Category: 21st century learning

It’s Time to Drop your Oars and Give Up Your “Bad Faith”

It’s Time to Drop your Oars and Give Up Your “Bad Faith”

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The Nobel-laureate philosopher Jean-Paul Satre reminded us that things don’t have to be the way things are. We live in possibilities, and we have the opportunity to ordain anything with purpose and meaning. We don’t have to live in “bad faith”, constraining ourselves to norms, living a certain way, closing ourselves off to opportunities, shackled to our capitalistic societies, pursuing money instead of passion. If we could liberate ourselves from these ideals, we could be truly free, meeting our full potential. He urged institutions to create new concepts and habits, rather than continuing to be ensnared by dogma and tradition. satre.jpegAlthough his battle cry of existential was influential and thought-provoking-it has yet to truly realize its potential for disrupting the status quo, but it seems that technology indeed has the capacity to transform many long-held beliefs and practices. Like it or not, we MUST change. The pick-ax has been replaced by the smartphone, in which our hands are no longer as useful as our minds. Nowadays our “Knowledge Economy” is transforming access to information, and so be it, we live in the “age of ideas”, in which creative thought and expression is our currency.

I think the time has come in education when we start to apply some of these notions to our schools, carefully examining our beliefs and practices and asking if what we are doing is even relevant and pertinent to the future world that our students will inhabit in 20 years.

As I ponder what Satre would say about our current school systems, I think he would lament that we have yet to “enhance” our schools in order to nurture truly alive individuals, who feel free to create and invent.

I think there are 3 things that need to shift radically if we really want to transform our schools into more agentic centers of learning.

Time

Recently I sat next to some design teachers at the United Nations International School who were sharing their ideas for re-designing their MYP design program so that it was less about paperwork and more about agency. Their team had some really brilliant ideas about personalizing the learning and making it less about grade levels and more about mastery and FUN. One of their inspirations was the teacher, Mark Barnett, who teaches design to K-12 in Hong Kong. When he added up how much time he got to see classes, it was the equivalent of 2 weeks for the WHOLE school year. So, instead of doing a two 40 minutes blocks a week, he took a grade level for 1 whole week a semester and engaged them in project-based learning experiences. For one whole week, they were absolutely engaged in their unit of inquiry. There wasn’t “Math from 8:30 to 9:10” and then from “9:15-9:55 Languages”.  It was one solid week of students engaged in learning and the single subjects were in service of the project.

When I heard that, it made me think of the book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. After I read that, I was profoundly affected, thinking about my use of time and productivity. In his book, he makes a case for extended periods of time for developing our “craft”, in which we apply continuous blocks of time to focus and concentrate our efforts in researching and creating. We’ve dabbled with that in doing “block periods”, but I think it would be worthwhile to have schools start experimenting with how we can have different time table structures that are flexible so that we can engage in meaningful projects.

Content

I think most of us can agree that the “what” we teach hasn’t changed much since technology has taken hold of our schools. We plan backward from our standards, developing a scope and sequence so that everything gets “covered”. Most of us have teacher-directed lessons, in which everyone sits down and we dispense the standards in whole-group fashion–what I have come to realize that this is still a One Size Fits All approach to learning. Flipped learning has been in our vernacular for a while now, yet only certain grade levels even dabble in it, and rarely have I seen it done in the primary grades.

Personally, I have been wondering if I have to give my Reader’s workshop “mini-lesson” to the whole class, at the same time. To get all of my 1st graders transitioned and on the carpet is a waste of time. I could just easily record my lesson and have them work at their own pace, with a partner, to get through the learning objective in less time that it would take me to go through the whole-group lesson. Meanwhile, it would free me up to conference more and pull groups. Although I have yet to try it, I think it would be a much more productive use of time, but I’ve been thinking about what types of learning management systems (LMS) I could use that would work with little ones. Plus, if I put the content into a LMS like Schology, then I could find better ways to differentiate and meet the individual needs of a student. Hmm….

SAmr.jpegOf course, if we were looking at this through the lens of S.A.M.R., I haven’t really gone deep into the “pool”, which isn’t bad, but I have to ask myself if I could do better than just “flipping” the content onto a screen. I think I have to ask myself, what can my students actually DO with this knowledge? How might they apply this through a project or idea, which doesn’t necessarily mean a summative task, but a context that is authentic to them–what do people do in the REAL world with this knowledge? I need more time to sit with this question, AND, I need to survey my students to ask them what they think so that we can co-create ways to demonstrate understanding. But I’ve come to a place where the “what” of the content isn’t as important as the “why ” and the “how” of what we do with that knowledge. I think we need to place more emphasis on this in our classrooms, and then find the tech to support this.

Assessment

I was recently listening to a webinar by Modern Learners about re-imagining assessment. One of the things that they brought up is how demotivating our assessment practices can be when we assign numbers to a student’s identity. I don’t think any of us want to be objectified like that and yet that is what our school systems do every day.  In this presentation, we are reminded that the root word of assessment (assidere) actually means “to sit beside”, so our focus needs to shift, in which we see assessment AS learning, recognizing that they are where they are. It’s not bad, it’s not good. It is a moment in time that we have put our attention on and can glean insight into how we can move them forward in their understanding. Consider this notion put forth by Modern Learner:

We need to develop partnerships between students and teachers, built around relationship, as co-learners, seeking to understand, guide and nuture new ideas, capabilities, and deeper understandings.

Does it remind you that your role as a teacher in the classroom needs to shift? We have to be the “researcher” and not the “knower”, being deeply curious about our learners and coaching them into deeper learning and appreciation for their unique perspective and gifts that they can offer the world. So assessment needs to stop being “evaluative” and quantifiable but instead reflect a more holistic approach, in which we are fostering life-long learning through authentic interactions and experiences that develop self-confidence and autonomy.

I think re-defining assessment in our schools would create a shift in power structures, which may be really challenging for some educators, and I think would definitely be difficult for our parents who grew up in these traditional paradigms. I’m not suggesting it is easy, but I do believe it is necessary.

It’s Time to Rock the Boat

Isatre boat.jpeg think these are the foundational pieces (Time, Content and Assessment) that create “bad faith” in our schools. Although I have ruminated a bit on these topics in this post, I have hardly dug deep into how we can transform them. I believe that is the business of EVERYONE to do in their unique educational settings. Maybe, as teachers, we start with Content, thinking about how we might “rock the boat”. And as leaders, we need to examine the other elements of Time and Assessment and start to challenge our dogmatic approaches.

One thing is certain, we cannot go into the future with one foot in the past. We must question and collaborate, working together in order to free our students to become the very best of who they can be. This is the only mission worthwhile, as I see it, as an educator.

 

#EdLeadership: Why You Can’t Lead without Love

#EdLeadership: Why You Can’t Lead without Love

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Michael Fullan describes in his book, The Six Secrets of Change: What the Best Leaders Do to Help Their Organizations Survive and Thrive,  the attributes that are akin to what good leadership looks like in schools which I think are elements that are embedded into a Happiness-Based approach. In general, a “good leader”, always has hope, is selfless and ready to serve, and they exemplify life-long learning. Moreover, they have 6 practices within their school culture that are the 6 “secrets” for creating a safe environment for change and innovation:

  1. Love your employees/staff as much as you love your students (and parents)
  2. Connect peers with purpose
  3. Build capacity rather than judgementalism
  4. Know that Learning IS the work!
  5. Transparency rules
  6. Systems “learn” rather than being fixed

What can we take away from these “secrets”?

With Big Responsibility, Comes Big Heart

As I see it, the only difference between a teacher and a school leader is the level and scale of your ability to see the good and find reasons to love the people in your care. Leadership not only has to care about its students but see its staff as allies in the pursuit of excellence, and with that, care about their well-being.

Heart trumps the head, especially as the extent of your responsibility and influence expands in the learning community. That’s the choice we make every day–who and how am I going to bring about awesomeness in others?

Love of …

Who you serve

Everyone has a desire to create. In fact, I strongly believe that educators are some of the most creative humans on the planet because of the level of attention and intention we bring to the learning process. So, I believe it is the ability to care and have empathy for our teachers that help them along on their professional path. And teachers who strive for excellence and innovation, I believe, do the same for their students.

How do you show your teachers that you care about them? Do you go out of your way to talk to them, ask about their family or weekend, or do something thoughtful like give them a birthday card? How many of your staff members do you connect with during the day? And of those interactions, how many of them would drum up a feeling of goodwill and appreciation?  Not sure?–then track it. You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

By the way, increased social interaction is a known antidote for the “blahs” when it comes to work, in general. In fact these social connections fuel innovation, in which one study showed how the importance of interpersonal relationships are to the professional atmosphere and learning behaviors of members in an organization.

What you do

Do  I really have to tell you this? Being in education isn’t a J-O-B, it’s a choice.

And it’s a choice to have relationships. We call this “culture”-the micro and macro choices that are made by every individual in that learning community to engage and connect. Educators who make a difference are the ones who understand the power of their relationships. Research shows that it eclipses raw intelligence in order to go beyond 1-2-3s and A-B-Cs because it’s this commitment to bringing out the best in others that creates impact and cultivates talent.

ken.jpeg So what do you do to bring out the best in teachers and colleagues? How do you instill trust and confidence in them? And how do you connect with them when you have something difficult to share? Do others solicit your advice for improvement or turn to others for help? Or do you have closed doors and closed minds?

You have to love what you do so you can do what you love. Think about how you inspire that in others and write down evidence of such impact.

How you do things

Everyone has a work ethic. Repetition creates discipline and culture within our four walls. Are teachers rushing out the door, seeing their work as a JOB and not a calling? And who’s responsible for that?

Ahem…..Hey Leader–YOU ARE! When you take responsibility for that, shift happens. You want to go back to step 1–Love of Who you Serve–so you can move from coordinating staff to co-producing with staff.

co-ordination to co-production.jpg

Just as when a child comes along and tugs on our sleeve, are we saying “yes” to our teachers’ ideas or listening to them challenge our decisions? We must cultivate the “voice” of our staff so that they feel heard and appreciated. In fact, I don’t think listening is enough. I think actively soliciting their ideas would open communication and provide the opportunity to ask them: “Now that you shared this with me, what action do you think should be taken as a result of it? Is there some way that you can lead this initiative?” This should not be seen as trying to manipulate them, but out of the observation that they deeply care around an issue and you VALUE their concern and perspective.

But it takes more than ears, it takes eyes–not only do leaders need a vision that is clearly articulated, but more importantly, school leaders need to take more responsibility for establishing a professional learning culture within the school. What do you see happening in classrooms? Have you ever read this paper by Peter Cole- Entitled “PD A great way to avoid change? Do you have a system of classroom observation, feedback, and lesson study? How do you create professionalism at your school?

I hope this post gives you a pause for reflection, making you wonder if the people around you see you as an encouraging person who inspires them or an obstacle to their personal happiness. Also, I hope you consider the habits and systems you use that cultivate the professional atmosphere and culture of your school–enthusiasm is the driver for the work and when people feel supported and cared for, they will go all-in.

Perhaps now you will too……

with love.

#TeachSDGs: Hope, Peace, and Love in the Near Future

#TeachSDGs: Hope, Peace, and Love in the Near Future

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Perhaps it was a mistake to pick Refugee, by Alan Gratz for our family “listen-aloud”. It is tearing a hole in my heart, as the tales of 3 children are mingled together through time and space, as they escape atrocities in their homeland. The book said it was appropriate for 9-year olds, but I feel that I may have chosen an audiobook that is too harrowing and intense for my daughter to take in. Even though this is a work of historical fiction, goodness knows its desperately painful and cruel moments were truthful for many people who underwent the moral crises of the Holocaust, the Cuban exodus of 1994 and the more recent Syrian refugee crisis. Luckily, in some aspects, my daughter is unaware of history, and she just finds the story gripping; however, my feeble heart is retching with sadness and compassion, especially when I think about the immigrants in the American detainment centers, with children in cages separated from their families and this talk of wall-building to keep out “caravans of criminals” that are marching toward the American border. I have to wonder if we have no soul left in our politicians and if our societies will move toward extremism, trying to “eradicate” these despairing individuals from within their borders.

Voltaire once said:

“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

 

And as I consider the research and work of Steven Pinker in his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, there is a reason to be optimistic. Education, with increasing literacy rates, has played an important role in subduing violence in society, and the trend, despite what the newsfeed may tell us, is that the world is becoming a more peaceful place as access to books is giving us a chance to inhabit each other’s minds and gain insights into new perspectives and cultural realities.  Our hearts are growing alongside our brains and evolving to become more empathetic. Clearly, as I read the book Refugee, I am embodying this experience and can definitely testify the impact of this book on my mind and spirit, so I can only guess that, despite my daughter’s ignorance of the specifics of these situations, she is opening her mind to the point of views of others and the resilience of the human spirit.

agreessionMoreover, my daughter, like so many of children her age, are now encountering the Flynn Effect, in which our kids are literally getting smarter with each passing decade with increased IQ scores and an improved ability to reason. This is great news because smarter people do less cruel things and engage in more humane actions. Furthermore, our perspective is shifting on a global scale from this “eye for an eye” mentality, in which violence now is becoming a problem to be solved, rather than looking at each other’s interests as a contest to be won. It is only a matter of time, in which sustainability is no longer a fringe ideal but a Science and Design norm, in which elements of our societies come into a shared understanding of the importance of developing our economies to move into alignment with these values.  What I find especially heartening is that even in developing nations, the IQ gap is closing between those countries and developed countries. This is a global epidemic and, in my opinion, an exciting time to be alive and be in education, as we move into new educational paradigms.

But in my mind, we can set an intention to escalate this transition to greater equanimity and more intelligent thought. As our process of educating young children improves, placing greater emphasis on creativity and critical thought, a direct and compounding effect will occur in the children’s brain, which in turn creates new ways of thinking and problem-solving. However, it can’t only be the methods and tools that improve, the content that we teach to children must improve as well. I don’t think all knowledge is created equal–I think there are certain concepts that deserve more attention than others. With that in mind, teaching the UN’s Sustainable Goals (SGDs) need to be a part of our Programme of Inquiry. If we, as educators, have a true desire to promote greater well-being and peace in our world, then we have a responsibility to advocate for focusing our academic attention towards these 13 goals, and even if we can’t “cover” all of them, making an effort, no matter how small, is a first start in evolving our school’s mission.

There is no more powerful transformative force than education—to promote human rights and dignity, to eradicate poverty and deepen sustainability, to build a better future for all, founded on equal rights and social justice, respect for cultural diversity, and international solidarity and shared responsibility, all of which are fundamental aspects of our common humanity.
—Irina Bokova, former Director-General of UNESCO

I know for many schools, PYP coordinators are beginning to prepare a “POI Review” around this time. Instead of just thumbing through IB documents and asking if your POI is transdisciplinary enough, be asking if what the students will be learning is actually going to make a difference in the world–does it connects to any of these goals? And if not, why not?–and How might we change that? There is no reason why we can’t be harbingers of peace through our academics. And, I’d like to add, that making these goals front and center, I believe, will naturally steer our programmes into more transdisciplarity.

It is my desire for us to go deeper in our learning, not just in our pedagogical practices but in the very context of what we are learning. If we can do that, there is no doubt that there will be hope, peace and greater understanding in our near future because we made it so.

 

“The Standards” Aren’t a Race: The Importance of Assessment in Getting to a Finish Line

“The Standards” Aren’t a Race: The Importance of Assessment in Getting to a Finish Line

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I didn’t enjoy Math until I was in high school. Trigonometry was the first time that I remember gazing up in amazement and wonder. Sin and Cosine. Identities, theorems, and proofs. Parabolas and Ellipses.  It suddenly became interesting even if it was hard. I loved using the nifty functions on the calculator as well. But why did it take me so long to appreciate the beauty of math? I wonder where and who I might be if I had learned less about standard algorithms and more about number concepts and reasoning at an earlier age.

I don’t see how it’s doing society any good to have its members walking around with vague memories of algebraic formulas and geometric diagrams, and clear memories of hating them. It might do some good, though, to show them something beautiful and give them an opportunity to enjoy being creative, flexible, open-minded thinkers— the kind of thing a real mathematical education might provide. ……. to create a profound simple beauty out of nothing, and change myself in the process. Isn’t that what art is all about?

From A Mathematician’s Lament by Paul Lockart-

For me, if I can invoke wonder and surprise, then the beauty of communicating in numbers becomes self-evident and a student’s heart awakens to the joy of an interesting problem or question. Creating this experience is a passion of mine. After spending a week with Lana Fleiszig, it’s hard NOT to be more inspired to create a love of math in our classroom. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and her advice about inquiry is clear–know your destination, but don’t worry about how you get there. Don’t be afraid to throw students into the “pit of learning” and allow them the experience of confusion. As I have come to appreciate her point of view, I recognize that when students climb out of their “pit”, that’s where beauty lies.

So here we are, in another stand-alone unit, which might be considered the “place value” unit, which is not typically the most exciting math concept. It’s a ho-hum inquiry into base-10 blocks in how we express large numbers and use it to develop strategies for addition and subtraction. But what if we threw them into the learning pit and took our time to really develop number sense. How might we approach our planning and execution of the unit if this wasn’t a race to tick off a curriculum math standard?

The Standalone

Let me break down the basics of the unit for you:

Central Idea: Numbers tell us How Many and How Much

  • The amount of a number determines its position in a numeral.
  • How we know when to regroup.
  • How grouping numbers into parts can help us find solutions

(All lines of inquiry and Central Idea from conceptual understanding in the PYP Math scope and sequence and subsequent learning outcomes in  Phase 2)

Knowledge and Understandings, aka, “The Standards”

I’m going to cross-reference 2 commonly used national curriculum, Australian and American Common Core, because our team needed clarity into exactly WHERE our destination needs to be in this unit of inquiry:

Australian:

Count collections to 100 by partitioning numbers using place value (ACMNA014 – Scootle )
  • understanding partitioning of numbers and the importance of grouping in tens
  • understanding two-digit numbers as comprised of tens and ones/units
Represent and solve simple addition and subtraction problems using a range of strategies including counting on, partitioning and rearranging parts (ACMNA015 – Scootle )
  • developing a range of mental strategies for addition and subtraction problems

The Common Core:

Understand place value.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.2
Understand that the two digits of a two-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones. Understand the following as special cases:
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.2.A
10 can be thought of as a bundle of ten ones — called a “ten.”
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.2.B
The numbers from 11 to 19 are composed of a ten and one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine ones.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.2.C
The numbers 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 refer to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, or nine tens (and 0 ones).
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.B.3
Compare two two-digit numbers based on meanings of the tens and ones digits, recording the results of comparisons with the symbols >, =, and <.

Use place value understanding and properties of operations to add and subtract.

CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.C.4
Add within 100, including adding a two-digit number and a one-digit number, and adding a two-digit number and a multiple of 10, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used. Understand that in adding two-digit numbers, one adds tens and tens, ones and ones; and sometimes it is necessary to compose a ten.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.C.5
Given a two-digit number, mentally find 10 more or 10 less than the number, without having to count; explain the reasoning used.
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.1.NBT.C.6
Subtract multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 from multiples of 10 in the range 10-90 (positive or zero differences), using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value, properties of operations, and/or the relationship between addition and subtraction; relate the strategy to a written method and explain the reasoning used.

 

Planning the Unit

If you “peel” back these standards, what (math) concepts and skills seem evident to you? What are the “big ideas” that students need to walk away with?

  • Collection or Group
  • Place Value
  • Position
  • Partitioning: composition and decomposition
  • Reasoning

Since I teach 1st grade, we would be exploring the key concept of Form and Function, mainly, throughout this unit. But we would also look at the Connection between using groups of 10s and developing mental strategies for problem-solving in which we can Change addends/subtrahends around to make friendly numbers. Students would also need to consider the Perspective of other mathematicians in our class when it came to solving a problem in different ways.

With this in mind, we looked at these standards and identified 5 main guiding questions  that will be the basis of our inquiry and the purpose of every provocation that we create:

  1. How does the place value system work?
  2. How does the position of a digit in a number affect its value?
  3. In what way can numbers be composed and decomposed?
  4. In what ways can items be grouped to make exchanges?
  5. How can we use place value patterns for computation?

Provocations to Explore and Reveal Math Thinking

Once we had clarity around the big ideas in our unit and created our guiding questions, it became easy to start planning provocations.  Using a guide like this one, Task Identification Tool_Identifying High-Quality Tasks (1),  from the work of John J. SanGiovanni in his book series on how to Mine the Gap for Mathematical Understanding really helps teams like ours to create a high ceiling, low-threshold activity for inquiry-based maths.

We knew from a previous provocation, (14 or 41–the position of a numeral doesn’t matter. Agree or Disagree. Prove it.), that students still were developing an understanding of what a written number means. We needed to further explore it. So we began with place value.

Guiding Question #1: How does the place value system work?

We decided to launch the unit with an emphasis on language since we noticed that a lot of students were mixing up their teen numbers when explaining their ideas. So we started with Teen vs. Ty, is there a pattern or a rule about these numbers?

  1. Sixteen and Sixty, What do you notice about these numbers?
  2. Seventeen and Seventy? How are they different, how are they the same?
  3. What do you think “teen” means? What do you think “ty” means?

We then began exploring expanded notation with showing the tens in a number. Students were introduced to how expanded notation is related to the place value mat, which can be represented as:

43=40 + 3 or 4 tens and 3 ones. 

The students played a partner game called “guess my number” in which they had to express a number in tens and ones and have the student create it with base-10 blocks and numerals.  They did really well. We thought we were smashing it and ready to move on to using it for addition and subtraction.

But how could we be sure they “got it”? ……….

Assessment

We decided to assess if they got the idea of base-ten and how we use the place value mat as a structure to show the parts of numbers. We used this SeeSaw prompt to assess if they truly understood:

How we know when to regroup – Using a collection of objects – how do you find out how many items you have?

We decided to use unifix cubes because the “tens” weren’t prepackaged, sort of speaking, as they are with base-10 blocks. In this assessment, we had them grab a handful of unifix cubes and organize them on the place value mat, explaining to us what number they thought they had. What we observed stopped us dead in our tracks and ask what misconceptions do we see? Here is an example of a common surprising result:

As you can see, this student didn’t connect the quantity he had in their collection at all. These students would need some additional support with connecting the amount of a number to how it is written and presented.  We felt we needed to go deeper into how we “bundle” tens to count things efficiently. In fact, we felt we needed to do an inquiry into 10, so they could appreciate how this is the basis of base-10.

Back to the Starting Line?

We are in Week 4 of this unit, and we are going back to the starting line. Based on our observations, it seems that the students don’t quite have the idea of ten yet, and, we have a group of students who just need to work on skip counting by tens. It would be easy to move ahead and push through so we can tick off our standards, but we’d rather spend more time immersed in context and play that develops their number sense than to push them along. We understand our future impact. Moving ahead hoping that they “get it” later on would seem like a disservice, as they’d lose the interest and motivation to do more complicated mathematics and have half-baked conceptual understandings.

Since have a free flow of student groups, in which children choose what Must Dos and May Dos they want to participate in. However, ideally, we have 3 primary activities that we want the students to work through in small teacher groups throughout our math learning time:

The Big Idea of our teacher-directed groups: 10 can be thought of as a bundle of ten ones — called a “ten.”

  • The Base-10 Bank

Students will pick a numeral and build numbers using “ones” which they can exchange for tens. As partners, one person will be the “bank”, which the other partner can trade in their ones for 10. No place value mats, only the base-10 blocks.

  • Race to 100

Using dice, a hundred’s chart and a place value mat, students have to roll and add their way to 100. As they roll their way up to 100, they have to build the new number, using the place value mat to show how the quantity that is ever-increasing, as well as giving a context for exchanging units.

Making Bundles: In this activity, students are given a collection of objects and they have to bundle them up into tens, so that they have an appreciation of the value of a number.

Additional Games and activities that they can do independently, when not working with a teacher. The May-Dos:

Traffic light (Partner Game): One partner comes up with a “mystery” number and, using a place value mat, has to try to guess what digit is in what position.

Big 4 (Independent or Small Group): In this game, we use a hundred chart to try to get to the biggest number in just 4 moves. A child rolls a die and moves that many spaces, moving in any direction, forwards, backward, diagonally, upwards or downwards. This game gives them practice at thinking about number patterns as they move around the hundreds chart.

Ready or Not?

After all that exploration, we hope that these games will prepare them for the following formative assessment:

4+4 = 44. Agree or Disagree? Show how you know. (This actually is inspired by a misconception that we observed) Students can use 10-frames, the Hundreds Chart, Math Racks or Base-10 blocks to provide evidence of their reasoning. (We determined that these sorts of materials would help them to “see” patterns and make connections, rather than loose parts alone)

If they can articulate and demonstrate a firm understanding of place value in this provocation, then we feel that we can move into applying our understanding of using the base-10 for addition and subtraction, examining the guiding question:

How can we use place value patterns for computation?

This is the ultimate reason why place value is such a critical understanding after all. However, it is the journey into number sense that makes this a beautiful experience. We are not quick to move them onto pencil and paper. We want them to experience numbers and segue them into contextual situations.

The Summative

We are still in process with determining the actual prompt, but we feel that we need to give them choices with the task. Choosing a task that shows how they apply grouping strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems will ultimately be our goal.

For our low-level readers, we will give them an oral word problem and then hand them a collection of objects that need to be counted. We want them to observe if they create groups of tens to determine the number. No place value mats offered, but they can request one. For our stronger readers, we will give them a word problem, and, again, offer them concrete materials, but other tools to solve the problem are upon request.

At the end of this task, we can identify the skills and understandings they have acquired. Although we have “mapped out” where we think this unit will go, we can be flexible and stop to address misconceptions along the way. Will they arrive and “meet the standard”? That is entirely up to us, and how effectively we observe, challenge and question our students’ thinking as they playfully and joyfully experience numbers. At the end of the day, that goal–to appreciate and be fascinated with numbers--that is the true destination of math inquiry.

 

What’s the Best that Could Happen? Using a Trans-Articulation Approach to Designing a Mission-Driven Programme of Inquiry (#PYP)

What’s the Best that Could Happen? Using a Trans-Articulation Approach to Designing a Mission-Driven Programme of Inquiry (#PYP)

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Where do good ideas come from? From a lot of bad ones, I think. We have to experiment and be willing to get “messy” in order to challenge ourselves. We have to be vulnerable. And, so I am sharing a very rough draft of some new thinking that I am exploring when it comes to our Programme of Inquiry. 

Last week, I meant to work on my Google Training series, but instead, I got the notion about how to rethink our Program of Inquiry with Future Thinking.  Inspired, I started sketching out possible approaches. Eventually, I created a Google Doc and started thinking about how I might map out the Programme of Inquiry (POI) based on the big WHY of a school’s mission. That became my starting line.

Excuse Me While I Make a Point

Pardon my digression.

Have you noticed that a lot of schools are really vague and general about their Mission?  I think the standard practice of trying to distill our mission into marketing taglines makes it harder to define our success as a school. For example: Inspire. Challenge. Empower. 

Inspired to do what? Challenging doing what? Empowering to do what? In my mind, these taglines create a state of “vanilla”, in which your school is, at best, average, instead of being a unique community of learning. I think this vagueness provides an incomplete map of why our school is so vital to the overall landscape of education.  Not just in our city, but in the world. We need to think bigger than our school bubble.

Back to the “Start”

Since I was present at our school’s recent Visioning session, I am aware of all the lovely conversations with staff, parents and students about “What’s the Best that Could Happen?” for our 5-year plan. Sustainability was a major theme that came out of those discussions and is a part of our strategic plans. Thus, I feel that our curriculum’s goal should be driven by what a school wants to become–the future they hope to build in 5 years.

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The 5-year plan now becomes a living document, as our curriculum can actualize the potential within our community. Sustainability, as a collective desire of the stakeholders, is going to be the “Rome” to which all roads lead to. In fact, it’s not a road, it’s a 4-lane highway, in which the Sustainability Compass comprises the lanes in which our curriculum will drive: Nature, Economy, Society and Well-being. What’s cool about this is that it’s been mapped against the UN’s Sustainability Goals which helps to promote them.

Sign Post #1: Guiding Conceptual Themes

Before looking at the POI, I want you to notice in the POI that I have included a grade level “Guiding Concept” that came from out of the Enhanced PYP discussions. Although I think of this as the tool for coherency and alignment, I love how Lisa Verkerk refers to it as the “red thread” that weaves units together. That’s a beautiful metaphor that describes how grade-level units have an overall conceptual theme that navigates the direction of each transdisciplinary theme’s inquiry. In this way, it makes it easier to map out the sequencing of units, because you consider which unit needs to come first in its understanding and then decide which one is the hardest, to help you to designate the order by conceptual understanding.

Sign Post #2: Layout

Sarah Osborne introduced me to another way of setting up the POI which has helped me to observe patterns of articulation of the descriptors within a transdisciplinary theme. When you just tilt this document on its side, sort of speaking, you get a whole new perspective on your Programme of Inquiry. Gaps begin to glare.

Although this is not a complete POI, once completed, it is a thing of beauty to see how coherent and infused it is deep conceptual understanding.

Sign Post #3: Central Ideas

I have a lot of strong opinions about central ideas which you may already be aware of if you read the blog post: Central Ideas: The Good, The Bad and The Messy. How the Primary Years Program Can Rethink and Define Them. However, I have to thank 25-year Reggio veteran Marianne Valentine  for helping me to consider how very broad central ideas are important for play-based learning as it opens up for more personalized inquiry and evolving your role as a teacher into a researcher. So, with that in mind, I have some central ideas that are succinct for a reason. Although I cringe when I read central ideas that sound more like slogans (ex: Ideas revel possibilities), they can be powerful tools in allowing certain units to go into a variety of directions and have their place in a POI.

Sign Post #4: Solution-Focused

I am really inspired by the work of Glenn Hayres, Jen Friske and Lynn Cuccaro with their diligence in writing units of inquiry that are solution-focused in directing a POI to create problem-solvers as students. I love this intention and I think it amplifies agency when we not only bring the world’s problems to the children’s attention but empower them into action. No doom and gloom. We can cope with hope. (Cheesy, I know, but couldn’t resist.)

However, this is a skillful endeavor, and I am still working on developing this skill. But I like a challenge and enjoy giving it a try.

Before you peek at the document, I have another POI that is following this approach. Very much a draft! And the one below that is another POI I created as a warm-up for the Enhancements. It’s an “old” way of thinking about a POI, but I go back to it to steal ideas and reference it to see if this purpose-driven POI is really any different from past ones I have created.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mQRFkpM8Z8V2KwRqvnFX294sm5dWY8g7dIkenP0oeck/edit?usp=sharing

 

This is a work in progress, clearly. I still have some “Future Building” to work on. But I am sharing this raw POI skeleton so you can start thinking about how your school can use these features in creating a POI template that is motivated with bigger ambitions than covering content in order to prepare students for MYP. One thing I have yet to do is to collaborate–something that is really necessary with designing a POI. You need lots of perspectives and ideas to tap into the genius and experience of others. Not necessarily with the whole staff, but definitely with the right people, can be exciting and fun.

Looking Back at the Map

Because I believe that our written curriculum is a major contributing factor to the ethos and culture within a school, I feel that a well-articulated POI is foundational for dynamic learning and teaching within a school. When this is fully fleshed out, I will have to filter this POI through that the school’s bigger “Why” and whether it will support our school’s goals. We always have to be challenging our POI. Furthermore, on paper this POI is in theory. When these units are taught, that is the really telling sign and the one that matters–What learning came out of this? What was its impact? We’d have to reflect and modify when necessary.

 

My hope is that your heart is leaping out of your chest with the possibility of how awesome your school can become when you have a written curriculum that is mission-driven and coherent. I wish for all of our schools to ask themselves What’s the Best that Can Happen?

In my mind, silence is accepting the status quo. Please challenge and extend my thinking in the comments below.

 

Future Thinking: Evolving as a Part of Enhancing A #PYP Programme of Inquiry

Future Thinking: Evolving as a Part of Enhancing A #PYP Programme of Inquiry

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Not everyone wakes up on a Sunday morning and sketches out ideas for a Programme of Inquiry (POI), but I’ve been reflecting for a while on my experience from last spring when I went to the IB’s headquarters in the Hague to help design sample POIs for the Enhanced PYP initiative (see the Teacher Support Materials that can be accessed in the MyIB section of the main page for those samples in PYP resources). During that time, our teams sat down and began to create POIs that were structurally synergistic, organized so that there was more conceptual coherence and personalized to the uniqueness of that school reality and age group. In the blog post, #PYP: What is a Successful Programme of Inquiry?, I articulated the intention that was foundational in creating those sample POIs, but I’m starting to consider this definition of “success” as my “first thinking” when I consider what it might mean to “enhance” something.

Probably all you English scholars know that the word “enhance” is a transitive verb, meaning that this verb is relational and influential. enhanced pypI find it an interesting word choice by the IB in its re-branding effort. So their call to “enhance” our Primary Years Programme has got me lingering on what it is that we want to elevate in the learning experience.  Visually, “Agency” has now become the symbolic heart of the PYP’s graphic. I think many educators are painting a picture of what that can look like in our classrooms; the blog called IB Educator Voices contains a multitude of examples of teachers pivoting towards an agentic pedagogical approach. Currently, I am enamored with Rick Hanson’s definition of agency from his book, Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength and Happiness , which I’d like to share with you:

Agency is the ability to look for ways to cause an effect. It’s a sense of internal freedom when you make something happen.

Hmm…..when I consider that interpretation, my eyes begin to widen its focus upon the outer ring’s message of this enhanced PYP graphic: “Building For the Future”.  Should we not, as PYP educators, be contemplating what sort of future we wish to build? We often undermine our influence of the big picture of how society and culture are developed over time through our educational paradigms. Educators have played a big role in creating the Millennial-generation, and we are helping to create the next generation of global citizens. We shouldn’t take these things lightly, and in fact, I think we should be much more intentional with our power and ability to transform our human experience and life on Earth. We should look for ways to cause an effect….because we have the freedom to make something happen. For example, it seems obvious to me that the intelligent and thoughtful people at the United Nation’s know this, which is why they have created a call to action with the #TeachSDGs movement. Our schools should be seriously considering how we might achieve those 17 goals by 2030, because this is certainly one way to shape our schools’ POIs which is in alignment with the PYP curricular framework and values of the IB.

A Second Thought

As I reflect back to that Hague experience, I feel that this initial approach to considering what it means to “enhance” the design of the POI is still ongoing. If you look carefully at those Sample POIs, you would notice that they don’t really deviate much from each other. Because at the end of the day, whether we were using national curricular standards or the IB’s Scope and Sequence, the challenges with using either the standards-based vs. concept-based curriculum results in more similarities than exceptions when creating the units of inquiries. I think this a testimony to the strength of the PYP framework and transdisciplinary learning with how translatable it is to a variety of educational settings.  However, when I read books like Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari, The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelly and  How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed by Ray Kurzweil, I begin to wonder if our current POIs are teaching towards the past or preparing for the imminent reality of our students. Are we, as schools, engaged in future-building, with meaningful and forward-thinking POIs, or clinging onto industrial-age ideas.

I’m not sure how familiar you are with those books, so I’d like to share a quote that persistently plagues me from Homo Deus:

As human fictions are translated into genetic and electronic codes, the intersubject reality will swallow up the objective reality and biology will merge with history. In the 21st century, fiction might thereby become the most potent force on Earth…hence, if we want to understand our future, cracking genomes and crunching numbers is hardly enough. We must also decipher the fictions that make meaning in our world……Fiction isn’t bad. It’s vital. Without commonly accepted stories about money, states or coorporations, no complex human society can function. We can’t play football unless everyone believes in the same made-up rules, and we can’t enjoy the benefits of the markets and courts without simliar make-believe stories. But the stories are just tools. They should not become our goals or our yardsticks. When we forget they are mere fiction, we lose touch with reality.

Yuval Noah Harari, from Home Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

I’ve been marinating in those words for over a year. Curious about what could be the “story” we are telling ourselves now about our future and how we can use it as a “tool”. I know that some feel that the book Future Shock is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. But what if we could choose another direction, one in which we meet the disruption that advancing technology will bring with creativity, grace, and intention. I believe wholeheartedly in that possibility, which is why I’ve been working on developing online courses for well-being in the digital age. I feel strongly that we should not resist technology but instead embrace it and use it to promote greater health and improve our relationships. That is the empowering “story” I wish to tell.

And today, I woke up, feeling alive, wanting to create a POI that was bathed in an over-reaching goal of developing well-being because I think that is the “fiction” I’d like to cultivate in the intersubjective (socially agreed upon) future reality of students. Here are the main 6 concepts that I feel need to be unpacked and gone into depth over the course of a student’s PYP experience within our 6 transdisciplinary themes.

  1. Sustainability (Production and Consumption):  because we need to shift from scarcity to ingenuity.
  2. Entrepreneurship: because we need to shift from profit-orientated goals to positive contributions in society.
  3. Computational Thinking: because we have to understand the algorithms of life and how we can co-evolve with exponential machine learning.
  4. Digital Citizenship: because online relationships and media are influencing us and our society. We need to navigate this reality skillfully.
  5. Social Emotional Learning: because attention and emotional awareness is vital to our health and is the new currency in our economy.
  6. Imagination (and Poetry): because creativity is the by-product of imagination, and we need to find more beautiful ways to express it.

I’ve started to create potential POIs that take these main concepts and build them out so that the overall force of the programme is one that develops well-bing: resilience, awareness, positive outlook and generosity. It’s really hard to translate these ideas into words without a fully fleshed out sample POI to show as a model but hopefully, the spirit of this quest has been communicated and I will have something completed soon that I can show as an example.

An Invitation

Now, whether you agree with me or not about what concepts need to be on a future-orientated whole-school POI isn’t the point but I do hope to open up a debate. I know in schools that are moving towards personalized learning culture, very broad and general central ideas are highly valued so that there is a lot of flexibility in the direction of a student’s inquiry. In my own experience, I am grappling with casting such a wide net with central ideas in the curriculum, uncertain if the overall outcome behooves the students and is manageable for teachers. But the purpose of this post is not to incite discussion around central ideas, but instead to provoke a re-examination of “the big picture” of your current school’s POI and reflect upon the future that you want to create through the curriculum.  Especially in schools that have authorized programmes, we need to be really challenging ourselves, moving beyond horizontal and vertical articulation. Perhaps this is my new working definition of the Enhanced PYP. I’m calling it “trans-articulation”. It’s less about ticking boxes and more about growing the future today, evolving consciously and actively within our curriculum approach.

As always, I hope you share your reflections, wonderings and concerns in the comments below.

 

What Can Pedagogical Leaders Do to Grease the Wheels of Innovation in Their Schools?

What Can Pedagogical Leaders Do to Grease the Wheels of Innovation in Their Schools?

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When you hear the innovative what does that mean to you as an educator?

I think for a long time we thought if we superimposed the business model upon schools, analyzing and improving our school’s mission, operations, outcomes, and personnel, we’d produce high-performance metrics and fiscal efficiency. Gains in test scores and budget expectations would be innovation in itself, but as we examine the high-stress that the high-stakes initiatives have created, it’s hard to call this improvement in education. In fact, I think this approach has been demonized rather than lauded, and countries like New Zealand are backing off standards-based approaches and beginning to embrace a competency-based model of student achievement, as personalized learning is beginning to become more of a focus. I know there a quite a few schools that question “What is school?” and are moving away from classrooms into “studios” while other schools would be better off calling themselves “resorts” in which the whole school timetable is collapsed, and children are at complete choice. Yet there are other schools such as these in America, that look at this same question, “What is school?” and has defined it differently, expanding it beyond the school campus, and look at how they can connect more to nature and their local community for an authentic experience of learning. I think several of these schools ask a more interesting question, instead of “What is school?”, “What is worth learning?” 

deweyLet me explain a bit: recently I sat down with a Grade 11 student to explain how gene therapy works for her Personal Project on cancer treatments (Previous to teaching, I aspired to get my Ph.D. in Genetics and conducted gene therapy research). But as I was chatting with her, discussing the biological mechanism of the treatment strategies, I really wanted to pull out some literature on epigenetics, an emerging field that demonstrates that we have more control over our genetics than we think–a paradigm that I know has yet to get written into the textbooks. So when I encountered this quote below, it made me think about all of the things we teach as “facts” that have contradictory evidence which would shift perspectives and approaches to solving problems in our future:

A school’s mission is to prepare children for the future by teaching them skills, knowledge, and values, which it can only do by drawing on the past—that is, by teaching them what we know now. Much of the curriculum is fixed or slow-changing (fractions, the meanings of Hamlet, the causes of the American Revolution), and many schools emphasize their commitment to enduring truths and established traditions. Education is a conservator’s work. Good teaching is always creative, but not perpetually innovative, and while it benefits from regular refreshers and occasional overhauls, it doesn’t demand the kind of continuous updating that, say, law or medicine or high technology do. Continuity is a core value in school life.

–Robert Evans, Why A School Doesn’t Run—or Change—Like A Business

With this in mind, I think as schools begin to grapple with defining innovation for their unique context, they need to look at both of these questions: What is school?, perhaps looking at this as the operational side of it, and What is worth learning?, the outcomes that we’d want to be achieved. I’d also say that we need to consider “How do we learn?” as an important question to add to our conversations, as we consider the role of technology and connecting to communities as a component of our school’s mission.

innovationThese questions aren’t answered in a 2-hour meeting, they are inquired into over time, in an institutional self-study, and requires getting teachers voice, choice, and ownership in initiatives. So often lofty goals subtract the perspective of teachers, who are the ones held accountable to many of the suggested changes. Pedagogical leaders choose efficiency over effectiveness, and often side-step the very educators who are laying the foundation of change in their learning institutions. Including teachers in all of these conversations, from the initial inquiry into “What is school?” is not only what is best practice when it comes to leadership, but it is critical to buy-in and sustainable transformation. I can’t help but reiterate this, simply because innovation doesn’t happen in closed-door meetings, it’s a community-driven mission, and it requires all stakeholders. I’ll stop my preaching here, but schools need a collaborative approach to cultivating lasting change that has a true impact on our students.

Needless to say, this is a process of probing a school’s values and traditions and asking if they are truly serving to benefit their students and preparing them for their future. All the research I’ve read suggests that when those foundational questions are asked, then a clear and compelling mission and vision can be the springboard to transforming schools. Once that comes into laser focus, the next layer to innovation, involves reflecting on the following set of questions:

  1. How can we create the conditions for a shared vision and a shared instructional language?
  2. How can we provide resources for research and development for teachers and the time to go along with deepening their understanding?
  3. How can we create conditions for team learning? How can you adopt looking at student work protocols?
  4. How can we create conditions for institutional learning?

Common ground and understanding are what creates a culture of community and self-efficacy that is organic and supportive of school goals. These 4 questions develop the glue that keeps the motivation for innovation intact. If I had to pin a job description on pedagogical leadership, it would be to do just that: to keep moving people forward, together, for the better.

I hope these questions give you a pause for reflection and make you start observing your school’s context in a new light, surveying the current values and traditions within your walls of learning. Moreover, I hope it motivates you to start these conversations and start unpacking WHO YOU ARE as a school and start designing WHO YOU CAN BECOME. In my opinion, if more schools had conversations like these, we’d move away from looking at the 1-dimensional performance metrics and expand our awareness and creativity into new territories for education.

Evolving Relationships with Parents: Open Forums to Open Minds

Evolving Relationships with Parents: Open Forums to Open Minds

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I’m a parent. So I am biased.

In my experience, parents are children’s 1st and longest lasting teacher. And not all the lessons they teach kids are “great ones”. We know that. But we also know that they are doing their best with the knowledge and strategies they have. More importantly, by and large, parents are invested in their child’s future and care about their role in helping their child grow up to be successful. That term “successful” looks and feels different based on the cultural and socioeconomic background, but it is a part of our job, as educators, to find common ground and understanding so that we may become united in our purpose with making our school year the best one on record. I’ve written before about how our school approaches every school year with a “prequel” to great learning by connecting with families: Hopes and Concerns-The Power of Conversations with Parents and Caregivers. However, that can’t be the only time, outside of conferences, that we invite their ideas and develop partnerships.

At our school, like many PYP schools, we have parent meetings to explain how our curriculum is taught and assessed. Often our transdisciplinary approach has to be translated to families since most of them come from traditional schooling backgrounds. Recently we had a parent coffee morning in which we went over our approach and philosophy around literacy learning. It turned out to be an hour-long discussion and debate about why we approach reading through a Love of Reading vs. Leveled Reading lens. Whether they were from Brazil or Bulgaria, Australia or Malaysia, parents were asking “yeah, but what makes this better?” I personally love it when parents challenge us. I know that when they ask questions, they are open to understanding. They want to know. They care. They are co-constructing knowledge, trying to make sense of the why, what and how schools are changing. As an educator, I love leaning into this sort of challenge.

At the end of our conversations, they got it. They felt empowered. We had given them tools and strategies to walk away with, and they asked for more meetings like this. Our team felt wonderful to know that we had drawn them in, not only as partners but as advocates.

However, we know that this isn’t the end, this is the beginning of discussions. We are wondering how else we can invite them in. We don’t want them on the outside, looking in; we want them to become an integral part of the learning community.  That’s an intention of ours! For example, one of my goals this year is to get parents involved in our unit planning retreats so that they might see past the 3Rs: Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic.  But this tweet also inspired some other directions that might support my intention surrounding this goal and has sparked a lot of thinking about how we might create active and involved parents.

But of course, there are more than 6 ideas to engage parents! This is really the tip of the iceberg. Parents are so much more than “parents”, they are resourceful and creative and curious learners, just like our students. And we have to find more ways to have us educators “mingle” with our families around the topic of learning in the 21st century so that we can expand our definitions of what a learning community can be in our schools.

How might we approach this?-I think our approaches will evolve as our thinking about our families as an integral part of our learning community evolve.

How might we know we are evolving?-I think when we see families go from a passive (or passive-aggressive) to a productive role in our schools, we will know that we are on the path.

For me, I find this an exciting time to be in education. How about you?

Math in the #PYP: Can you really “kill 2 birds” with one planner?

Math in the #PYP: Can you really “kill 2 birds” with one planner?

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I’ve been doing a little light reading and exploring the new PYP: From principles into practice digital resource in the PYP resource center. This led me to nose around the Programme standards and practices documentation to see if anything had dramatically changed. I was surprised at how much it had changed in wording, not just swapping section letters for numbers but how some of the ideas have shifted to articulate the “enhancement” of the programme.  Here’s something that stood out to me:

(2014)Standard C3: Teaching and learning

Teaching and learning reflects IB philosophy.

1. Teaching and learning aligns with the requirements of the programme(s). PYP requirements

a. The school ensures that students experience coherence in their learning supported by the five essential elements of the programme regardless of which teacher has responsibility for them at any point in time.

 

(2018) Learning (04)  Standard: Coherent curriculum (0401)

Learning in IB World Schools is based on a coherent curriculum.

Practices: The school plans and implements a coherent curriculum that organizes learning and teaching within and across the years of its IB programme(s). (0401-01)

This led me to question and scan through the standards and practices documentation to examine how “stand alones” are being viewed in the enhancements. Since I wonder how they fit in with this idea of “coherency”, (which was not defined in the glossary of terms, oddly enough) they could be problematic as they might conflict with transdisciplinary learning.

And why do I think this?-because I’ve been struggling with trying to “cover” the math standalone along with the transdisciplinary maths. At schools in which TD (Transdisciplinary) Maths and SA (Stand Alone) Maths are taught simultaneously during a unit of inquiry,  I’m sure many of you PYP educators share my pain and are trying to “fit” it all in while not sacrificing the main UOI.

Oh, I can hear you–

Judy, but TD Maths is supposed to be embedded naturally into our UOIs. We shouldn’t know where one subject begins and where ends in transdisciplinary learning. 

But math is not a noun, it’s really a verb. And unless you write units of inquiry that create the context to do mathematics organically, it hardly lends itself to transdisciplinary learning. Perhaps it is for this reason why our school has created a whole Math Programme of Inquiry (POI) around the strands of Number and Pattern & Function. Christopher Frost wrote a brilliant blog post that articulated his school’s challenge with the PYP planning puzzle: mathematics so I can appreciate why our school has attempted to create a Math POI. However, because we only developed it within those strands, in my opinion, this has further complicated the challenge of integrating math into our units of inquiry.

For example, our last Math UOI  in 1st Grade was:

Patterns and sequences occur in everyday situations.
–Patterns can be found in numbers.
-Types of number patterns
-Patterns can be created and extended.

This was our conceptual rubric for this Unit of Inquiry:

Screen Shot 2018-10-28 at 9.52.48 AM

The lines of inquiry came from the learning outcomes (which we refer to as “learning territories” at our school) from the IB’s Math Scope and Sequence, under “constructing meaning” in Phase 2 in the Pattern & Function strand.  But then this stand-alone wasn’t enough, and we had to then create a TD math focus to go with our How We Express Ourselves unit:

Language can communicate a message and build relationships.
-Different forms of media;
-The way we choose to communicate;
-How we interpret and respond.

So there we were, as a team, staring at this central idea and wondering what would be a natural match, conceptually, with this unit. We could definitely DO data handling as a component of this unit, creating graphs and charts that reflect the 2nd and 3rd lines of inquiry. However, since we were stuck on the CONCEPT (rather than the skills), we ended up focusing on the word LANGUAGE and eventually wrote another conceptual rubric based upon the conceptual understanding (from the Math Scope and Sequence): Numbers are a Naming System (Phase 1, Number), using the learning phases from the Junior Assessment of Mathematics from New Zealand–a standardized assessment that we use across all grade levels.

Screen Shot 2018-10-28 at 10.08.44 AM

Although we felt that we “covered” the learning outcomes or “territories”, we definitely felt dissatisfied with how we approached planning and learning these of concepts. Recently, I read the Hechinger Report, OPINION: How one city got math right, something stuck out at me and made me reflect deeply on our process and purpose of math in the PYP.

The top countries in education have shown that going deeper and having more rigor in middle school are the keys to later success in advanced math. Compared to high-performing countries, American math curricula are a “mile wide and and inch deep.” Students who want to go far in mathematics need a deeper, more rigorous treatment of mathematics…..

Going for depth of understanding in the foundational years, and accelerating only when students have solid backgrounds and have identified their goals, has paid off. This is progress we can’t risk undoing by returning to the failed practices of tracking and early acceleration.

Here are the questions that surfaced after reading that article and reflecting on our context:

  1. Is having TD math and SA math taught during the same unit of inquiry really “best practice”? Are we creating a “mile wide and an inch deep”?
  2. Is focusing on conceptual understandings vs. skills really the best approach to transdisciplanary learning in math?
  3. Do broad conceptual understandings help or hinder the assessment of a math UOI?

Now I’d like to add one more question after reading the Standards and Practices……

4. How can we create coherency, not only by “covering” all the learning expectations for our grade, but create authentic math connections for transdisciplinary learning?

 

Where we are in place and time with Math in How the World Works.

Our new unit began this week. Originally our upcoming Number SA Central Idea was going to be:

Making connections between our experiences with number can help us to develop number sense.

As we were beginning to develop lines of inquiry for our “learning territories”, we decided that this central idea seemed hard to approach and written for the teacher, rather than the learner. (In my opinion, if students find Central Ideas to be goobly-gook, then how on Earth can they make meaningful connections?) We went back to the IB’s Math Scope and Sequence to provide clarity and direction to developing skills.

Will mathematics inform this unit? Do aspects of the transdisciplinary theme initially stand out as being mathematics related? Will mathematical knowledge, concepts and skills be needed to understand the central idea? Will mathematical knowledge, concepts and skills be needed to develop the lines of inquiry within the unit?

When we looked at those questions, our team nodded their heads in agreement–Yes, of course this is a TD Math unit–it’s a scientific thinking unit, for heaven’s sake–the best kind to connect with!

Thus we rewrote the Central Idea and created our lines of inquiry based upon what they might be “doing” with number, recognizing that other math strands might be employed in our How The World Works unit (Central idea: Understanding sound and light can transform experience), thus combining the “Stand Alone” with our “TD Math“. Here is the unit we created:

We collect information and make connections between our experience and numbers.
–use number words and numerals to represent real-life quantities.
-subtitize in real-life situations.
–understand that information about themselves and their surrounding can be collected and recorded
-understand the concept of chance in daily events.

To be honest, I’m not sure if this is the best approach either and I spent a good amount of time cross-referencing pacing calendars and scope and sequences from other national curricula. However, this not only would help us to “kill 2 birds” with one planner, but it also helps us lean towards creating math units that develop the context of discovering vs. “being told” when and how to do math. This is true inquiry, in my mind, whether it is through a SA or a TD Math lens of learning. But when you are trying to squeeze in teaching two maths (TD and SA) during a unit then there is the challenge of approaching problem solving as a rote skill instead of having enough time for students to make decisions based on their math understanding. Documenting and analyzing those student decisions require time in order to evaluate appropriately what our next steps might be and in order to guide them towards a deeper understanding and more flexible thinking. So stay tuned.

If any other schools have been fiddling around with integrating math into units, I’d love to hear some of your stories–indeed anyone reading this blog would!! So please share your approaches in the comments below.  It benefits all of us trying to put “Principles into Practice”.

 

 

#ChangeInEducation: A Letter to Policy Makers

#ChangeInEducation: A Letter to Policy Makers

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Dear Policy Makers,

We are not robots and we are not robot designers.

We are difference makers who are highly creative, intelligent and resourceful.

Treat us that way.

We work in schools. Not in factories.

We don’t care about those “test results” that are your widgets.

We care about self-confident and kind humans in our world.

It’s time to value this.

We don’t want to create the workforce of the future.

We want to create a love for life, generosity with each other, and peace in ourselves, now and for tomorrow. We want this for each and every student. No matter the color, the creed or the language they speak.

Stop making us inhumane with this “human capital” approach.

It’s time for a change in education.

Yours Truly,

*Teachers

 

* I presume you, dear fellow teacher, are with me in this endeavor. Please forgive my misunderstanding if you are not.

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