Category: International Baccalaureate

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.

 

DigitalLunch: How to Bring an End to Poverty (#TeachSDGs) using Google’s Blogger App

DigitalLunch: How to Bring an End to Poverty (#TeachSDGs) using Google’s Blogger App

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To imagine this goal- ending poverty in all its forms everywhere- seems like humankind would need to make a mighty effort to bring this into reality. However, I felt inspired by the research presented by Peter Diamandis in his book, Abundance, the Future is Better Than You Think. Extreme-Poverty-OurWorldIn his book, he presents really interesting data that shows that current efforts are making an impact, helping people get out of “absolute poverty” or extreme poverty which are defined as income levels that are below the minimum amount to sustain people’s basic needs. Although this is a dreadful situation, I believe as educators, we should convey a sense of optimism to our students–that WE can be the Change, while bringing them into awareness of the issue and compel them to eradicate it.

If we are to take on the challenge of teaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), then we can look to the work done by UNESCO to find learning objectives that we may embed into our current curriculum. They suggest to create a conceptual understanding of extreme and relative poverty and to critically reflect on the underlying cultural and behavioral practices that create these conditions. Furthermore, it should be our intention to connect the head to the heart, adding social-emotional learning objectives so that students begin to show sensitivity to the issues of poverty as well as empathy and solidarity with poor people and those in vulnerable situations. (Education for Sustainable Goals). I believe wholeheartedly we can do this, and I’d like to suggest using the Google App Blogger to cultivate knowledge of the local, national and global distribution of extreme poverty and extreme wealth.  In my opinion, student blogs can be a great way to chronicle their learning journey because they combine both traditional writing skills with the new literacy skill of visual messages as students create reflections and powerful posts that respond to their deepening understanding. 

Here are some of the basic reasons why I would use Blogger:

  • Free and easy to set up–all you need is a Gmail account.
  • Simple and easy to use its features.
  • Autosaves their work as a draft, and they can go back in “history” to review changes.
  • Can be used as an individual or collaborative blog
  • Great context for important problem-solving, critical thinking and cultural awareness.
  • Has the opportunity for an authentic audience experience.
  • Transforms students of “consumers” into “creators” of media.

My Personal Recommendations….

  • When you have the students sign up Blogger, make sure they DO NOT sign up for the G+ platform or it will not allow the blog to get set up if they are under 13 years old.
  • Make sure you have Admin privileges on the students’ accounts, so you can have editing privileges and can moderate comments.

Click on the video below if you are ready to learn  How to Create a Blog for Student Learning Using Blogger.  (If you are already familiar with Blogger, then you can continue to read how we could use to blogging to journey students through an inquiry into poverty…… )

 

Okay, so now that you have a general sense of the power of blogging in learning and how you can get started using Blogger, I’d like to provide some ideas of how you use the blog to show growth in their understanding of issues surrounding poverty, in their local and community and globally.

Suggested Provocations:

  1. Watching the film Living On One Dollar . Also, there are a ton of resources on that website and additional work done by the filmmakers. By the way, not an easy documentary to watch–will evoke strong emotions.  (I’m tearing up just thinking about it.)
  2. Field Trip to the Landfill. What does the trash tell us about the wealth in our community?  Depending on where you live in the world, you may actually bare witness to people who are living in extreme poverty.
  3. A ride on the local bus through impoverished neighborhoods. In some places, just the bus ride alone can be quite an eye-opener to the people who live in poverty. I would add the See, Think and Wonder thinking routine to this excursion.
  4. Student Challenge: What might it be like living on 1 USD a day?

Blogging about these experiences will be illuminating and can be done either in-class or for home learning. Here are some possible blog prompts:

blog prompts.png

I would also recommend that students read and respond to each other’s blogs using the comment feature. No matter the age-group, I think a review of what constitutes a helpful comment would be a smart idea. I would NEVER assume students understand the complexity of netiquette. In first grade, these were some of the “starters” we gave them to help guide appropriate responses: Helpful Comments. Perhaps those might provide a guide on how you might want students to engage with each other online.

These suggestions, as well as the blog prompts, are merely the beginning of what could be possible. If you go to the TeachSDGs website, you can find more resources and ideas. The great thing is that students could share their blog posts on social media platforms to further spread the message of the SDGs as well as be a resource to others grade levels within our school communities or across the globe.

If you have any feedback, I’d really appreciate how you felt about this information:

 

*This is the 1st of our Digital Lunch series, in which using Google Apps for Education training was used to support teaching the Sustainable Development Goals put forth by the United Nations. In this lunch hour training sessions, participates were exposed to SDG #1: No Poverty and the digital tool of Blogger. This blog post gives an overview of the training.

Summertime: Renewal, Reading, and Reflection

Summertime: Renewal, Reading, and Reflection

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I’m staring at our suitcases. 46 hours of travel provides for a lot of time to read. What needs to be on my Kindle or packed in my bag? Aside from the next book in the Dr. Siri mystery series and Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, I’m trying to sort out my “professional reading” for the summer. I have 3 goals for next year that all revolve around developing more awareness and powerful learning mindsets. So this is what I have so far for supporting my intentions:

  1. Books to boost our Who We Are Unit and our classroom practice of Mindfulness: Happy Teachers Change the World  and The Brain Power Classroom
  2. Books to help create more “connective tissue” with students and staff, that center around kindness and care: The Nurtured Heart Approach: Transforming the Difficult Child and Conversations Worth Having: Using Appreciative Inquiry to Fuel Productive and Meaningful Engagement and The Culture Code.
  3. Books that help support developing a culture of authentic writing and reading: Projecting Possibilities: The How, What, and Why of Designing Units of Study, K-5 and Growing Readers by Kathy Collins and Passionate Readers by Pernille Ripp. (I’m hoping to get a lot of inspiration of how we can reframe the Workshop model so we can make it more PYP-ish with developing units of study around the conceptual understandings using the conceptual understandings from  the Language Scope and Sequence)

And then I hope that A.J. Juliani’s new book on Project Based Learning comes out because his ideas always inspire me. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I can “combine” transdisciplinary themes and extend timelines, using a project-based learning approach. For next year, we have “bundled” a few units next to each other so that the conceptual understandings connect and build upon one another for a sustainable city project, but I’m always wondering how else we might approach the enhancements to the PYP since we have more flexibility. I’d like to do some more thinking around this.

Of course, there are quite a few blogs that I have to go back and re-read some posts (and find some new ones). So many awesome IB blogs these days that inspire and provoke us!

So, I hope everyone has a lovely summer, full of rest, renewal and reflections (and perhaps some reading). I know most of us strive to be at least 1% more awesome every year so I’m sure that reaching out for the great ideas out there can spark new thinking and approaches to learning in our schools for next year.

#PYP: Sticky Learning: Moving from a Topic to a Conceptually based Central Idea

#PYP: Sticky Learning: Moving from a Topic to a Conceptually based Central Idea

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As an early years teacher, it’s not hard to notice that so many national curriculums are “pushing down” learning skills and content knowledge. So a common traditional approach in preschools and kindergartens has been teaching the literacy and numeracy skills through topics. You teach an “Animals” unit, a “Farm” unit or a “Weather” themed unit.  So when I was recently asked if I could help write a Central Idea for a unit on “sound” for nursery age students, it harkened back to those days for me. Since I know how difficult it can be to break those habits of thinking about teaching those skills through a topic, I thought there might be others out there who’d like to figure out how to take a topic and have it evolve into a conceptually-based unit and I decided to disentangle this approach in a blog post.
First of all, what is all the hubbub between a topic and a concept anyhow? Let’s just get that squared away before we go further. made-to-stick_quoteA classic definition of a concept is an enduring understanding that is broad enough that you can transfer it across disciplines and time. But I’d like to add that a concept is something that makes you think, makes you wonder, gets those neurons firing. A topic fades from your mind, just like a rainbow after a shower–it seemed lovely at the moment, but quickly disappears from your memory. You see that quote from Chip and Dan Heath–our goal whenever we write a Central Idea is nearly the same–an idea so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning about it. This is why the PYP makes such a fuss about developing conceptual knowledge and skills. Learning facts and skills without a context is a waste of time and often evaporates unless we make units that are “sticky”.  Concepts are like a bad rash that won’t go away. Concepts get under our skin and stick with us and reappear in new contexts that broaden our perspectives.
I’d just like to say that writing a central idea is easier than you think, but first, it’s important to ask Why is this worth knowing and How does it connect to other learning? –This is especially true for younger students since they have limited life experience to draw upon. No matter what ideas you bring forward in the learning, this is where we start. In a previous post, #PYP: 3 Things to Consider when Evaluating a Programme of Inquiry, I reiterate the driving force behind the Written Curriculum, in which Central Ideas are developed to be engaging, relevant, challenging and significant.  Here is how the IB defines them:
Engaging: Of interest to the students, and involving them actively in their own learning.
Relevant: Linked to the students’ prior knowledge and experience, and current circumstances, and therefore placing learning in a context connected to the lives of the students.
Challenging: Extending the prior knowledge and experience of the students to increase their competencies and understanding.
Significant: Contributing to an understanding of the transdisciplinary nature of the theme, and therefore to an understanding of commonality of human experiences.
So when writing a UOI, I start with related concepts. “Sound” is typically considered a topic all by itself and it would really narrow the learning experiences of students. However, if you add the related concepts, then it makes the unit more conceptually based. Taryn Bond Clegg shared a helpful list of these related concepts.
So, let’s have a think about concepts that sound is connected to…..
The concept of Pattern can examine sound relationships such as rhyme, rhythm, tone, and pitch. It’s also a great math link.
The concept of Properties can make a connection to materials and how it impacts the quality of sounds. This also makes a great math link for attributes and data.
The concept of Imagination is another one that could make for an engaging unit, as the students in this year group can interpret sounds and make images related to sounds they hear  (Interpretation is another concept that might be relatable.)
So, looking at those related concepts, now it’s a matter of determining what’s relevant and worth knowing for your students. I’d choose one of those concepts and write a simple central idea–especially if they are 3-5 year-olds. Anything longer and more sophisticated is just “blah-blah language” (a term described by a 4-year-old to me once. Bless his heart.) The younger ones are constructing meaning, so let’s honor that’s where they are at developmentally.
Examples of UOIs that reframe this topic into a conceptually based learning unit might be:
Discovering patterns help us make sense of our world.
The properties of a material determine how it is used.
The interpretation of sounds can spark our imagination.
The intention is for students to construct the meaning of these concepts and we can embed the topic of “sound” in our lines of inquiry.
For example: Discovering patterns help us make sense of our world.
  • what is a pattern (form)–thinking about beat and rhythm
  • how we use sound to make patterns (function)
  • patterns in language (connection)–rhymes and poems
  • different ways we can change a pattern (change)–tone and pitch
  • patterns in our world (reflection)–sounds can be a learning lens for this
 (I bet if I had a music or performing arts teacher sitting next to me, they’d be nudging me with more examples.)
For older students, we can expand this Central Idea:
Discovering patterns help us make sense of our world and spark our creativity.
*the and in that Central Idea invites students to move from exploration to creation of the concept of patterns because we would expect older students to be applying knowledge since they’ve probably already constructed a basic understanding of this concept.
However, I wouldn’t say that Central Ideas have to be lengthier or all about applying knowledge in upper-grade levels. They will likely come across concepts are entirely new, and there would be a danger of “overpacking” a Central Idea. More complex concepts might be biodiversity, government, and networks. We’d want central ideas to go deep, not wide, and yet provide for a multitude of student inquiries. Consider the challenges in teaching the following Central Idea:
The well-being of an ecosystem can be determined by its biodiversity.
If this is the first time that students are exposed to the concept of an ecosystem, then this will make for a challenging unit because the teacher will have to ensure that the students have that understanding of food webs before they can build upon it to get the concept of biodiversity. Make sure it has been explored in previous units or rewrite the Central Idea so that it’s simplified:
The growth of living things determines the well-being of an ecosystem.
The “blah-blah language” has been diluted and now the focus is developing a strong foundation. Hey, I heard you in the back of the room-Can you write biodiversity into a line of inquiry? No, I would caution it simply because you are adding another level of complexity and decreasing the chances that students feel confident to drive their learning.
I’m not sure if this helps in clarifying how to write concept-based Central Ideas but at least these ideas should get you started in writing units and hopefully empowers your approach to writing a central idea and a unit of inquiry. Remember: If a central idea “sticks” in your mind, then it’s probably worth spending time inquiring into.
#PYP: 3 Things to Consider when Evaluating a Programme of Inquiry

#PYP: 3 Things to Consider when Evaluating a Programme of Inquiry

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The Programme of Inquiry is a living document.

So it’s not a surprise that around this time of year, many PYP coordinators are getting staff to hover around the Programme of Inquiry, taking a critical stance into the what and how we do teaching and learning in the classroom. Often times we thumb through the guide on developing a programme of transdisciplinary learning and wonder if our central ideas meet the criteria, and see if we have horizontal and vertical alignment of the key concepts, learner profile attributes and ATLs.  If a school is really thorough, they will make sure that there aren’t any conceptual gaps, particularly in science and math, and ensure that units of the same flavor aren’t repeating themselves. I find this simple task of deeply examining our POI a vital component of what makes a PYP school unique because, in so many ways, it is an inquiry into Who We Are, as a school, digging into the written curriculum, discussing the breadth and depth of our curriculum. This sort of professional conversation and debate are what creates a dedication to quality learning and ownership into the school culture.

But I think, not many schools really poke or probe their units of inquiry to see if the ideas are even worth inquiring into. They spend more time wordsmithing them instead of challenging the value of them. Investigating the Programme Of Inquiry (POI) with a good measure of curiosity and openness to change can really enable schools to rewrite units so that they are engaging, relevant, challenging and significant (Making the PYP Happen)  to the learners and the context that you find your school in and be innovative with your curriculum.

Here are 3 things that you could consider when looking at units of inquiry:

Why over the What

I’ve seen plenty of Units Of Inquiry (UOI) that read like it is a learning objective or standard from a national curriculum.  quote-it-is-better-to-teach-a-few-things-perfectly-than-many-things-indifferently-and-an-overloaded-andre-maurois-251482Yes, developing content knowledge and skills are really important, but what’s more important is the WHY that knowledge and skill are important. I think we can all agree that if you can google it, it shouldn’t be in a line of inquiry, let alone a central idea.

Schools should be seeking to bring more innovation and inspiration into the learning environment so that students can become more empowered. So the WHY should always be about the kids.

Why would students want to learn this?

Why is learning this important for their future?

Start with Why and the What takes care of itself anyhow.

When

Not all Central Ideas should be taught to all grade levels. Yes, I understand that the rule of thumb is that they should be written in such a way that you could theoretically teach them to any grade level, however, that doesn’t mean that it’s really appropriate for ALL grade levels.

Let me give you an example. I had an early year’s Central Idea from Where We Are In Place and Time that was about personal histories. Let’s be honest, 3-4-year-olds just don’t have a lot of personal history that they can reflect on, plus time is a very abstract concept that doesn’t really develop until they are 7 years old. So, we moved it to 1st grade and it became one of the favorites of that year group since the students had ownership and pride in that inquiry.

Here’s a hint: if a unit is not suitable for an age group, then the teacher has to micro-manage and direct the inquiry in order to “get through the unit”; it’s probably out of their developmental experience and aptitude…or interest! You can choose to rewrite it so it’s more appropriate or transfer it to another year level.

How might we …….

Now every school has their unique context and challenges, but overall we should be having conversations about improving our curriculum about issues that might naturally invoke agency.

For example, last year, our school developed a special Who We Are unit in which every grade did the same Central Idea (Our choices and actions as individuals define who we become as a community.) which included specific lines of inquiry that developed our understanding and appreciation about the local culture and traditions. These lines of inquiry also gave our local staff an opportunity to be more involved in the learning, thus providing more voice for our instructional assistants.

However, thinking ahead for next year, we’ve been inspired by Teaspoons of Change and our conversations may shift into examining and reflecting on how we can promote the UN Global Goals. Personally, I’d love to see that!

Global-Goals

So perhaps you could be wondering how might we incorporate more……..

  • Computer Science and System’s Thinking
  • Financial Literacy
  • Sustainability
  • Design Thinking
  • Entrapreunual skills
  • Equity Issues
  • Nutrition and Fitness
  • Digital Citizenship
  • Artistic behaviors
  • Well-being and social-emotional learning

into the Programme of Inquiry. These ideas are just a smattering of things that could be brought into your written curriculum so that it is challenging, engaging and relevant for your learners.

At the end of the day, we want units of inquiry that inspire our learners and develop student agency-right?! Spending time as a staff having dialogue and debate is not silly nor a waste of time. It’s a wonderful opportunity to have deep professional conversations, and come to an understanding of how we live out, not just the mission and vision of our schools, but also IB’s aim to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

Hopefully when you consider the important questions of Why?, When? and How Might We..., your school’s Programme of Inquiry will come into greater focus.

#IMMOOC: Innovation in Education Starts with Climbing a Pyramid

#IMMOOC: Innovation in Education Starts with Climbing a Pyramid

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It’s hard not to think about the recent school shooting in America and think about how innovation could benefit schools. These acts of violence are the most extreme case of why we need to change “school as usual” and start creating a paradigm shift in how we think about our school culture and climate.

abraham
Innovation can happen when schools look beyond scores and see the child in front of them. 

It’s hard for me to imagine that a student who felt connected and supported at school would have ever fathomed to pick up a weapon and kill. There is no way that he would want to destroy what brought meaning and value to his life. Think about it.

 

I believe that if a child knew that it was a leaf or a branch on a tree, it wouldn’t hack away at its bark, it would turn toward the light and would be eager to nourish its supporting system.

We know the future will present great challenges ahead that we will need to develop more creativity, empathy, and resilience in order to tackle them. We need students prepared for that. But maybe instead of test scores, we need to think about student achievement through a different lens. Personally, I have been thinking a lot about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and how our schools play a role in an individual’s life.maslow-hierarchy-of-needsRemember this pyramid of needs?-the core message was if you want to have a happy and fulfilling life, you need to reach the highest level of this. School provides a major basis for this, 7 hours a day, 180 days a year.

Perhaps our whole definition of student success should be reframed to include emotional intelligence and other indicators of SEL (social-emotional learning) because cultivating the mind without the heart is a great malfeasance of our educational system. Even as an IB school, which has character development as a central part of our framework, we never consider to assess SEL as meaningful data points. The IB’s stance (at least its workshop leaders) say that it’s too subjective to assess our Learner Profile, but I’d like to challenge this. We can’t say that we are creating internationally-minded citizens which work to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect (IB Mission Statement) without some data that proves that we are in fact developing these values in our school communities.

So it is becoming quite evident to me that we cannot speak about innovation without considering how it broadens our definition of learning. And we’ve got to think about how we all–students, school leaders, and teachers included– can climb this pyramid together.

#IMMOOC, Season 4: Does it Matter?- Giving Students Choice (My Personal Inquiry into Empowering Students Begins)

#IMMOOC, Season 4: Does it Matter?- Giving Students Choice (My Personal Inquiry into Empowering Students Begins)

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400 minutes a day is roughly what most students spend in school. After 180 school days, my 1st graders will have spent 72,000 minutes in our learning community (given that they are not absent) and move onto 2nd grade.What will they have learned? Who will they be at the end of that time? Will our team really have developed inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect? (From the IB Mission Statement)

That is an incredibly hard question to answer. I know that we work hard to forge new territory and challenge our learners to become self-reliant, reflective and kind. Sometimes it is easy- a simple provocation might provide the nudge, but most of the time, cultivating the awareness and motivation to do what is hard takes a lot of different approaches. In IB-Speak, we call it being principled however others may call it grit–it’s doing what’s right or the best thing to do even if it is hard, boring or uncomfortable, especially when NO ONE is watching you.

To develop “leaders of tomorrow”, we need to develop them as leaders of today.

-George Curous-  #EmpowerBook

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately-am I empowering students to make good choices or am I handicapping them by making the choices for them?  As a first grade teacher, this is sure easy to do–to “boss” those little ones around and “help” them make those choices for them.  Painful as it is to admit, that certainly happens.

As I begin this season of IMMOOC,  I really want to shine a light into those dark places of my practice. I want to examine whether or not I am consistently and compassionately developing our learners to be challenged and independent in their learning.

So I am excited to be reading the book Empower to take a more critical look at how I approach student learning and develop greater student agency in the classroom. Perhaps you might be keen to join? If so, you can sign up and join a whole load of us educators who really want to make an impact and create these leaders of today.

 

#PYP : 5 Things You Should See in a Successful Unit of Inquiry

#PYP : 5 Things You Should See in a Successful Unit of Inquiry

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Sometimes I wonder why we spend so much time discussing and deliberating Central Ideas and the nit-picky debates over the conceptual understandings. Why not just copy the sample Programme Of Inquiry that is inside the Making the PYP Happen document or other go-to places to find tried and true units of inquiry? We would be done and dusted, right?  But then we would lose the magic of the PYP–the ability to shape our curriculum based on the students’ interests and culture of our schools! That’s the challenge of every school–Who are WE and what defines our community of learning?

Well, as we wrap up our current How the World Works unit, we are reflecting on how much time and energy we put into creating our Central Idea. As teachers, we brainstormed ideas based on scientific concepts that the students need developing and cross-referenced science standards from a variety of sources (like national and independent curriculums other than the PYP Scope and Sequence for Science). We then pitched the ideas to the students with a general interest survey using a Design Thinking approach and then did some pre-packing of the Central Idea. We knew after all of that effort that we had a solid unit of inquiry ahead. What we ended up with was:

Understanding light and sound can transform experience

  • How animals hear sound and see light
  • Transformation of Energy
  • Ways we use the scientific process

Although our central idea was ironically very similar to a unit at NIS, the lines of inquiry and adding the word “transform” made it unique to our students because of what we had been learning about in performing arts and visual art classes. We really wanted to make a strong link to go beyond this being a “science unit” and make it transdisciplinary. This sort of intention really showed in the learning.

In the Enhanced PYP,   there is a shift in developing learner agency, and I can appreciate how it might build upon the idea of Action as we reflect our the design of our school’s Programmes of Inquiry.We spent a few lessons on gauging student interest and “pre-packing” the Central Idea of our unit before we even launched it to capture student voice and choice involved.

So really it shouldn’t be a surprise that when we examined whether students were really engaged and invested in their learning, we found several tell-tale signs. This was some of the evidence we saw:

  1. Students challenging each other’s ideas, particularly when they were generating their scientific questions and hypothesis.
  2. Students bringing in outside resources that added to the conceptual understanding of the unit.
  3. Parents reporting that students are reading and researching the concepts at home.
  4. Students wanting to extend their learning, either at home or at school.
  5. Students asking deep questions and a compulsion to test out their conjectures.

These are just 5 things that we observed throughout the unit. I hope others can add to the list because I think identifying what success of a unit is an important component of every school’s Programme of Inquiry. We need to take a look at our Central Ideas and begin to wonder who is this unit for? And will student action naturally and authentically develop? And when you think about it, the word inquiry means “a search for knowledge” and “a request for truth” so student initiative isn’t really the high bar we should expect in learning, but truly the bare minimum of a successfully designed unit. If we touch a nerve and truly spark interest, then a commitment and motivation to learning should ensue. If I was to be truly critical of whether or not we nailed student agency in this unit, I would say that tuning in and shaping units around their needs and interests were only the tip of the iceberg and we need to challenge our team a bit more to develop this feature in our community of learning.

However, I hope sharing this experience will help ignite some deeper thinking and reflection about designing units of inquiry. If you have any more “symptoms” of a successful unit, please share below. The more conversation we can have around this, the stronger our school programmes will become because we put our learners first. Please add your perspective in the comments below.

Mathematics in the Primary Years Program (PYP): Negotiating Transdisciplanary Vs. Stand Alone

Mathematics in the Primary Years Program (PYP): Negotiating Transdisciplanary Vs. Stand Alone

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In the purest sense of the PYP, everything is the Unit of Inquiry (UOI), right? One of the greatest suppositions of transdisciplinary learning is to try to create enduring understandings that connect as many dots with the discrete subject areas. For example, when we think about how young children learn, when they play with blocks, they never think that they are “doing math” or “creating art” or “testing hypotheses”.  So it is our duty to match their curiosity and creativity which curriculum that is relevant, meaningful and engaging. However, as children develop and their thinking matures, we need to challenge them with more complex ideas in our inquiry-based and concept-driven approach to learning. But with Math, it is probably the one subject area that can be the most difficult to naturally incorporate into UOI and make transdisciplinary due to the demands of the mathematical concepts. 

For example, here is a How We Organize Ourselves UOI for students age 5-6 years old that works great for math:

Systems help us to make meaning and communicate.

  • systems in our community
  • ways we use systems
  • our responsibility within systems

Now, this is probably a great unit to develop the conceptual understanding that numbers are a naming system and, for a set of objects, the number name of the last object counted describes the quantity of the whole set; which can then help students to connect number names and numerals to the quantities they represent. (Phase 1, Number Strand of the IB Math Scope and Sequence).

 But then, in this same year group, you have a How We Express Ourselves unit like this:

Creating and responding to art develops an understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

  • what art is
  • how the arts communicate different messages
  • ways we respond and react to art
  • the different ways that can express ourselves through art

At first glance, you are probably thinking, duh!–this is an “art” unit, it’s gotta be Pattern…….or maybe Shape and Space for Transdisciplinary Math (TD)? I could do both, right?

Well, you could, but then you would be “exposing” students to these ideas but not necessarily really developing their conceptual understandings. To further demonstrate how challenging this decision is, think about this conceptual understanding: Shape and Space Strand: Shapes can be described and organized according to their properties;  Pattern: understand that patterns can be found in everyday situations, for example, sounds, actions, objects, nature. So now I am wondering which what part of the central idea or lines of inquiry supports either one of those strands?

You can see that unless you write central ideas and lines of inquiry that consciously make an effort to incorporate math, it can easily get nudged aside during UOI. 

Now, this example is in the early grades, imagine how difficult it gets in the upper grades! How would you write a UOI that could be a “good fit” for teaching decimals, the conversations of fractions and understanding exponents? You could, but you’d have to have a POI that leaned toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and have staff that is incredibly skillful at writing this curriculum so that Social Studies, the Arts, and PSPE don’t get sacrificed in the process. Most schools don’t go to such efforts. 

So thus we create “Stand Alones”, which are separate subject-specific units of inquiry, that we put into the PYP planner. There are many schools that do this for Math. Some schools do one-off or piecemeal planners for certain mathematical concepts that don’t fit into the transdisciplinary units while other schools just do this for upper year groups, yet others create a whole school Programme of Inquiry for math. (I won’t open up the conversation of how you might create a scope and sequence for math for these stand alones but please check out this blog post that details one school’s struggle to do so.)

In our school’s case, it was decided to create a POI that focused merely on Number and Pattern & Function Strands since these are the most difficult to incorporate into UOIs. With that in mind, most grade levels have TD maths running simultaneously with our Number/Pattern POI. As a disclaimer, it’s our first thinking on how we might approach improving mathematical thinking and learning at our school, so be gentle in your judgment. To create a POI for math is a daunting task, and there is no doubt that we will reflect and revise on ours.

In Grade 1, we are starting to encounter challenges when we look through the number of conceptual understandings and learning outcomes that need to be developed so we stopped and had a whole planning retreat to delve into this. As we looked through the IB Scope and Sequence and referenced the learning outcomes from other national standards, we wondered how much classroom time would it take to accomplish both Stand Alone AND TD Math?  Furthermore, is having essentially “2 Maths” (2 Math Strands) going co-currently a sensible idea-and how might we make it fit better? At the end of our discussions and debates, we mapped out the rest of the year’s TD Math. In one UOI (Where We Are in Place and Time, CI: Homes reflect cultural influences and local conditions.), we decided to not make a TD Math link because it might be “a stretch” to do so and instead to just focus on Number. Here is the Number central idea and lines of inquiry that we will cover during that time: 

Numbers often tell how many or how much
1. The amount of a number determines its position in a numeral
2. How we know when to regroup
3. How grouping numbers into parts can help us find solutions.

CONCEPTS – Function, Change, Reflection
ATTITUDES – Integrity, Confidence
LEARNER PROFILE: Knowledgeable

You can see that this unit has place value and regrouping strategies for addition and subtraction–one of the foundational conceptual understandings that must be well developed in Grade 1 and so needs more attention and time devoted to it. 

Likewise, we decided that we would make one of our units (How the World Works, whose CI we are rewriting), heavy on the TD Maths and a little lighter on the Number POI because we needed to really spend more time on developing the conceptual understandings within the Data and Measurement Strands. This is the Number UOI during that time:

Patterns repeat or grow
1. The ways patterns can be represented.
2. We use pattern to infer and to make predictions.

CONCEPTS – Form, Connection
ATTITUDES – Creativity
LEARNER PROFILE: Thinker

As you can see, our examination and reflection process is just beginning when it comes to negotiating classtime with TD Math and our Number POI. Sharing our grade level’s experience in this blog does not only reveal a bit of our thinking process but perhaps you are contemplating your school’s struggle with striking a balance between Stand Alone Math and TD Math and have an idea that would help navigate this challenge.

I’m deeply curious what kinds of conversations your school has regarding Math and what have you done to address “coverage” of concepts. Since our school is in the early days of developing and refining our Number POI, sharing perspectives and theories about using the PYP framework would be helpful to discuss and debate in our larger IB community because all of us are striving to create the best learning experiences and outcomes for our learners.  No pressure, but I’m hoping you will comment below. 🙂

 

Does your school have UOIs that were particularly successful at incorporating Math so that it was transdisciplinary?

How does your school balance TD Math and Stand Alone Math in the curriculum?

#IMMOOC: Prototyping the Classroom to Reflect Values and Guiding Principles of our IB Culture

#IMMOOC: Prototyping the Classroom to Reflect Values and Guiding Principles of our IB Culture

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Our attitudes steer our decisions and build momentum in everything we do. A space is at its most sublime when it reinforces and encourages desired values. The first step in designing a space to support particular attitudes is to define those attitudes. – From the book, Make Space, by d.School

I have come to realize that our learning space is more like a living breathing organism, which changes and evolves. It’s always going to be a prototype of the changing learning needs of students. In one of our last IMMOOC ,Kayla Delzer, a flexible seating expert, discusses the importance of cultivating “workspaces” that provide students with opportunities to learn best.  Anyone who has worked with me knows that my classroom setup changes at least ten times a year. However, instead of shifting a table or bookcase, I decided to take all of the classroom furniture out of the rooms and start all over to get a fresh start and churn up different energy in the learning space.  I’ve been looking at the student data that I have gotten from surveys and student sketches of their design ideas, as well as reflections on our timetable to get an idea of their interests and feelings towards different grouping strategies. I understand that the data that I get from those surveys and diagrams are just a snapshot because the learning environment will shift as our culture of learning shifts.

So then I’ve decided to think about how I could use our classroom as a provocation and context of our current Sharing the Planet unit. I’ve been working on “natural vs man-made” and wondering how I can elevate their love of nature and our environment. In one classroom, I took as much of the plastic and industrial looking furniture and replaced it with wooden furniture that we use for outdoor seating in our corridors.  However, I left one of our classroom spaces with all the normal school furniture in it. I wanted to see how the students responded to the change of environment.

This is our first prototype, but it has been fun to see how the students behave and respond to the changes, even if they cannot articulate it. I have to say that is incredibly hard to take the “man-made” out of our learning environment and so this idea will have to continue to grow and be refined. But when I think back to the original quote from the book Make Space, I want the next prototype to really support the value and love of our environment–what makes our Blue Planet worth appreciating and how can we still be “human”, with our deep desire towards progress and yet honor the other conscious living organisms and their plight to survive? In our IB programmes, we have a strong emphasis on how humans must negotiate our roles and responsibilities in sharing finite resources with other living things.

The aim of all IB programmes is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing their common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world. -From, What is an IB Education–

I wonder how I might continue to create this awareness in our students and how I can use our classroom environment as the context to develop this appreciation. Although this is the first prototype, taking cues from the flexible seating playbook is helpful, but trying to bring nature back into the classroom is not an easy task, yet this challenge is a fun one. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I am keenly open to it, as collaboration really helps to make an idea stronger. So I welcome your comments below.

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