“Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”. This well-known adage encapsulates the indispensable goal of a high-quality education. What goes unnoticed, however, is the process. Teaching a man to fish requires a certain degree of craft, patience, and most importantly, skill. You could learn about the different kinds of fish and the appropriate bait to catch them, the mechanics behind the working of a fishing rod and even study the correct technique underlying the process. The skill, however, to catch a fish will have gone missing.
Teaching a man to fish requires methods that focus on building a specific skill set, and so it is with our approaches to teaching and learning. The essence of ATL lies in the creation and further honing of essential skills within each of our students. The successful implementation of ATL requires three key elements to work in synchrony. It must be Intentional, Interconnected and Internalised at all times.
Each semester, ATL focuses on a particular skill set for all the Secondary grades. This runs parallel to the teaching which takes place inside the classroom. Students and teachers work synergistically, to achieve a systemic building of skills from grades six through twelve.
Over the course of the next two years, we will focus on a specific set of skills, each of which will build on the previous set. For example, ‘Research’ will build on facets of ‘Inquiry and Collaboration’ addressed during the last semesters.
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