Overview

Riffenburgh Elementary needed a coherent ATL skills framework for grades K–5 — one that teachers could use in daily instruction, students could understand and self-assess against, and that built intentionally toward the demands of middle and upper school. Rather than designing the framework for teachers and delivering it to them, I designed a facilitation process that produced the framework with them.

Over the course of a full school year, I worked with each grade level team across four structured half-day sessions to build, write, and refine the framework collaboratively. The result was a spiral competency map across five ATL skill categories and four developmental phases — and because teachers built it, adoption was embedded in the process itself.

Key Outcomes

• Facilitated 20+ half-day co-design sessions across all grade level teams over one academic year

• Produced framework covering five ATL skill categories (Communication, Thinking, Self-Management, Social, Research) across four developmental phases (K–1 through grade 5)

• Wrote student-facing “I can” statements in accessible language for each phase

• Connected framework to IB Learner Profile; designed for use as classroom poster, teacher planning tool, and student self-assessment reference

• ATL articulation work contributed to official IB workshop model development at the organizational level

What This Demonstrates

• Collaborative instructional design and co-design facilitation

• Competency framework development for K–5 learners

• Student-facing learning design and accessible language

• Visual communication of complex frameworks

• Elementary education expertise