Category: Primary Years Programme (PYP)

#PYP Where We Are in Place and Time: Being Critical of a “Slam-Dunk” PYP Unit of Inquiry. (#IMMOOC)

#PYP Where We Are in Place and Time: Being Critical of a “Slam-Dunk” PYP Unit of Inquiry. (#IMMOOC)

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We have begun a unit of inquiry that could be considered a “slam-dunk”- an easy to teach unit with a clear summative task: designing a home. Here’s the central idea and lines of inquiry for this Where We Are in Place in Time:

Homes reflect cultural influences and local conditions.

  • what makes a home
  • how homes reflect local culture and family values
  • factors which determine where people live

I bet if you are experienced PYP teacher, you have taught a unit similar to this. It’s a “good” unit, right? I’ve taught it before. It can be quite transdisciplinary when you think about all the wonderful social science and physical science that you can pull into this, along with art and math, if students design a model home.

I often ask myself two questions: So What? Now What? But I keep re-reading this sentence from the book Empower  by A. J. Juliani and John Spencer and it makes me want to extend my thinking to be more critical of these types of “slam-dunk” units. Here’s the brief excerpt from the book:

We began to empathize with our students, which led us to ask questions like the following:

What would our students care about (literary devices)?

What would be the best way to learn (the devices)?

How can we engage the students in understanding their purpose and use in the real world?

 

Now, in the book’s context, they are trying to determine the best approach to tackling literary devices for their eighth graders, but I could apply these same questions to any given unit of inquiry. In particular, that last question lingers in my mind.

SO WHAT?: Examining Units of Inquiry for Student Interest and Action

So what part of this is important and meaningful for students? So what aspect of this unit will have a lasting impact and build upon future learning?– is this going to be important for the next unit or next year? How immediate will they be applying these conceptual understandings or skills?

And now if I was to apply this So What principle and add those ideas from the Empower book, then I would begin reflecting on units of inquiry in the Programme of Inquiry (POI) through the lens of students who are driving the unit (and not us teachers).

So what part of this unit will students genuinely care about? (Do they actually care about homes?)

So what would be the best way for them to learn about homes?

So what aspect of the conceptual understandings will have a purpose and use in the real world?

 

NOW WHAT?: Examining Units of Inquiry for Meaning and Coherence

NOW WHAT -this has to do will the impact that learning will have on students.

Now what will students care about as a result of their learning?

Now what would be the best way to extend their thinking and develop new perspectives?

Now what can they transfer to future units? What use in the real world will these conceptual understandings have? Can they apply their knowledge in different ways to other subjects?

We are embarking on Week 3 of this unit. I’m not suggesting that this unit is a “bad” unit–I think that the students will get a lot of learning out of this unit, especially since we are developing their awareness of family values, culture and how homes are designed for natural disasters.  I also think this is really meaningful, that the concept of “home” is a challenging one for our 3rd Culture Kids–is my home the one on my passport? Or the physical space I live in? Or the emotional space I inhabit? There’s a lot of relevance for our students’ learning in this unit. quotes-on-innovation-and-creativity-2

But I think we should always remain critical and challenge “easy” units because this can become very teacher-directed inquiry instead of releasing control of the learning over to students. As I reflect on the summative task, designing a home, I wonder how we can amplify their learning by providing more choice and voice in the matter. Considering how we give students more agency can shift this “slam-dunk” unit into new learning territory. It’s an idea that I will bring forward to our team, and it’s an idea that I hope you will hold in your memory and consider when you also come across these staple sorts of units.

#PYP The Null Curriculum? Why PYP Schools Need to Examine Science in the Program of Inquiry

#PYP The Null Curriculum? Why PYP Schools Need to Examine Science in the Program of Inquiry

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Let me be clear, I am biased. I wholeheartedly agree with the Nobel-Prize winning quantum scientist, Richard Feynman, ” The world looks so different after learning science.”  In my mind, this is the greatest argument for scrutinizing our Programme of Inquiry to ensure that are developing scientific literacy. Scientific inquiry naturally challenges and changes you.

I have been trying to track down the memory of where I first heard a PYP educational leader say that out of our 6 Transdisciplinary Themes, there are some units that should be Social Studies focused (Where We Are in Place and Time and How We Organize Ourselves), another that should be Arts focused (How We Express Ourselves), 2 that are Science focused (How the World Works and Sharing the Planet) and the Who We Are theme can bridge multiple disciplines. Of course, it’s very easy to read the transdisciplinary theme descriptors and arrive at these conclusions, but this whole notion of a theme as the “arts” and the “social studies” unit is incongruent with the whole notion of what IS supposed to transdisciplinary learning. But whenever I look at a school’s Programme of Inquiry (POI), this sort of thinking seems to leave its fingerprints everywhere in their curriculum design. Look at your own POI, right now. I double dog dare you! You’ll see exactly what I am talking about.

I’d like to challenge this discrete packaging of developing knowledge by themes. Furthermore, I’d like to use this term, the Null Curriculum, ironically, to explore what it means to our POI.

The Null Curriculum: the options students are not afforded, the perspectives they may never know about, much less be able to use, the concepts and skills that are not part of their intellectual repertoire. -Elliot Eisner-

For those who don’t know, Elliot Eisner, a curriculum thought leader and art education advocate, coined this term null curriculum, in which he often stated that art appreciation is an important and often neglected aspect of our school’s implicit curriculum. However, this term is transferable to other subject matter. When we relegate science and its thinking skills to only a couple of TD themes, we are minimalizing its importance, making it null; especially since it is not a “special” (visual art, music/performing arts, additional languages and PE) that IB schools offer a couple times a week. Therefore, Science, as a subject, only gets to be spotlighted and explored for 6-12 weeks a year, for maybe 3 hours a week during the time in which we are not teaching math, literacy or the special subjects.

Did you just do the math? 36 hours or 3 days of Science learning a year. Ouch. That’s not a lot dedicated time to an area of learning that we know is emerging as a necessary element of our students’ lives. We know that technology is changing the dynamics of our society and STEM (Science, Technology, and Math) is becoming a focal point for innovation in many schools (which many schools have expanded STEM to STEAM to include art as an essential component) So shouldn’t we be examining our POIs to make sure we are in synch with emerging trends and provide a balanced curriculum?

Here’s what troubles me the most, science, in my mind is the binding agent of all the other disciplines. It is an inherently transdisciplinary inquiry. That’s because science explores the “magic” that remains invisible until we apply scientific habits of thinking. It starts off with What Does It All Mean, Man?-sort of thinking; our curiosity and our imagination are naturally provoked and we are driven to make discoveries which only lead to further questions and a revealing of new possibilities. Science, in my mind, is a big game of What If? which can be applied to all manner of subjects and cultivate deeper thinking. 

Anytime teachers think differently about (1).png

When the Arts and Science Get Married: Changing How the World Works to How We Express Ourselves 

I’d like to pull out some central ideas and challenge how you can put more science into other themes.  How We Express Ourselves is probably not the first one you would have picked so I’d like to start there.  Here’s the overview of the theme.

How We Express Ourselves: an inquiry into…the ways in which we discover and express ideas, feelings, nature, culture, beliefs, and values; the ways in which we reflect on, extend and enjoy our creativity; our appreciation of the aesthetic.

Now, I’m going to hit close to home and share the How the World Works unit that we did with our 1st graders:

Understanding sound and light can transform experience.

Put this central idea in that theme descriptor above. Think about how students could have applied their knowledge of light and sound if we had inquired through this theme.  We could have developed perspective-taking and thinking about an audience. We could have explored acoustics and how light enhances a performance. We could have used design thinking. It would have been messy learning. We, students and teachers, included, would have gone into the learning pit, and we would have had fun, we would have been challenged. It would have an impact and lasting memory on all of us. It would have been exhilarating and excruciating at the same time. Really the only constraints of this collaboration would be the depth of our lines of inquiry.

What about this central idea from another school’s  How the World Works Unit?

Materials can be categorized, manipulated and changed.

The same sort of collaboration would have been possible.  If we extended the central to include more concepts, I think there would be a richer learning experience. For example:

Materials can be categorized, manipulated and changed for a purpose.

Materials can be categorized, manipulated and changed for communicating a message. 

The second central idea makes me wonder how we might explore art curation or how manufacturers and designers consider the impact of plastic on our world. What about  Addis shoes made out of plastic?-Can you think of how you can teach students material science and apply it to innovation, making treasure out of trash? We just did this concept of transformation with musical instruments to make a sound garden at our school. (This unplanned collaboration came out of a Sharing the Planet unit) This is only one idea of a hundred possibilities. I’m not even scratching the surface. What ideas float up in your mind?

Here’s another central idea:

People are inspired to create by observing the natural world. 

If you pull out a piece of paper and start mind mapping the possibilities of this central idea, it would be hard to write only 3 lines of inquiry for it. My mind goes to weather, jumps to landforms, then airplane design or bridge building then wonders how we could capture movement and change in our drawings or dancing. I think about culture, whether it is folktale creation stories or costumes.  There all sorts of connections that can be made. I am only limited by my imagination.

I’d like to share one more thought about the marriage of art and science in our curriculum. Have a think about what Eisner is postulating:

eeisner
From Reimagining Schools: The Selected Works of Elliot W. Eisner

Did you read that last line? Connoisseurs of…the world. When you marry science to all the other areas of learning, you get all sorts of delightful experiences. You apply skills. You apply knowledge. So stop thinking that How We Express Ourselves is the Arts unit! It goes beyond those boundaries of that discipline, from passive to active learning, when you combine it with science.

I’m going to revisit this idea of putting science into other themes.  I just really want to challenge this notion of what disciplines are emphasized during a unit of inquiry. I want us PYP educators to really be true to the transdisciplinary nature of our framework’s design–not because we are blindly following Making the PYP Happen, but because the future world in which our students will live demand that they can transfer knowledge and skills between disciplines. Technology is blurring the lines between subject areas and we need to prepare students for the shifting nature of what we will call “progress”.

Perhaps you have any other thoughts that you would like to add to this discussion of curriculum. Please share! It helps all of us grow!

#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.

 

#SOL: Looking Through a Window of An Open House

#SOL: Looking Through a Window of An Open House

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As I locked the door and closed all the curtains, I wondered what emotions were stirring in the children – were they excited, were they nervous, or were they blase to share their learning?

heiyun
Where is MY planning sheet?

Today was their opportunity to present their knowledge and efforts in our unit, how did that make them feel?

 

At three o’clock, another door swings open and a head of a beaming student pops in, “Can I come in, Ms. Judy? Can I show my mom?”. I look up at the clock. “It’s 3pm.  Time to get started! Come on in!-What are you going to present to your mom first? Can you find your planning sheet?”

 

pierre
Showing how to use Book Creator app. 

 

Before you know it,  students start piling in with their loved ones: moms, dads, brothers, aunts, and grandmas–they all show up to see what their child has been up to in 1st Grade.The noise of the activity is fun to observe. We start grabbing iPads to document the interactions.  We want the parents to remember this moment, this moment of wonder and curiosity; hopefully a proud moment, a moment when they realize that their baby is growing up, a moment when pride wells up inside.

As we look on, some of the interactions are gorgeous. “C’mon”, squeaks one girl. “I want to show you how to play this game. It’s called BANG!”

sophia
Playing a Word Game.

Enthusiasm has flooded the room. It is four o’clock and a desire to show off their favorite things in class has yet to cease after an hour.

 

We asked students to choose five things to present to their families–touching a bit on math, language, technology, and unit. One girl has checked off the entire list. We tried to avoid this from happening since we know that the adult’s time is busy. One mother struggles to get her daughter to stop playing a game.

thomas and charlotte
Playing the “Sound Detective” Game.

“This is the last round, okay?”, she beseeches.

 

Over in the corner, a sort of game of tug-of-war seems to be in process, in which there is a tension between their interaction, as a loved one is challenging and pulling out the learning from their child, questioning and critical. The child pulls back with counter arguments and claims, then relents. These interactions are difficult to watch from the eyes of a child, but the teacher in me also feels a bit grateful for the pressure that is being applied, hoping that it will make the student more focused in their work. (Today I will find out who has really won this game–has this really changed any habits or behaviors?)

kathyIt’s 4:30. Students start to come back to me to report that they have finished.  As they hand me their planning sheets, I direct a question towards them, “How do you feel about presenting your learning?” Most smile and reply, “Good!”.  I give a high five. I want them to have some small acknowledgeable that what they did today mattered. That the learning they have done up until now and the effort they put into presenting it was important. As I look up to say my goodbyes and thank yous to loved ones, in my head I am wondering and hoping that this experience opened a window into the lives of the learners; that the parents and family members gained some valuable insight and perspective into their unique and wonder-filled child. In my heart, I am hoping that the learners left feeling a sense of pride and recognition; that this has further developed their confidence and self-esteem.

It’s nearly six o’clock before I leave school, exhausted yet content.

#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.

#Inquiry: Transforming Learning Objectives and Intentions.

#Inquiry: Transforming Learning Objectives and Intentions.

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I had an Aha-Moment this week and I am bursting to share it! You see I grew up and was trained in the American school system so most of my pedagogical schema is steeped in a Standards-Based Approach to teaching and learning. Lessons must have learning objectives, which usually are framed around the State’s curriculum or nowadays there is the Common Core. When I write or state the objective on the board, there is a magnetic pull that drives the learning towards meeting that goal. I get tunnel vision and achieving this standard becomes a primary focus, if not for the day, then for the week. But can we still attain the skills and knowledge in the curriculum without letting the learning intention be the end-all/be-all in our lessons?

Let me just set the stage for my lightbulb moment:

One of my colleagues had said earlier this year that she feels like when you do inquiry it seems like you have to always make the students guess what they are learning about. It’s as if learning intention is a mystery. And so herein lies the challenge with inquiry-based learning when it meets the standards-based curriculum training. Is there a happy medium? And I think I found the answer and the answer is YES!

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Compliments of the wonderful teachers at VIS, Mr. David, and Mr. John!

Did you catch that? In the example above, they just open up the lesson  with a question and it naturally covered standards that would be typically on the board or stated as you tell your students what they would be learning about in that 4th-grade lesson:

  • Use the four operations with whole numbers to solve problems. (Common Core)
  • 4.1.2.1.f checking reasonableness of answers. ( Singapore Mathematics Syllabi)
  • Know multiplication and division facts for the 2× to 10× tables (Cambridge)

If you’re a PYP teacher then we are always packing our unit planners with “teacher questions”.  I already was well aware that questions are vital for inquiry teaching and learning. But it never occurred to me that I could or should turn the learning intention/objective into a question. It totally changes the dynamic of the lesson, in which a clear path of learning is set yet there is still enough space for curiosity and divergent thinking.

So I’m going to start transforming my WALT (W.hat we A.re L.earning T.oday) into questions so that students have a goal and purpose for learning. And then I’d like to end with a student reflection: Did we answer the question? Why or why not?

I think when we shift from Telling To Asking, we start moving away from didactic approaches and move into curiosity and student agency. I’m going to test out this tweak and I invite others to do the same so that more student interest and inquiry can be sparked.

#PYP “Pre-packing” vs. “Unpacking” the Central Idea: Design Thinking Based Approach to Writing Units of Inquiry.

#PYP “Pre-packing” vs. “Unpacking” the Central Idea: Design Thinking Based Approach to Writing Units of Inquiry.

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Anyone who teaches the Primary Years Program knows preciously what I mean by the word unpack. But just for clarity sake, let me explain:

Unpack (verb): to explain and define the key conceptual understandings and “big words” used in a central idea and lines of inquiry, usually as a part of “tuning into” a new unit of inquiry.

Depending on the unit of inquiry, teachers can choose to go a more traditional path to explain the big words or they can create provocations that awaken the meanings. I suppose it depends on how much weight you want to give to these keywords or how long you want to dwell on them. Each unit is sort of unique in that way.

In an earlier post (#PYP The Sound and Light of Using Design Thinking To Write a Unit of Inquiry), I explained the experiment and struggle of using design thinking to construct a unit of inquiry. This past week, we presented two different “prototypes” of a central idea for a How The World Works unit that we are creating for our Grade 1 students. Here are the prototypes:

Version 1.1: Understanding energy can lead to discoveries and help us predict its behavior.

Version 1.2 Exploring light and sound can lead to discoveries and open up new possibilities.

When we presented these central ideas, we discussed them one by one and asked them what words they connected to and what did it make them think about. This was a very revealing exercise! The first reaction to the central ideas:

“Wow, that is long and hard sounding”

Second of all, only a handful of our 34 kids had much to say about the scientific concepts in either central idea, showing a deep need to develop real content knowledge.  Third of all, our English language learners preferred “light and sound” over “energy”, which was something that we needed to put a high emphasis on since we have a large group of them. Last insight was that they made the connection with the words exploring and discoveries to “finding out”, which then evolved into the idea of a “science experiment lab”–these words got an uproar of excitement in the group. They began seeing themselves as scientists, creating all sorts of investigations.

At that point, we voted on whether we would explore “energy” in general or if they wanted to just focus on “light and sound”.  The latter was the most popular with both our ELLs and our girls (which made me go, “hmmm….”) in high numbers for the vote.

So then I tried to capture the ideas that the students resonated with, while still honoring the nature of this transdisciplinary theme, and wordsmithed some new ones. Our grade level team discussed and debated them, which is an important aspect of using design thinking.

Central Idea, Version 1.3: Experimenting with light and sound can lead to discoveries and innovation.  

Team comment summary:

” I think it’s 1 dimensional, with the word experiment in it because there are many ways to explore light and sound that isn’t through experiments. “; 

“This sounds like an upper-grade unit because they can do more research into the innovation part”;

“Yeah, we’d have to unpack the word innovation and they don’t have much context for that concept yet”. 

Central Idea, Version 1.4: How living things hear sounds and see light impacts their experience of their world.

Team comments summary:

“Kids this age love animals, so I think they would really enjoy the learning.”; 

“Yeah, this is very Grade 1 friendly and we need to develop the concept of living vs. non-living”;

“Oh, and we could discuss sonar with underwater animals and how bats use echolocation. They’d love that!”;

“Would this have any scientific thinking and process skills though? They really wanted to do experiments and I think we’d lose the ‘science lab’ aspect if we made this the central idea. I mean, we could do experiments showing how living things experience light and sound differently but then it would just be proving scientific facts vs. exploring with our own original ones. In our original UOI, it was all about scientific thinking so maybe it covers a different TD indicator and this one definitely feels like an inquiry into the natural laws. But maybe we could write this into a line of inquiry”.

Central Idea, Version 1.4: Human understanding of sound and light can transform their experience.

Team comments summary: 

” This invites more inquiry-how many ways do humans experience light and sight?” 

“Yeah, when I think about this, I think about how humans first harnessed fire and this sort of discovery led to so many more advancements, as people tried to turn night into day.”

“Oh, totally– this has more of a transdisciplinary approach because we not only have the science bit with natural vs. artificial light but then you have social impact of candlelight to electricity.” 

“But if we only focus on humans, then this unit might not be as interesting as the one with animals. The concepts within electrical energy would be better for older kids. Our 1st graders would appreciate more the context of how animals and plants have senses that detect light and sound in different ways.”

” Good point-How about we just drop the word ‘human’ so we can keep it open for other living things and see where this unit takes us?”

Nods in agreement……..

So here is the new prototype that we are going with for our UOI:

Central Idea (v. 1.5): Understanding sound and light can transform experience.   

Lines of inquiry        

  • How living things hear sound and see light (perspective)      
  • Transformation of energy (change)
  • Ways we use the scientific process (reflection)

       Related Concepts:  Energy, Impact, and Transformation

Attitude: Enthusiasm, Creativity, Curiosity                              LP: Reflective, Thinker, Inquirer

Although this process may have taken longer than we would have liked, it was important to reflect on the needs of our students as well as appreciating what fascinates them and promotes curiosity. When I think about how the PYP has been reviewed, I think this exercise in Design Thinking honors the new emphasis on Learner Agency. In the new IB documentation, it states:

Your understanding of the learner is the foundation of all learning and teaching and will influence how you support student agency, and how the learning community considers children’s rights, responsibilities and identities.

Agency is present when students partner with teachers and members of the learning community to take charge of what, where, why, with whom and when they learn. This provides opportunities to demonstrate and reflect on knowledge, approaches to learning and attributes of the learner profile.

–The Learner in the Enhanced PYP–

Even though I think this is our first iteration at developing learner agency through “pre-packing” the Central Idea with student thoughts and viewpoints, I still believe that we have honored the core of the PYP programme and moreover have really carefully considered our learners over pulling units of inquiry out of the archives to see which one might “fit”. For our team, we have a higher level of excitement going into this unit (and maybe a little trepidation), knowing that we can’t wait to surprise and inspire them with the provocations and challenges that this Central Idea will bring.

How does your team approach honoring student voice and choice? Have you ever “pre-packed” a unit of inquiry (other than Exhibition or PYPX)?

#PYP: What is a Provocation?

#PYP: What is a Provocation?

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I love the International Baccalaureate but the jargon really can get you jumbled up, especially when you are new to the program. In the PYP, we use a lot of terminologies that others would just call “best practice”.  However, there is a word that pops up quite a lot: provocation.

Now someone might call it the “hook”, something that draws student’s attention into a lesson. But when I say “hook”, I don’t mean an attention grabber like a joke or cute anecdote or a routine of some sort that gets students on task. No, that’s not a provocation!   A provocation is a thoughtfully constructed activity to get students excited and engaged, but a really powerful provocation creates cognitive dissonance that throws kids into the Learning Pit (of inquiry).  Students should be examining their beliefs and ideas as a result of the provocation.

Here is a list of questions that were shared by Chad Walsh which can help filter activities and perhaps refine them in order to transform them into provocations:

  • Is the provocation likely to leave a lasting impression?
  • Is there a degree of complexity?
  • Might the provocation invite debate?
  • Might the provocation begin a conversation?
  • Might the provocation extend thinking?
  • Might the provocation reveal prior knowledge?
  • Is the provocation likely to uncover misconceptions?
  • Does the provocation transfer the ‘energy’ in the room from the teacher to the students?
  • Does the provocation have multiple entry points?
  • Can the provocation be revisited throughout the unit?
  • Might the provocation lead learners into a zone of confusion and discomfort?
  • Does the provocation relate to real life/their world?
  • Is the provocation inconspicuous and a little mysterious?
  • Might the provocation lead learners to broader concepts that tend to carry more relevance and universalitMight the provocation be best during the inquiry, rather than at the beginning?
  • Does this provocation elicit feelings?

That is a very extensive list, isn’t it?

Well, let me share a  few examples of provocations:

How We Organize Itself, The Central Idea: Governments make decisions that impact the broader community.

Students come to class that morning and are treated according to the government system that is being highlighted. (Example, Totalitarian) This goes on for a week and each day students have to reflect on what it was like to be a citizen of this type of government.

Where We Are In Place and Time, The Central Idea: Personal histories help us to reflect on who we are and where we’ve come from.

The “mystery box” (which I think originated from the work of Kath Murdoch): inside a box (or a suitcase, in this example) there is a bunch of seemingly unrelated items that students have to guess what the unit might be about. This is a “tuning in” activity. And since this is a central idea about personal histories, it might include a family photo, an old toy, some cultural artifacts or relics of things we enjoy doing, a clock, a map.

Math Stand Alone, The Central Idea: Mathematical problems can be solved in a variety of ways 

The  “sealed solution“: there are 5 envelopes that have the sum of two numbers “sealed” inside them. Students have to use the digits 0-9 only once to create those sums. What could be the sums inside?

Hopefully, this is helping you to discern what a provocation might be. Even if you are an experienced PYP teacher, reflecting and refining our provocations is something that is critical to developing our student’s learning and sparking curiosity.  A well-designed provocation will not only make it to the family dinner table conversation that night but will have a longer shelf life in a child’s mind and ultimately develops important conceptual understandings.

What have been some of your favorite provocations? What questions or engagements have led to deeper learning? Please share in the comments below so we can all benefit from your experience! (Thanks!)

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?

Post Mortem Reflection: Autopsy of a Failed PYP Unit (Sharing the Planet)

Post Mortem Reflection: Autopsy of a Failed PYP Unit (Sharing the Planet)

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It doesn’t matter if you have been teaching for 8 months or 18 years, you will experience a bombed lesson from time to time. But a bombed unit-well, that I have yet to experience until now. And it has been the most frustrating 6 weeks of my life, as I have worked relentlessly to cultivate their conceptual understanding. Most teachers don’t share their failures, they only blog or tweet about all the “cool learning” that’s going on but I think it’s equally important to reveal and reflect on our failings. So in an effort to be vulnerable, I humbly submit that this unit has yet to meet its central idea and only narrowly developed its lines of inquiry. And I can’t stop asking why.

Our actions can make a difference to the environment we share.

  • how we use resources (function)
  • the impact of people’s actions on the environment (causation)
  • choices we make to care for our environment (responsibility)

I hold some very strong beliefs when it comes to creating curriculum in the PYP, one of which is having a solid central idea that a teacher can anchor the learning in.  If you pulled out the keywords–what would they be? I chose to focus on “actions”, “environment” and “share”. Other key ideas were from the lines of inquiry: resources, impact, and choices. The assessment is really quite simple–we document student action that has occurred over the unit. And herein lies the problem: student action. Students are not taking action because they don’t have enough conceptual understanding to appreciate a need to act. They literally do not see pollution-even if a coke bottle flew out of the sky and bonked them on the head, they wouldn’t notice. Oh, and if that same coke bottle then got buried in the ground, one of the students said it would sprout a Coke Tree. No, I’m not lying–this was an actual prediction during one of our engagements.

At first, this put me in a panic and I went in the wrong direction. I thought, oh my gosh, this future generation, they are either absolutely oblivious or litter and pollution (particularly in Asia) are so endemic that it’s like wallpaper and thus hardly take notice. So we began inquiring into endangered animals and the impact on habitats. We worked through key vocabulary and food chains. The kids put together wonderful ChatterPix presentations which summarized their library research on the animals. But during another provocation when I showed a picture of a turtle that had been deformed due to garbage in the water, I had 3 kids tell me that it looked like that because it was farting, clearly articulating (with a straight face) that gas can make you bloated and you feel bubbles are in your belly. I could see his thinking but I felt deeply concerned and it was at this point that our unit started to take a turn for the worse.

One of the Segel pictures that the students examined. They thought they were just “having a picnic at the beach.”

So then, to make a stronger link about humans and how we use resources, we explored the work of Gregg Segal,  which started as a provocation but since the students made no connection between the garbage and the people who were lying in it, we examined our “home” garbage and collected our classroom garbage, including snacks, for a week to analyze. I had also gotten one of our Secondary Art and Design teachers who is an avid photographer on board to help us orchestrate an attempt to do a photoshoot with our students in this garbage. It was going to be awesome, right?! –They were finally going to “get it” so we can move into learning about the 3 R’s–Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Nope–the day before the photoshoot, our cleaners emptied our bins. Deflated, we decided that we would “follow the garbage”, trying to pull together this idea of how individual and collective choices can add up to make a difference in the burden that ecosystems might have to shoulder. So we went down to our school’s dump area and examined our rubbish. Next, we made a day of it and went down to the Vientiane Landfill.  Although they were absolutely disgusted by it, they had seemed unchanged.  This week we are going to meet people whose “choices” to care for our environment are having a  positive impact on our Vientiane community. We are still hopeful that a handful of them will be moved into action but I know now that it’s a foolhardy job to try to assess them on this central idea. We will have to create unit grades based on their academic skills in language and math that have been developed alongside these conceptual understandings.  

The moral of the learning debacle boils down to these things:

  • Doing a bunch of “cool stuff” is not as important to properly pre-assessing basic knowledge and skills. Sometimes we get so preoccupied with launching a unit with instant student engagement, that we forgo necessary assessment which can be documented and examined. I think in heavy science-based units, it’s important to probe into common misconceptions and vocabulary that may be misunderstood. I did some of it, but I missed some big ideas–simple stuff like living vs. non-living because I had assumed it had been “covered” in previous years.
  • Furthermore, provocations that reveal severe inadequacies in student knowledge means that the unit probably needed to be scrubbed and rewritten immediately instead of trudging through the painful experience of trying to get students to arrive at mastery and develop knowledge that is beyond their experience or developmental appropriateness is asinine.
  • And the third thing is that the sequence of units matters A LOT. In our case, we were asking that students take their knowledge and apply it by taking action. We should have had a How The World Works Unit beforehand that developed the key information and scientific principles to really appreciate the need to act. Our unit implied that kids should “reduce, reuse, recycle” without understanding why it’s important to do so.
  • Also, a unit whose central idea demands that students assimilate knowledge and then adapt it to behaviors needs to reconcile with the developmental stage that they are at. Most of the students are at the cognitive stage in which they are transitioning from concrete to abstract thinking and operational thought. This unit would have been better served when most, if not all the kids, were 7 years old because cognitively they would have understood the concept of conservation. This was a second term unit. It was too early in the school year to introduce these ideas.
  • And of course, the old PYP coordinator in me wondered why I didn’t go back into last year’s POI to see what scientific ideas that they had been exploring when I first saw warning signs. Although I had interviewed past teachers who did the unit, I should have dug deeper into the curriculum that my current classes had been working on in the past years. I needed to research my learners more. I would have seen the gaps and been able to re-route the unit sooner instead of “following the garbage”.

So, I would suggest that educators ask themselves a couple of important questions before embarking on units of inquiry in which student action should be the hallmark of successful learning outcomes:

  1. What previous knowledge and skills should we look for? What was their most recent learning (last grade level’s POI)? What conceptual understandings will students need to understand in order to really apply knowledge? (Go deep on Box #3 on the PYP planner)
  2. What misconceptions do you predict students may come with? How will we know if they have them?
  3. What is the age of the majority of the students? Will they have access cognitively to the concepts and related concepts in the units?
  4. What action is already taking place? What can we expect young children to be doing, feeling and thinking?

 

I can see now that words like “action” and “choices” are too subjective to be put into a central idea for this Sharing the Planet Theme. They are great in the lines of inquiry, but if you take the stance that you assess the central idea in your summative and formative assessments, then you are setting students up for failure. Although student action is the proof that real learning has occurred, this unit would have been better served with related concepts in the central idea. (Here is a great blog that demonstrates how units can be analyzed in this way.) With that in mind, I would suggest rewriting the unit to look like this, with the related concepts in bold:

Human interaction with living things can have consequences on the environment.

 

Although this unit is going to be seared into my mind and will haunt me all year, I will remember the lessons learned here when it comes to analyzing my grade level’s units of inquiry. Perhaps this will also help you to reflect and consider how your units are structured and be more critical in your understanding of your learners.

So I ask you, dear reader, what other suggestions would you make regarding this failure? What takeaways did you get from this? Please comment below.

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