MYP Induction and Orientation

When students returned from their summer holidays, they are usually excited to see their friends and meet teachers. They crave for social interaction and want to catch up with everyone. They want to get to know the teachers and their expectations. Students are so motivated, enthusiastic, and eager to set learning goals for self-improvement. Meanwhile, they are also anxious about the upcoming new school year and their friends. 

Reflecting on our students’ experiences, I have felt that we, teachers, usually kill students’ motivation and enthusiasm right in the first week of the new school year. I observe that teachers give course outlines, assessment criteria and sometimes even homework in the first week of the school. For new students (coming from the PYP or other schools), I definitely think ‘sink or swim’ approach is sometimes unconsciously used. It is important for us to remember that students are social beings and they need time to build relationships and develop confidence before they can engage with any academic work. 

On the other hand, teachers are also excited meeting their new students. However, they are often worried there is not enough time to plan their curriculum and assessment. If teachers are new to the school, they particularly feel overwhelmed with the new curriculum, new students, new country, new culture, and so on. 

In order to create a win-win situation for both teachers and students, I am proposing to run a two-day MYP induction and orientation for the year of 2018-19 at my school. The purposes are for students and teachers to: 

• build relationships; 
• promote learning retention and foster self-awareness; 
• establish a community of learners who are equipped with the learning skills; 
• enhance international-mindedness and develop TOK thinking; 
• help students and teachers explore diversity and expand their empathy potential.  

While students are engaged in their induction and orientation program, teachers can have grade-level or department meetings to plan the curriculum, assessment and learning experiences. This could also be a great time for new staff to ask questions and clarify confusions. 

Our school has developed three learning statements for our learning community:

• strive for understanding;
• taking action ethically;
• and nurture passion in self and others.

Based on the three learning statements, I have came up with four key areas to develop our action plans: 

• foster self-awareness; 
• building experiences; 
• expanding empathy potential; 
• enhancing international mindedness.  

No matter what we do at school, our ultimate goal is to help students achieve the four key aspects mentioned above. (Refer to Transitions between IB programmes.) 

In the two-day MYP induction and orientation program, we hope students will get to know their classmates in their grade and also peers across different grade levels. Many students will be anxious but also feel excited to meet their teachers. I have design “class carousel” and “physical activities” for teachers and students to get to know each other. ( I am thinking a tug-of-war between teachers and students could be fun.)  “Ethical chocolate” is an activity to promote TOK thinking and encourage critical thinking skills. 

​I will update the details and resources later.

Note: Special thanks go to @alohalavina for the ‘student panel discussion’ activity and @sjtylr for the ’30 circles challenge’ activity.   

(Updated June 6, 2018): Soon after I started planning, I realised that I was too ambitious to complete all the activities mentioned above. This induction and orientation is for all of our MYP students, and hence, the logistic issues are tricky. We identified mixed-grade activities and homeroom-based activities for different intentions. We hope the two-day induction and orientation can get our MYP students excited about the upcoming new school year, build relationships with their peers and teachers, and help them to explore further who they are as learners. Having said that, I do believe that orientation should be all year around. I am keeping the original plan as a menu and advisors can use these activities to build positive classroom learning communities.

Below is the modified two-day MYP Induction and Orientation Programme with details of the activities. If you are interested in obtain a copy of this slides, please leave a comment or email me via [email protected].   

Note: Slides #12-15 are made by @sjtylr. Here is the link of the wonderful “Getting Going in MYP: Student Orientation” resource prepared by @sjtylr.