We had a five hour drive home from Paris today, so I bombarded my husband with podcasts for the whole journey. One I listened to for the first time comes from Stanford University, and is called Stanford Innovation Lab. 
The episode we first listened to looked at a design challenge - getting people to think of innovative uses for our odd socks!

Some of the ideas that their listeners came up with included;

• dog toys
• marble bags
• hospital socks to comfort babies in ICUs
• reusable coffee filters
• mood bracelets
• drinks holders
• hand warmers
• sweat collectors (for companies that need sweat for their studies... I am guessing medical, beauty, and sports wear companies!
• balls
• diapers
• seedling holders
• dating websites (named Footsie or Glass Slipper)

I'm not sure yet if I will use the challenges for one off lessons, quick brain breaks or starter activities - I will also get them to think of additional items, that we waste at school, which could be transformed. 
My students are just finishing off their current units at the moment, so I probably won't get to use this for a couple of weeks, but wanted to share it anyway. Here is a link to the presentation and below I have embedded it for you to browse through. Feel free to use, and let me know what your students come up with!

I've been re-organising my classroom and laminating like crazy over the break. I decided to print out the thinking routines I use often, or want to use often.  These are from different places including Visible Thinking, Artful Thinking, Pathways to Understanding: Developing Students’ Memory & Note Taking Skills, Agency by Design, Exploring Complexity and Global Thinking. 
I just created a Google Slide Deck which has the routine name and instructions on one side, and the purpose on the other side. I printed these out on coloured paper, then folded them in half (name and instruction on front, purpose on back) and laminated them.

Feel free to use these too.

Remember there are more thinking routines out there - I just personally use/want to use these ones.

A while ago I posted a link in my blog to my ATL Toolkit. This is a big spreadsheet with with all the ATLs laid out with their different indicators. For each indicator I put different resources linked to this - for example, under 'Research - Information Literacy Skills "Create references and citations, use footnotes/endnotes and construct a bibliography according to recognized conventions"' I have the following links posted:

• YouTube: What Are In-Text Citations?
• YouTube: Citations for Beginner
• IB Writing a Bibliography
• MLA 8 Poster
• and other links

I am happy to see that lots of schools are using this - I often meet other IB educators, and they mention my ATL Toolkit, and I often seen people online looking at it. I thought how I could improve the user experience and how I could check that I have a variety of different source types.... I settled in colour coding - so educators can easily see what links go to views, activities, websites and other places...

and here is a screenshot of part of the Social Skills page

I'm going to make it a personal learning goal to keep adding more resources to this, as I know I haven't added many for a while. Please send me links to any resources you think should be added to the ATL toolkit.

Last weekend I attended a "ATLs in the DP" training session, run by the wonderful Chiel Mooij. This was a super enjoyable session, which touched a lot on international mindedness and TOK. Although I am an MYP teacher, I found this super useful, especially with discussion about bringing more TOK into other classes.
One of the tools Chiel shared was the IB's "Approaches to teaching and learning in the Diploma Programme: Reflection tool". (available on MY IB, or here). I found this took super useful, for reflecting on my teaching practice in general, not just on particular units, and not just for DP. 

I decided to take this document, and make it into a Google Form - I will make copies of the form and use them for different purposes. For example, I will make a copy to:

• complete at the end of each unit, then use to reflect on the end of the year
• Make a copy for my design team, so we can see which we are doing best as a department or need to work on more
• Use with my teaching team (for example, all Grade 8 Design teachers), to make sure we are on the same page
• To use to reflect on individual/team/department/school practice more generally
  
  

There are a couple of potential challenges/issues with the IB's form as it stands - so I want to address these here too:
When reflecting on each skill/activity, it ranges from "In almost every lesson" to "Not in this unit/topic". However, it is important to understand that you are not aiming for "In almost every lesson" everytime - firstly it would be impossible to do each activity/skill in every class, and also some are needed more regularly than others. For example,  "Thinking Skills -ask open questions?" you might aim to do this in every lesson, but "Self-Management Skills - discuss planning and approaches to revision?" might happen only once.

It's a super long form. I've made it so none of the questions are required (apart from the one asking if you want to move to ATLs/ATTs or Complete the Form). You can just look at one particular section, or can skip through what you think is not relevant.

It also might just be worth looking through the initial document or the survey, and picking out your strengths and weaknesses.  
For example:
Thinking Skills
My Strengths:

• ask open questions 
• make a link to TOK

My Weaknesses:

• include a reflection activity
• ​give students time to think through their answers before asking them for a response?

I kept all the questions the same, even those this document is designed for DP, as I think it is just as useful for MYP. The only place I made changes was to "Approaches to Teaching: Teaching developed in local and global contexts" where I added in some info for MYP Teachers about Global Contexts and Service as Action. I also made changes to "Approaches to Teaching: Teaching focused on conceptual understanding", where I added some info about the Statement of Inquiry, Key Concepts, Related Concepts and Inquiry Questions.

Here are some of the changes:

Feel free to fill in my copy of the form. This will just be used as a template, but I .am happy to see people filling it in. If you want a copy, please leave a comment with your GMAIL address.

I listened to an episode of My Disney Class podcast, and they did an activity called 'truth or trash' as an ice breaker. I decided to use this as an idea for a quick activity, where students can evaluate sources AND have a better understanding of in-text citations.

I gave them five facts, with the in-text citation, and a bibliography at the end.
The first task was to find the correct source - the second was to see if it was truth or trash!
The first answer was very easy (truth), then the next were kind of trick questions.

Here's the link, and the questions below.

Answers.
1 - True
2 - True-ish. It was actually Serena Williams, not Venus who said that.
3 - Trash - the source does say that Game of Thrown's actors will come back....but the Onion is a spoof website, (this relies on some prior knowledge of the game)
4 - Trash - They never asked for a tennis court - they asked outright for a basketball course
5 - True - BUT it is "Kukur Tihar" not "Tukur Kihar"

I put this together very quickly before a class - but will do more of these in the future!