The Learner Profile (9) – Balanced

September 27, 2012

Balanced. One of my favourites for many reasons. We need to teach our students how to balance equations correctly. No, seriously …. ….. we want the young Chemists of the future to have balanced minds. To be able to see both sides of the argument. To see...

The Learner Profile (8) – Risk Takers

September 26, 2012

Risk Takers. This is my least favourite term in the learner profile list. Why? Do we want our Chemists to take risks? The images that this term brings up are of students mixing together random chemicals, explosions, poison gas and so on! Do you want this in our...

The Learner Profile (7) – Caring

September 25, 2012

Caring. Without getting stuck into how us teachers are generally caring I want to focus on how we can be caring CHEMISTRY teacher. In other words, what sort of ‘caring’ do we do that other teachers don’t. I think it boils down to lab work and the...

The IB Learner Profile (6)

September 20, 2012

Open minded. I don’t think we would be teachers, let alone Chemistry teachers if we were not open minded. We need to be open to the idea (philosophy) of life long learning. We need to be ready to change our teaching methods by talking to others, listening and...

The IB Learner Profile (5) – Principled

September 19, 2012

Principled. I think this goes beyond teaching and starts reaching into how you act or behave for your students – what type of role model you are, if you like …. but I won’t go into this, I’ll save that for another day. I want to focus on being...

The IB Learner Profile (4) – Communicators

September 18, 2012

Communicators. The first thing that springs to mind (for me anyway) is talking – and as teachers, we all the know importance of talking! We need to ensure that our instructions to students are clear, concise and to the point in a very complicated system. But...