INSTITUT AURORA

Commune de la Gombe, Kinshasa

République Démocratique du Congo

A rundown of ATL Skills and possible examples for practice. Note how the
development of each skill leads to the development of a profile or more.

Communication
The teaching and acquisition of communication skills helps students to develop
the ability to express their ideas clearly and in diverse ways such as speaking and
reading with comprehension. It helps them to interpret a variety of sources
correctly as well as be able to write for different purposes. It helps them to listen
to multiple perspectives and to collaborate with others. Examples of ways that
teachers can help students achieve this include:
1. Students can be given a graph/Chart plotted with data on a specific topic in
subjects like Math or Economics and are asked to describe the features and
shape of the graph/chart as well as to interpret the represented data. The
scenario can be reversed, wherein, the student is provided a table of data
and asked to represent that on a graph/chart.
2. A topic is provided or students choose a topic of choice on which to write
an essay. How appropriately can they introduce and conclude an essay?
How competent are they in formulating a thesis or topic sentence? Etc.
3. Communicating a fundraiser: Take for example your class decides to
organize a fundraiser event for a particular cause. Students learn how to
think of their audience and design messages according to the audience.
How catchy are students’ topics? How relevant and clear are terms and
sentences?
4. Speechmaking: What is the purpose (congratulatory, motivational, appeal,
celebratory), and what is the style?
5. A video on some social interaction can be given to students to watch, then
ask them to role-play the scenario with a partner.
Collaboration
Collaboration is all about the ability to work with others effectively to achieve a
common goal. This can be within a classroom or workplace. It is a skill that also
helps students build relationships with their team, resolve conflicts, and create a
work environment where everyone feels included and respected.
1. Students can be given debate topics and asked to organize themselves in
groups and delegate debate roles to each member of the group. This activity
encourages students to use what the other person before them said in their
own argument when it is their turn to speak. In the end, group members
should have enough perspective among them to build consensus on the
topic being discussed.
2. Teachers can create an activity for students aimed at helping others to
succeed. This activity is a way for students to share/display how much they
know about a given topic/theme/concept and encourage others in their
class to participate, and help others to succeed. Start by linking the topic of
discussion to prior-knowledge. Then fill in the gaps. Once these are done, a
general discussion is held where each student participates by presenting
what they previously knew and have now found out about the topic.
3. Students are set up in groups to discuss ideas for a product design. An
example can be a school magazine or newsletter.

Organization
Organizational skills are the skills required to arrange people, things, or affairs so
they are orderly and structured. It involves the proper delegation of tasks,
planning, prioritizing and time management, setting of goals, documenting,
researching, taking inventory record keeping etc. Organization skills are very
important for the student. Students need good organizational skills in order to
succeed. With good organization skills, students can plan their week well as they
juggle between studies and other extracurricular activities, planning of study
lessons, organizing group and personal projects, taking notes etc.
1. Making a plan helps to manage time and tasks effectively. For example,
a. What am I going to study? ________________________________
b. What will I learn? _______________________________________
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 c. What format will I use to communicate my information?
___________ What supporting information do I need? ie. Facts
charts, examples, photos etc.
2. Set goals that are challenging and realistic.
a. The goal should be specific e.g. what exactly do I want to achieve?
b. The goal should be measurable e.g. How will you know when you
meet your goal?
c. The goal should be achievable e.g Do you have the skills and
resources for this?
d. The goal should be relevant e.g Is the current goal consistent with
your other goals and vision for yourself?
e. It should be timed e.g When will you achieve the goal?

Affective
Affective education seeks to teach students social and emotional skills and
attitudes. It focuses on the development of students who are compassionate, can
manage anxiety and stress, can persevere, can be positive in thinking as well as
able to find strategies to overcome obstacles.
1. With affective skills, students can overcome distractions and manage stress
and reconnect easily. To do this, they learn how to easily turn to exercises
of mindfulness. Students struggling to focus and complete tasks, can divide
the task and create a game.
2. Making anchors on one’s fingers. On every finger, students can assign a
powerful happy memory. Then close their eyes, and press each finger
against their thumb to activate that memory. They spend 5-10 minutes
every day going over these memories. Over time, these memories will be
anchored to their fingers, becoming a ready supply for a quick dose of
HAPPY!
3. Students can get themselves motivated to do and achieve the things they
want. They can choose a motivator such as deciding on a worthwhile reward
for finishing a task. They may also sweeten the task by changing the
environment if it is keeping them from being productive.

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Media Literacy
Most of the information we receive from our immediate and beyond our
immediate experiences comes to us through media. Examples include
newspapers, magazines, journals, posters, postcards product packaging,
television, radio, text messages, emails, blogs, websites, social media, Video
games etc. Media Literacy therefore is about the ability to identify different types
of media, understand how media operates, how content is created, and how to
evaluate and use this content based on its quality, credibility and validity. The
following are examples
1. Since false news spreads faster and deeper than real news, teachers must
teach students to read past the headlines, check the date and credentials
of authors, size up the tone and language, and identify biases. They should
learn how to do a quick search on at least one other source that states the
same thing.
2. Students can experience fake news firsthand by creating fake news
themselves. Teachers can ask students to design a newspaper that features
some combination of both fake and real news, or either real or fake news
and have other students see if they can identify each type.
3. Students learn how important images are to the brain. You know the saying,
“Images speak louder than words” Thus, teachers should teach students
how to use images appropriately. They can evoke emotion and vividly tell a
story, they can be used in ads to influence our buying decisions. An
understanding of the influence of images can help students in the way they
perceive or use them. For a task, teachers can have students create
powerful but misleading messages on posters with mismatched images and
text. Then follow up to see how many students believe the text, or buy the
visual product. This can be followed by a discussion of similar examples they
may have seen in print, online, on TV, or in advertisements around Kinshasa
or elsewhere.
4. Remember the fundraiser activity we saw earlier? For media literacy,
students can demonstrate their ability to use electronic devices to capture
and design publicity material.

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 5. They may also learn how to use different social media platforms to reach
out to multiple audiences.

Information Literacy
This develops the ability to identify information, find it, evaluate it, organize it, use
it, communicate it and acknowledge it source(s). Such information can be used or
communicated for decision-making, for problem-solving or for the acquisition of
knowledge. The successful development of Information Literacy skills means
students must also be good at the following skills: research, critical thinking,
communication, and computer technology skills. The following activities can be
considered as examples.
1. Examples of being able to identify information include the ability of students
to write a thesis statement, create a timeline plan for research or
differentiate between primary and secondary sources of information such
as a published court decision and a news article about that court decision.
Students should also be able to search for current information about any
issue. It could also be the finding of a search strategy for information on
buying a piece of land in a city like Kinshasa.
2. Students should be effective and efficient in finding needed information.
For example, use Boolean terms such as AND, OR, and NOT to search online.
Choosing the best keywords and phrases when searching online or in library
databases. Students are able to search the public archives for information
on local histories, visit government websites or request police records to
get data on crime wave statistics.
3. Examples of how students can evaluate the information they find and their
sources critically include reviewing multiple points of view to form an
opinion. Exploring multiple sources of information like books, databases,
periodicals and the Internet in order to understand a topic. It also involves
the ability to analyze the structure and logical arguments made in lectures
and speeches. In the real world be able to research the claims made in
political ads on television, and check websites to make sure it is updated
regularly with current information.
4. Examples of how to apply information are by paraphrasing an expert’s
speech to support a position in a persuasive speech, integrating a quotation
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 from an article into a research paper, downloading an image from a
database then incorporating it into a visual presentation. Students can also
learn how to be able to develop a survey based on gaps they identify in the
review of the studies of other people. They can also learn how to reference
experts to support a point during a discussion.
5. To use the work of other people in their work, students must understand
the ethical, legal, and socio-economic issues surrounding such information.
Students should be able to create a bibliography, avoid plagiarism and able
to use copyright.

Reflective
For any learning process to be complete, the learner must, after learning
something, rethink it and find ways to grow or improve. This is what building
reflective skills is about. It offers students the opportunity to understand their
strengths and weaknesses in order to support their learning and personal
development.
1. Journaling is a method of self-reflection that involves writing down
thoughts, feelings, and experiences consistently. It can help students to
personalize their space, and express emotions and ideas thereby providing
a record to reference and evaluate later on. Over time, this reflection can
highlight patterns, progress, and areas for development.
2. Refocus your mind through breathing. Breathe in for 5 seconds, hold your
breath for 5 seconds and breathe out for 10 seconds.
3. Feedback analysis involves contemplating the feedback received from
others. Notice how very often, students get feedback from other students
and teachers but never read it. They just care about the grade. This is not
self-reflecting enough. Self-reflection would involve actually looking at the
feedback and thinking about how to take it into consideration in order to
improve their work next time.
4. Taking self-assessment quizzes is a good way to do self-reflection. These
quizzes can shed light on strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and
behavioral tendencies. These often depend upon the tasks, but one good
method is for students to lay out a set of desired outcomes before doing a
task, then do a self-assessment once the task is complete, followed by a
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 grade for each outcome. Once this is done, students can think about how
to improve on each aspect.
5. Reflective conversations involve discussing personal experiences and
thoughts with trusted friends, peers, family, and mentors. These
conversations foster deeper self-understanding and provide opportunities
to view issues from different perspectives.

Transfer
These are portable skills that someone takes along from one job to the other. This
means skills you acquire from one field of operation which can also be useful in
another field of operation. In the MYP, this involves the use of knowledge,
understanding and skills across subjects to create products or solutions. It helps
students to apply skills and knowledge in unfamiliar situations.
1. You may consider the first example given under communication skills.
However, under transfer skills, a geography teacher may ask students to
represent data on population demographics or density on a graph.
Students’ knowledge about graphs/Charts learned in Math or Economics
can come in handy in this case.
2. In order to source valid data for research purposes, a geography teacher
can ask students to make connections between various sources of
information by using their knowledge of Venn diagrams in mathematics.
These diagrams can help them sort out information that appears in each
source.

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Critical-thinking
Thinking critically is the systematic evaluation of information for reasonable
judgment. This means, a critical thinker challenges assumptions, recognizes
biases, and is able to assess the validity of arguments or solutions in order to
eliminate skepticism, establish objectivity, and build the ability to discern
connections between ideas.
1. For example, students can be taught how to analyze news sources. To do
so, before accepting a news article’s claim, a critical-thinking student checks
for biases and compares it to other reports for accuracy.
2. Another example is reassessing personal views. This means students can
actively seek opposing viewpoints, assess their merits, and adjust their own
perspectives based on the evidence presented.
3. The active reader is another example. Active reading is a skill that requires
the reader to be engaged with the text in order to fully understand it. This
means not only being able to read the words on the page but also being
able to interpret the meaning behind them.
4. You may also consider the creation of a hypothesis. When scientists set out
to test a new theory, they first need to develop a hypothesis. A hypothesis
is a proposition, suggestion or assumption that one makes on the basis of
limited evidence to be used as a starting point for further investigation.

Creative-thinking
The ability to creatively think helps students to generate novel ideas that lead to
the creation of new things or the improvement of existing ones. Therefore
creativity leads to new perspectives, designs, compositions, innovations, or
inventions that provide solutions to real-world problems. Therefore, creativity is
seen as standing above other forms of thinking, knowing, and understanding. It
doesn’t simply mean knowing something that already existed, but it goes further
to produce knowledge that did not exist before. This means it is at the core of
building human knowledge and helps lead to human social, cultural, economic,
and intellectual progress. Examples include:
1. Writing a novel for example. A creative student conceives a unique plot with
engaging characters and vivid descriptions.
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2. Students can paint a portrait that depicts a person’s characteristics,
emotions, and personality through a visual representation.
3. Students can grow their ability in clay sculpting. This is shaping clay into a
three-dimensional artwork, either abstract or representational.
4. Interior Decorating - An interior decoration student can elect color palettes,
arrange furniture, and design the layout of a room to create a specific mood.
5. Students may also design and assemble parts to create a functioning piece
of equipment.