Tyger's First SLC

For the uninitiated, as I was till a couple of weeks ago, SLC stands for "student-led conference"... Ahhh, I know, still pretty cryptic. Let me explain...


First, Tyger took me through his folder. It was full of work that described what he had done through various Units of Inquiry.

Too much information for adult brain... Tyger explains what he's been up to.

  

Then he showed me the boards which further described the work undertaken during the UOIs.

"We must not throw away non-degradable waste"



And finally, the games... verb dumb charades!

This I can relate to - GAMES!




Guess the word, Tyger!

So, I concluded, this is how it works. The children not only take ownership for their learning, but also take on the task of educating their parents on what they have been up to.

There was a great deal of excitement. The build up had been tremendous, the formality of the occasion drilled into each one of them. So, although he was conscious of how strange it was to introduce me formally to his teacher, he did so with panache!

For the past two days he asked me several times, "Which games will you choose to play?" There were two literacy games and two numeracy games. "Can't we play all of them?" I wanted to know. "No, you have to choose one from each." Drat.... I would've skipped the debrief happily and gone onto the games bit.

But educated I was. There was stuff on waste and what NOT to throw away [with dawning light on why the house has every packet, every box, every everything that would normally head into a dustbin carefully preserved for "recycling"]. I also found out that the human heart can keep beating even when taken out of the body... uhhhh! that's one visual that I don't want to carry.

And, ultimately, that paper is non-degradable. We recycle that too :) therefore...

Tyger, we learnt, had been a "thinker" and a "communicator". For a few moments I felt glad that "writer" is not one of the IB Learner Profile attributes [phew!]. In his adorable joined-together words Tyger had written much about his process, understood in his reflection sheet that his time management skills need improvement, and that he needed to be more organized about research and journal writing. His simple solution was, "I need to learn cursive writing. Then I will be able to write faster." He was suitably impressed that I could read his teacher's comments which were in the above-mentioned cursive writing. His mathematical calculations were impressive to me - questions that I shot at him were answered in a jiffy.

In a word, the interaction was ENCHANTING!

Photo credits: Ms Shilpa Nautiyal, Form Tutor, Grade 2