Tips

Tips for Integrating ATL Skills into any classroom

Planning and Documenting:

• Plan activities with this lesson template. It forefronts ATL skills.
• Choose only two to three ATL skills categories to focus on over the span of one unit. Plan multiple encounters with that skill.
• Use your subject specific criteria as a guide and find complimentary wording in the ATL skills practices.
• Identify skills clusters and practices that are most obviously tied to your subject. Reflect on activities that you already do where students practice those skills.
• Coordinate with both grade-level and subject teachers to make sure skills are being reinforced in other areas. This can be as simple as letting others know about an activity you recently did with students or when a group students seems to be struggling with a particular skill practice.
• Check the ATL Activities pages for inspiration.
• Decide whether you will explicitly or implicitly teach the ATL skill.
  • Explicit means you are "purposefully teaching the skill outside of your regular curriculum in order to help students be able to eventually achieve the learning objective(s)" (Elizabeth Swanson). For example, teaching students strategies for active listening or collaboration using scenarios from their own lives or with scenarios or content not related to your subject content.
  • Implicit means using "the context for the practicing of [a] skill is the curriculum" (Swanson). For example, teaching students to use Cornell notes using your lesson content.
• Update your unit planner to reflect which ATL skills were used during formatives that were critical to completing summative tasks. Use this guide and template to document student learning experiences.

Implementation

• Include a noticing moment for the students at the beginning of your PPT or Slides or writing it down in a notebook. Use the practices labels in your class materials.
• Provide a moment for students to evaluate and reflect on their ability with the skill both at the beginning and end of class. Do this at least twice throughout the unit.

Assessment

• Track progress on a few skills per unit through student self-assessment and other reflection activities.
• Adapt this rubric to suit your unit.
• Consider the following language when describing students progress with ATL skills:
  • Beginning (novice, can observe the practice but cannot do it)
  • Learning (emulator, can learn to do the practice)
  • Using (practitioner, can regularly use the practice, self-controlled)
  • Sharing (expert, can do the practice and teach it to others, self-regulated)

Example: