, and speaker. She is the founder of The Families of the World Company and has received support from agencies such as UNICEF, UNFPA and UNESCO and companies such as Olympus and the Body Shop.

Grisham Middle School in Texas, USA and Colegio CIEDI in Bogota, Colombia collaboratively studied the Amazon rainforest from the AOI of Human Ingenuity. Through online sharing via a moodle platform, Year 5 students at CIEDI became the teachers and even assessed the learning of the Year 1 students at Grisham.

This session invites administrators and PYP/MYP coordinators to discover how a proven method has helped embed 21st century skills including critical thinking, collaborative learning, and global problem solving into a framework.

Participants will engage in an examination and discussion of the evolution of a public school’s sixth grade teachers from a group of eight independent contractors to a highly functioning instructional team based on the MYP whole-school pedagogical model.

How do you cultivate in students a sense of ownership for the classroom? By giving them a voice. Every month, second graders at Morris Brandon Elementary School hold meetings like those in a democratic senate to examine and change their essential agreements. Individual students propose changes to the agreements in the same manner as amending a constitution, with a class vote on any changes.

Understanding that all transitions can be difficult, how can an IB World School suitably prepare their incoming students for the program ahead? One solution is a successful International Baccalaureate Mentorship Conference (IBMC). The IBMC was conceived and brought to fruition by three exceptional IB students in 2005. What resulted was a conference entirely run by students, for students.