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The Service learning activity

The philosophy of the IB curriculum is to develop individuals who are service minded, identify the real-world problems and have the empathy and clean ethics to work and find solutions to these problems. To inculcate this thinking and to develop a mindset in this regard, the DP Service-learning activity is designed in the DP curriculum. n the IB, service learning is a structured approach where students engage in meaningful community service while deliberately connecting it to their academic learning and personal growth. The CAS (Creativity, activity and service) helps the students to work on the current topic that they have studied in the classroom, identify a real-world problem in this regard and work towards it. It is not a 1 hour or a day project that the learner works on to acquire his/her grades. It is an 18-month long project which helps inculcate the international mindedness and community thinking in the learner. The five stages of the project – investigation, preparation, act...
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Volunteering

Volunteerism is good. But sometimes, it so happens that the volunteer has not done enough groundwork and background homework before signing up for the same. The lack of knowledge, or maybe sometimes the lack` of right resourceful knowledge leads to more dangers that do something good. Also, most of the times, volunteering is done for somebody who is more downtrodden, and this might give rise to a sense of sympathy. While the service experience is supposed to be done with a mindset of empathy and service, this type of volunteerism can be more harmful, and it is not set with the right attitude and mindset of the learner. A lot of it is also related to dependency creation as it might get to the extent where the locals are purely dependent on the external authorities/volunteers who assist them. Another aspect that could negatively effect is the attitude to find short term quick fixes for the problem in hand. As volunteers work for short duration of time, they might not get enough time t...
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Differentiation in learning styles - how to cater

Celebrating individual learning styles and unique interests and personalities is a game changer in the field of education. If personalised education can cater to this by differentiated learning, it is one of the best processes to cater to all types of learners, not just learners with learning difficulties. It would reduce stress and increase creativity and interest in the learners and make them self-motivated, lifelong learners which is the core of the IB curriculum. As an educator it is not an easy task to create differentiation in terms of content, product, assessment and interests. Hence creating a fair process of evaluating the students based on the differentiated content might be difficult and something that I need to have more knowledge about. Including self and peer assessments for students who have different learning styles also needs to be kept in mind while designing the content.
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The IB practices

Ontario Ministry of Education approach and the approach of the IB curriculum are similar in many aspects, especially pertaining to the mode of assessments. Both the models have a deep emphasis on the formative assessment pattern where the learning is assessment of learning model. This ensures the deep learning of the learners rather than a route learning model. Its emphasis on fair assessment practices and self-evaluation of the students with self-assessment pattern is given a lot of emphasis and importance. A continuous feedback model helps learners get a better and on-time understanding. However, while the Ontario Ministry of education emphasis on the fairness of evaluation and ethical practices, the IB approach is more towards a rubric based predetermined model. The IB adapts a policy where the assessment criterion is pre-determined and used as a reference model. Both the approaches help provide a holistic, internationally minded and global citizen who cannot just understand the...
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