Independent Studies

Independent Studies is a new initiative that has started this year in Grades 3-5. As I have worked on setting this programme up with our Elementary Librarian, we have drawn heavily on the IBO document that was published last year The Role of ICT in the PYP as well as ASB's Information Fluency continuum.  We feel it is important that students are able to pursue their dreams and develop their own passions about a subject that is of interest to them, so that in future they will have the necessary skills and confidence to engage in their own personal learning, and so we meet with groups of students once every 8 day cycle to help them pursue an investigation into a subject that they are passionate about. The skills that we are focused on are those that students will need to become lifelong learners.  These include investigation, organization, collaboration, communication and creation.  We support students in using higher order thinking skills to formulate their questions, use good search strategies, validate the information they find, synthesize information from print and digital resources and apply this knowledge to create their own product that shows their understanding. They will be able to make a presentation about this in order to share their learning with others. It's early days at the moment - we have only met with each group once so far. I'll be blogging about how this programme develops and highlighting some of the studies our students are engaged in over the coming weeks.

Poster created by Hannah T Morz