I made some more posters on Canva - these ones are for the different ATL clusters, with their descriptors. Even though their are ten clusters, the IB has grouped media literacy skills and information literacy skills together when they give a definition... (If I am wrong, let me know, and I'll separate them out into two posters). Canva is free and easy to use...imagine if everyone was making and sharing IB posters... (on that note, check out the cool posters shared here). All the icons are free from FlatIcon - super easy to use, my students love this site!
​Link to posters here.

I'm working on a project to make AtL Skills more visible across my school, (but will first work with the teachers to narrow down the list of AtLs covered, as the one I inherited is too long, covering almost 250 AtL skills in a year...). I realised I have lots of different posters saved on my drive, or in various Pinterest Folders, covering everything from MLA 8 Citations, to Growth Mindset.

I decided to put them together into a spreadsheet, organised by AtL. This is just a start and I would love for other teachers to share posters to add to the spreadsheet. Link to the spreadsheet is here.

Here's some samples of some of the posters in the folder:

I heard someone once say that when a poster has been on the wall for more than three months it becomes invisible! I decided to knock out some quick Global Context posters this morning (just made on Canva), to swap out with my current ones.
Feel free to use - Link here.

Don't forget I also have AtL posters, Global Context Posters, MYP Design Concepts Posters and Personal Project Posters!

The 10th of October is WHO's World Mental Health Day. The day before students will be doing activities about mental health in their advisories. This year I have my Grade 6s and 8s working on a very similar activity, with the AtL focus being: Self-Management - Affective Skills: Practise strategies to reduce stress and anxiety.
Students will start off by considering the similarities between mental and physical health, and that we all have both. Just like physical health, we have have moments of excellent and poor mental health, and some people have better health than others.

After watching the above video, students share out what they do when they are stressed or feeling down. (examples from the video include everything from exercising to playing with your pet!).
Students then watch the following videos and discuss the strategies that the primary school aged students share:

Students then reflect on current things which might be impacted their class' mental health, including transitioning from primary to grade 6, or from 7, to 8 (not being the middle school leaders) or into a new school. Students then also discuss what other issues impact their grade (this is an opportunity to focus on current issues, anything from social media to peer pressure to homework pressure).
Students then watch this BBC Brainsmart video about managing stress:

The conversation then leads to how they can support each other and how the school can support them
Below I've embedded the Grade 6 presentation. You can view, and make a copy of the Grade 6 presentation here and the Grade 8 presentation here.

At the end I also give the students some fun websites to use when they have moments of light-stress (this should end the session on a lighter note, as they may have been discussing heavy issues!)

• Autodraw
• Calm
• Do Nothing for Two Minutes
• Fluid Simulation
• LandLines
• Noisli
• Open Puppies
• Rainy Mood
• Remember Spook (interactive movie)
• Soundrown
• Stars (Google Earth...but for Stars)
• Weave Silk 
• Yoga for the Classroom

 Grade 8s will have their first session linked to LGBTQ activities in advisory this week. The main focus on the lesson is the difference between friendly teasing and bullying.  The AtL focus is "Social Skills: “Manage and resolve conflict and work collaboratively in teams”.

Although not 100% focussed on LGBTQ issues, much of the lesson comes from GLSEN activity "I was just Kidding" and I've also incorporated the following "That is so gay" advert with Wanda Sykes:

Sometimes in international schools there can be some teasing related to language, ethnicity and race, so it is easy to draw parallels with those issues in this presentation too.
I also put in this video "​Dove & Steven Universe | Teasing and Bullying Episode 1"

Last year a couple of my students spoke to me about wanting to cover more LGBTQ issues in the curriculum or in advisory. I have made a few activities, for every grade, to be delivered through homeroom/advisory time. 
This week my Grade 9s had their first session. I checked in with the three homeroom teachers and they said it went very well. One said they were nervous before teaching it, but that it came together perfectly. Another said, because the focus is on discussion, and there are no wrong or right answers in advisory, that this is becoming a safe space for students. I was so happy to hear this, and hope the other sessions are as successful.
This first lesson is looking at the Social Skills AtL - Helping other to succeed, and is about LGBTQ representation, as well as how we can help others feel supported.

Students start off by reading an article from The Day "​LGBT pupils and the long fight for acceptance". The day is a fantastic resource- under every article you will find activities, discussion points and further resources. It's quite a cheap resource, but if your school doesn't have it, you can still access three articles a month.

Students then talked about LGBTQ characters in films, before looking at actual LGBTQ celebrities. Here they were able to discuss representation and stereotypes!

Lastly they watched a beautiful video, where Ellen Page comes out at the  HRCF's Time to Thrive Conference. Students reflect on this, and think about the barriers people face to coming out. They also reframe the class by thinking about how topics covered link to the IB Learner Profile.

Lastly students tackle the final question "How can we make sure members of our community feel confident in being their authentic selves?*" .  (*Not just in relation to sexuality and gender, but in relation to any part of their identity).
Feel free to make a copy of this activity and use it with your students too.

Recently my MYPC told me about a documentary on DW called "Will Germany's car industry survive?". I watched it over the weekend and thought it was perfect for our Grade 9 design unit on car design, but also that many of our other students would love it, especially as live in Stuttgart and many parents are working in the car industry! My MYPC and I discussed giving students more opportunities to watch documentaries in their advisory class.

In an advisory session coming soon(ish), the class will have the opportunity to pick a documentary to watch together. To help them come to a consensus, one of the ways they will have to justify the selection, is by saying why the documentary is useful for an IB Learner. Here they can use the IB Learner Profile, Mission or AtL skills to justify their selection. If they can't unanimously agree on one documentary, then the homeroom teacher will make the call.

The ATL focus is: Research Skills - Media Literacy: Make informed choices about personal viewing experiences

They can pick any documentary they want. It could be from a youtuber they love or something they have seen on TV.  Below are some options of places to look, along with some examples of documentaries. Our advisory sessions are an hour long, so it should give them time to find, discuss, pick, watch and reflect!
Documentary Sources
DW Documentaries
“DW Documentary gives you knowledge beyond the headlines. Watch high-class documentaries from German broadcasters and international production companies. Meet intriguing people, travel to distant lands, get a look behind the complexities of daily life and build a deeper understanding of current affairs a”

• People smuggling in Germany - a multibillion-dollar business (28 mins 27 secs)
• Refugees stranded in Greece (25 mins 55 secs)
• Rwanda - 25 years after the genocide (28 mins 25 secs)
• Slavery in Italy? (28 mins 26 secs)
• Will Germany's car industry survive? (28 mins 31 secs)
• Women's football in India (26 mins 01 secs)

Global Oneness Project
“We aim to connect, through stories, the local human experience to global meta-level issues, such as climate change, water scarcity, food insecurity, poverty, endangered cultures, migration, and sustainability.”

• Alive & Kicking: The Soccer Grannies of South Africa (19 mins 38 secs)
• Living Service - The Slums of Ahmedabad (16 mins 43 secs)
• Not Just a Piece of Cloth - a volunteer-run urban recycling center in New Delhi (7 mins 05 secs)
• We Became Fragments -A story about a Syrian teenager Ibraheem Sarhan as he comes of age in Winnipeg, Canada. (12 mins 32 secs)
• While I Yet Live - Meet five African American women who are acclaimed quilters and freedom-fighters (15 mins)

Guardian Documentaries
Documentaries from the Guardian newspaper

• The Climate and the Cross (23 mins 01 secs)
• Little Pyongyang - A North Korean in South London (24 mins 02 secs)
• Silent Sam - The Mute Punk Singer (20 mins 56 secs)
• Trapped in the city of a thousand mountains - rap in China (20 mins 37 secs)

NY Times Op-Ed Videos
Short documentaries from the NY Times. All documentaries have an accompanying article linked below.

• Death Metal Grandma (12 mins 35 secs)
• Searching for Saraswati (19 mins 42 secs)
• Six Degrees of Immigration (12 mins 07 secs)
• Stonewall: The Making of a Monument (18 mins 36 secs)
• Tungrus and the Chicken From Hell (12 mins 36 secs)

Here's a link to the document. Feel free to make a copy for your students.

LASTLY - Please comment or tweet me links to other sources of good documentaries! I want to give my students a lot of choice, and also have documentaries being made/produced in different parts of the world.