The Purpose of ATL Skills

This initial post can act as an introduction to the ATL skills Learning Journal.  When introducing the concept of of ATL skills to students, they can prepare a post that explains their importance in the learning process.  The students can detail how they are going to reflect on their use of the skills throughout the year.  This post becomes a Mission Statement of sorts for the overall Learning Journal.

Each year the students could either return to this post to add updates at the beginning of the year, or they could produce an entirely new post.  Over time this can become a goal setting location as students become more familiar with their own ATL skill sets.  This could be a location that students return to during the year to comment on how they are progressing on any goals they set.

Clearly, this would look differently at every grade level and would require teachers to plan how and when this post occurs, but if we build this into the traditional beginning of the year routines then we set a clear expectation for an emphasis on ATL skills.  This post also serves a very practical purpose of creating the standardized labels to be used on the blog.