Originally posted on October 29, 2019 @ 2:10 pm
The last week in September was a week of firsts.
It was the first time that I presented at a conference and the first time that I ran an IBDP induction morning for my new year 12s.
Most induction programs happen at the start but what I know about how people learn tells me that spacing information out over a period of time is probably best for their long term retention of the facts.
There is a trade-off then, between front loading inductions which save time but probably doesn’t help attendees remember the material all that much and spacing them out which may maximise retention but takes a lot more time.
In fact one of my prior schools used to do just this, new staff induction was spaced out over the first term.
This year, I ran the induction morning at the end of week 5. This, I hoped, gave kids the chance to get used to the new routines and social dynamics of year 12 but was near enough the beginning of the program to not render the information meaningless.
The following were the objectives of the morning:
- Introduce students to key information about the IBDP
- Introduce our students to the Academic Integrity Policy
- Introduce students to the idea of assessment, specifically formative and summative assessment and the difference between them.
- Introduce students to the library, Questia and citations
- Introduce some key ideas surrounding study habits
For the assessment activity we had a paper airplane competition where students were judged on the criteria below. If students asked to know what the criteria were we shared them but if they didn’t and just proceeded to make an airplane using their own assumptions about what the assessment criteria were.
When they came to be judged they were given one set of “feedback” against the rubric and a chance to resubmit.
