Category: PYP (Primary Years Program)

Who Cares? Why I can’t “take” it anymore!

Who Cares? Why I can’t “take” it anymore!

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Last week, I sat through student interviews for our school scholarship program. Students could win scholarship awards for Learner Profile, the ATL’s, and Action. It was fascinating to hear young 6-8 year old children summarize what they believe were some of their best qualities and why they do what they do. But the learner profile award was the most telling. And learner profile trait that made me cringe the most when I heard a student talk about it was caring. Caring? I hear you say. I know. It’s a surprise. Let me explain.

First of all, whenever I hear the students talk about learner profiles, it reflects greatly on the teachers, aspects of the school culture, and family values. Children mirror the learning community.

I heard numerous students talk about how they do caring things because they hope others will appreciate them and extend care back to them. In fact, what they described was being generous in order to initiate reciprocity. I recognize that this concept of reciprocity is apparent in my host country’s culture. People often refer to this as Guanxi. Western cultures refer to it as Quid-Pro Quo. I’m just not sure how I feel about it.

Several years ago, Adam Grant wrote a really interesting book called Give and Take. In the book, he makes a compelling argument for why doing good is not only smart, but should be our goal. Generous and caring people in studies demonstrate better life outcomes, such as greater career success, improved relationships, and health outcomes. Even though he may enumerate many ways doing good is beneficial, that should not be why we are caring and kind.

I couldn’t agree more.

Now, I don’t want to be a book spoiler, but Grant explains how people may look like “givers” but are actually “takers”. He uses the example of Kenneth Lay and his abuse of power that ultimately bankrupted the company and left his employees jobless and without pensions. But on the outside, he looked like a “good guy” because he was charitable. I think this is a prime example of using generosity for optics and is the danger of what can happen when “caring” is miscommunicated and reinforced in our society. Clearly, this man had an intellectual understanding of kindness and generosity but not the emotional intelligence to be able to demonstrate ethical behavior and true responsibility for his employees.

We need to do better at educating our children’s hearts, or this pattern repeats itself in our society.

IB is supposed to be the framework that can adapt to any context in which it finds itself, whether a public or private institution or the values within a nation or town. We are flexible and respectful in how we approach curriculum design. Although I think it’s important to navigate the curriculum through these complex lenses, I think the learner profile is where we might need to take a stand. What do I mean by that? I mean, that has a particular definition of what it means to be caring, and guess what?-It’s not a quid-pro-quo protocol. Take a look:

As you can see, we don’t do caring things because we expect good things to happen to us in return. It’s not about filling our spiritual coffer with good karma or our bank account with money. We do good things because we want a better and more peaceful world. Caring simply for the sake of being caring has no benefit other than knowing that we are helping the world be a better place. Money isn’t the goal. Service is. And we must do that in our schools by explicitly developing empathy-building skills. I recognize that we may be swimming against society’s current paradigm, but it matters. It’s worth the effort. Don’t you agree?

So, if you are an educator who has been promoting the status quo of a “taker” (ie: I give so I can get) in sheep’s clothing, take a moment to reflect on where that type of behavior leads to our society. Let’s go back to the definition of this Learner Profile and refocus CARING on using our empathy skills to inspire our young learners to create systems, products and services that make a difference in our future.

**If you have any great resources that help others to make the connection between our minds and hearts, please share them in the comments below. Sharing is Caring, right?!

PYPC Book Club: Opportunities for “The Fun Habit” in Team Collaborative Meetings

PYPC Book Club: Opportunities for “The Fun Habit” in Team Collaborative Meetings

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In April 2020 I needed to find an antidote to my seclusion.  Not only was I physically isolated but also felt lonely professionally. Although there were lots of webinars and free professional development out there to help us execute online and hybrid learning, there wasn’t a lot that really supported my role as a coordinator beyond “emergency planning”. So I was inspired by a recommendation to read The Art of Coaching Teams: Building Resilient Communities That Transform Schools by Elena Aguilar.  I felt like I needed to discuss and process it with others. So I decided to throw out the idea of forming a book discussion group to the PYP Coordinator Facebook community and the next thing I knew, a true virtual book club was formed.

Books have created a campfire experience, in which we huddle around its pages and tell stories about our lives and our practices as PYP curriculum coordinators.  They can facilitate vulnerability and connection, and help us to take risks in our leadership practice.  It’s the 4th year now and it is a joy to co-construct the reading list with colleagues from all over our global network of PYPC. One of the goals of our reading is to put at least one idea from the book into practice, and in our final meeting for that book title, we share an idea with the group of something that we have or we will put into practice. It’s like professional development on steroids because we are naturally each other’s accountability partners and support mastery in our leadership practice. 

Typically I offer an “Early Bird” read at the end of the summer holiday or winter holiday, depending on your hemisphere. This book typically is adjacent to the work we do in our schools but not necessarily for educators. This year we have been reading The Fun Habit: How the Pursuit of Joy and Wonder Can Change Your Life by Micheal Rucker, Ph.D. You can tell by the title that its aspirational message is to make fun an integrated part of your life and not just something that happens sometimes. The ideas I share in this post are stimulated by our discussions. 

The PLAY Model

One of the key ideas of the book is to purposely design your life for more enjoyable experiences. To do that you need to take a “fun audit” and determine how and why you are spending your time the way that you do. He suggests you filter your audit through the PLAY model, analyzing your activities by how they make you feel: vibrant, pleasant, “meh” or in suffering. 

In my mind, collaborative team meetings are really a “split screen”; part of the meeting is for team building and the other part is to achieve a particular goal. We can conduct this “fun audit” not only on our personal lives but in our professional lives. When do we truly feel alive as teachers? When is school a drudgery? And in those honest conversations with one another, how can we support each other in moving out of the “agonizing” quadrant to at least the “yielding” if not “pleasant” quadrant? 

Treasure Chest

To me, time is something you don’t get a refund on. The time I spend with teams is precious and I want to help them to reflect on the moments of joy and fun in the classroom. Remembering these moments is important to our mental health and it stirs positive emotions that charge our “batteries”. We get so much energy and inspiration when we can share them moments with others. 

There are many ways to do this. I could provide teachers with a meeting “exit ticket” in which they share a moment that they “treasured”, which could be with the students or with a colleague. I collect those happy memories and put them in a treasure chest, to pull out later at a staff meeting, helping them to recall those times when they enjoyed school life. And if a moment doesn’t come to mind during our meeting, it’s okay–they can hold on to the “ticket” and pop it in the treasure chest later. 

The treasured moment includes:

  • Who was involved?
  • What happened, when it happened, and where it happened?
  • And why it was a treasure for them?

Or if that is too ambitious to bake this exit ticket into our meeting routines, then we do it as a component of an end-of-unit reflection or at least an end-of-term reflection. The goal is to find the good (there’s lots of it!) and to savor those beautiful moments we have with students and each other every day. 

Finding Connection 

Collaboration is a skill that we must develop intentionally with our teams and staff. Mindset and attitude play a vital role in how teams function. Having a desire to work with one another and demonstrating respect is an essential component of facilitating team dynamics. We have to like each other to work well with each other. Congeniality matters.  Developing compassion and trust for members of a team is something that we can support by establishing camaraderie during our meetings. Plus, it gives us great data about the people we serve in our role. The great news–we can make it fun by doing quick “warm-ups” in our meetings. Here are a few light-hearted ways to bring people together. 

  • This or That: Hobbies, movies, music, books, quotes favorite holidays, food–the topic doesn’t matter–it’s the ability to find commonalities is a really important aspect.
  • Roll of the Dice: Dice always add an element of excitement. Create options for things people can share based on what they roll. For example: 1, something that they are proud of. 2, the last thing you read about (can be personal or professional reading). 3, your favorite toy as a child. 4, a place that is on your bucketlist to visit. 5, the last resturant you went to. 6, a social media post that made you smile. (By the way, you could also use a Spinner tool if you don’t have dice)
  • “Yes and…”: This is a fun improv activity in which the team has to plan an event and the goal is to agree with what the person says and add on another idea to the planning. For example: You’re going away on a wonderful trip to The Shire (the mythical home of hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”). Clothes and toiletries will be provided for you but you can bring some other items to make this trip special. What will you bring?  Remember, this can be any type of event, realistic or imaginary like this one–anything from a Taylor Swift concert to a something even quirkier like the World Toe Wrestling Championship. You would do a round or 2 just to have a few laughs and practice agreeing with one another.  
  • What meme lives here: show a funny picture and write a quick quip as a meme. Can be done individually or created as a group. 
  • What’s your story?: Show a collage of some funny children books. If you could be a character in one of these books, which one would you choose and why. 
  • Would you rather?: similar to This or That but it can be more silly and can add a 3rd option.

These are just some ideas that will hopefully help you to spark some opportunities for relationship building and infuse some energy into meetings. Remember, the intention is to bring levity and joy to the start of the meeting. These activities should not go beyond 5 minutes. 

Are you the nerdy type of pedagogical leader?

For me, the PYPC Book club has been a source of amazing professional development. I’ve been inspired by other great pedagogical leaders, and it has nudged me out of my comfort zone. I hope this post not only sparks some fresh thinking, but also helps you to consider other ways to connect with other IB educators. If you are a PYPC and you’d be interested in joining, please send me a message so I can share our reading schedule with you.  

 

Navigating Transdisciplinary Learning: Empowering Students in the PYP

Navigating Transdisciplinary Learning: Empowering Students in the PYP

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In the Primary Years Programme (PYP), transdisciplinary learning is not only a mouthful to say, but it’s a very difficult thing to articulate.  You might say that it is when we connect the dots between single-subject lenses, but that is only one dimension. You can say it is when we use real-world problems and challenges to provide authentic experiences for learning, but applying knowledge in a safe context through a project-based learning approach does not fully describe it either. The truth is that it is all of this, but so much more. So if we can barely describe it,  how do we know if we are doing it “right”?

Lately, I’ve been thinking about it differently. With the revised IB Programme evaluation process, our PYP programme development is ever evolving, always unfinished, as we elevate and improve our standards and practices.  So I have come to think about transdisciplinary learning, not like a checklist of “to dos” but more like a compass. As we inquire into how we “do” the PYP in our school’s unique context, we should seek a more holistic approach to our students’ learning, navigating on a path toward more meaningful and transformative learning experiences. So what direction do we need to go?

NORTH: Knowledge and Grit

There are many forms of knowledge. Transdisciplinary learning transcends mere memorization of facts. However, let’s be clear, the retrieval of information is valuable, but learners must realize that truths may change in the face of new evidence. Thus students must come to recognize that learning any content requires an understanding of the ways information is obtained, used, and created. Knowledge is acquired through study and collaboration within and across disciplines, in which new understandings are co-constructed, and thus may be revised.   Although there is satisfaction in knowing facts and figures, we must also remain curious and open to making more discoveries. If students are still asking questions, making connections, and keen to dig deeper at the end of a unit of inquiry, then you are pointing in the direction of transdisciplinary learning.

If not, then we need to come up with ways to create a learning environment that fosters intellectual grit and a thirst for ongoing discovery. Moreover, paving the way towards true transdisciplinary understanding might require more teacher collaboration and interdisciplinary exploration in order to analyze the unit of inquiry for opportunities to invite more student agency and investigation of topics within the related concepts.

EAST: Emotion and Care

Let’s be honest, if the heart is absent during learning, then true learning is impossible. Having an emotional response is key to a student taking an interest in a unit. And when there is student interest, the brain is open to taking in content and connecting this information to its schema. Emotion makes it “sticky”.

Transdisciplinary learning invites personal reflection, creating empathy, compassion, and social responsibility, nurturing a sense of concern for others and the world. According to the UNESCO Futures of Education Ideas LAB, this would look like students reflecting on how we are interconnected to each other and our planet. We impact our communities as well as being simultaneously affected by others and the world, stirring us to work toward a goal for the common good of all. They describe this as a “commoning” mindset or attitude of “caring for”, “caring about” and receiving care (“care receive”).

Let’s put this in a context of a unit of inquiry:

Central Idea: The interconnectedness of living things influences the sustainability of our planet.

Lines of Inquiry:

  1. The interdependence of living organisms in ecosystems(function)
  2. Human actions and their impact on the environment (connection)
  3. Strategies for promoting environmental sustainability (responsibility)
  • Care For: Students might actively participate in environmental conservation efforts, such as organizing a beach clean-up to protect marine life and habitats. They could create posters and awareness campaigns to encourage others to reduce waste and recycle, demonstrating care for the planet and its resources.
  • Care About: During the unit, students might develop empathy and concern for endangered species. They could research and present information about endangered animals and their habitats, raising awareness about the importance of protecting biodiversity and the interconnectedness of all living beings.
  • Care Receive: Students may collaborate with local environmental organizations or experts who share their knowledge and experiences in conservation efforts. These experts could visit the classroom or take students on field trips to engage them in hands-on experiences, deepening their understanding of environmental care and inspiring them to take action.

You can probably think about your own school’s programme of inquiry and start asking yourself if these units cultivate this spirit of “commoning”. If there are units that are blaise or do not invoke students to action, then chances are that their hearts are not ignited. This may require some re-visioning of the learning experiences or re-writing units altogether.

SOUTH: Skills and Habits of Learning

If we want our students to be truly empowered then they must be able to put their intellect into action, and that is harder than it sounds. There are plenty of smart people who sit on their sofas and never lift a finger to improve our world. Why is that? Are they lazy? No! I reckon it’s simply because they never learned HOW to organize their ideas into action.

So, we have to consider the value and importance of utilizing the PYP AtLs (approaches to learning) in order for our students to conduct meaningful research and become resourceful problem-solvers. We need to ask ourselves if our Atls are an afterthought in our planning or are in the forefront of our minds.

So what does that look like? Well, not only should our classrooms provide explicit instruction and success criteria that help students learn how to learn, but we should support students to create their own goals. For example, how often do teachers assess students and then sit down with students to share the results? Teachers may take weeks to do a reading running record but then miss out on the opportunities to discuss the strengths and opportunities for development for the learner, let alone give them the chance to co-construct goals with them. When we reflect on this, we must realize that there are possibilities within our current assessment practices that we can co-construct goals with our learners. This is a perfect moment to empower our students and create a more transdisciplinary approach to learning.

Even small changes in our planning of the Atls can yield big results when we start to brainstorm ways to elevate them in our classrooms.

WEST: Working Together

Developing the desire to live and work together, and thinking about the quality of life and common good for future generations is an inherent aspect of transdisciplinary learning.

One of the most exciting challenges in our programmes is managing the delicate balance of preparing our students to be open-minded while cherishing their heritage. This is why I think having a collaborative learning environment is critical to the PYP. Students must understand the influence of culture and values in shaping our opinions while seeking diverse perspectives when tackling complex problems.

We need to analyze our classroom cultures to evaluate if collaboration is a challenge or an innate part of how learning happens. Students must have opportunities to discover the joys of working together, pooling their varied talents and perspectives together in order to craft innovative solutions. Moreover, they need strategies for when conflict arises (which it ALWAYS does) and how they can find agreement in the midst of disagreement.

If students lack empathy and prefer competition over cooperation, then this is our signal that change needs to happen in our programme. I don’t think the age of the learner matters, a thoughtful discussion about this observation can help generate some new understandings and provide solutions on how the classroom can shift into a more collaborative spirit of work.

Walking in the “right” direction?

Of course our dream as PYP educators is that transdisciplinary learning infuses our students with a desire for a future grounded in unity, empathy, and sustainability. As we examine our programmes, I hope this “compass” helps you to consider what direction your school may need to go in so that transdisciplinary learning can no longer be a theoretical concept but a palpable plan for improving student learning. I think this is a highly personal reflection and gathering insight from a variety of stakeholders can help prioritize which one of these “directions” is right for your school.

If you have other ideas, please leave a comment below so we can engage in thoughtful dialogue. Together, we all can unleash the power of the PYP and move towards a more compassionate, collaborative, and sustainable world.

Want to Learn More? I was inspired by this reading. 

Sobe, N. W. (10 February 2021) Reworking Four Pillars of Education to Sustain the Commons. UNESCO Futures of Education Ideas LAB.  Retrieved from https://en.unesco.org/futuresofeducation/ideas-lab/sobe-reworking-four-pillars-education-sustain-commons

Delors, J. [. (1996). Learning: the treasure within; report to UNESCO of the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century (highlights). Unesdoc.unesco.org. Retrieved November 6, 2022, from https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000109590.locale=en

10 Ways to Use ChatGPT as a PYP Curriculum Coordinator

10 Ways to Use ChatGPT as a PYP Curriculum Coordinator

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Are you resisting Artificial Intelligence (AI), afraid it’s going to lead to the destruction of our humanity, eliminating our jobs and withering our brains? Stop that! No, really that kind of thinking stifles creativity and innovation, and if you are a pedagogical leader, then you have an obligation to embrace emerging technologies. We are guiding our programs to develop our learners to be leaders of tomorrow. We can’t cling to the past. And when I say the past, I’m not talking about 500 B.C.E., I’m talking about 5 months ago. In fact, the past is no longer bygone days of old. It is one hour ago. To keep up with the fast-paced world, we must be open to change and agile.

So, let’s face the facts, just like smartphones aren’t going away, AI isn’t either. I’m not suggesting that you should let AI usurp your intelligence, I’m telling you that can use it to augment it and give your creativity a boost. Our jobs as PYP Curriculum Coordinators are complex, and often times we work in near isolation, so we could use a little help from AI from time to time. Although I plan to dedicate part of my summer learning to tinkering on ChatGPT to figure out more uses, here are at least 10 ways that you might use it to brainstorm and elevate your program right now:

  1. Use it to inspire ideas during planning meetings: From provocations to possible field trips to inspiring student action, if teachers are in a rut, then stoke their creativity with a few ideas from AI.
  2. Write or re-write central ideas: Wordy or confusing central ideas can be banished easily. If you work in a candidate school or your POI needs enhancing, then put in the related concepts and the aspect of your transdisciplinary theme you want to cover. Don’t forget to put in “child-friendly language” into your request before you hit send.
  3. Create newsletters or articles for your learning community: Does your marketing department ask you to create newsletters? Are they due tomorrow? Well, give yourself a helping hand with plugging in your ideas and let it design a first draft so you can improve upon it and make those deadlines.
  4. Generate ideas for parent meeting topics and activities: Ever been stumped on planning a parent meeting, or coming up with novel ways to work with parents to address their concerns?
  5. Rewrite communication to check for tone and bias: Written communication, particularly emails, sometimes can hurt or upset staff or families. This is especially true when we are stressed or the topic is emotionally charged. Better to have AI rewrite your email so that it is more sensitive to the culture and issues in your community.
  6. Come up with ways to improve teacher instructional practice: Some teachers really could use help but you may not be sure how best to help support them. Whether you want to come up with behavior management techniques or approaches to lesson planning, ChatGPT can help you coach teachers.
  7. Develop our Program Development Plans: Oh yes, that’s right, struggle with your action research no more! ChatGPT will help you come up with goals, timelines, and possible ways to collect evidence for your school to move forward with its growth.
  8. Create solutions to scheduling problems: Time is the only thing I can’t get a refund on, so I want to use it wisely.  Whether I’m trying to find creative ways to get collaborative planning time with homeroom and specialist teachers, or I’m trying to figure out better time-management techniques for myself, using ChatGPT to hack these problems seems like a good use.
  9.  Plan Professional Development Sessions: Sometimes I walk out of a week of team meetings and think to myself that I should do a PD. But I don’t always have the time to make good on this desire. Throw the idea into ChatGPT to cut down on the cognitive load of PD design to come up with fun and interesting ways to design professional learning. It doesn’t matter if it is a 15-minute PD or a 2-Day training, it will definitely save time and inspire you to find engaging ways to promote professional learning.
  10. Cross-walk standards: There are so many aspects of the curriculum that we have to manage, and mapping out the expectations and objectives of one set of curriculum standards to another is time-consuming. You can input your standards and ask it to find commonalities to ensure that our programme of inquiry and classroom instruction is comprehensive. Imagine what you could do with all that time if you got a head-start with ChatGPT!!

Bonus idea: Make sense of data: AIs are pattern-finding machines! Use it to help you triangulate data and generate optimal assessment practices for your program’s learning goals.

I hope this sparks your imaginative use of ChatGPT, inspiring and supporting your pedagogical leadership. I bet if you copy and pasted my 10 ideas into ChatGPT, it could give 10 more ways that we could use it. Go ahead! And share that with me! I want to expand and excel in my role as a coordinator. Let’s grow together!

And before I hit publish on this post, I’d like to leave you with some ideas from ChatGPT about some considerations for improving our results when we use it; it told me:

1. Be clear and specific: When you ask a question, try to be clear and specific about what you want to know. This will help the ChatGPT algorithm provide you with a more accurate response.

2. Use natural language: ChatGPT is designed to understand natural language, so try to phrase your questions in a way that feels natural to you. Avoid using overly technical or complex language.

3. Be patient: ChatGPT is an AI system that requires a few seconds to process your question and generate a response. Be patient and wait for the system to provide an answer before asking again.

4. Provide feedback: If you feel that ChatGPT is not providing you with useful answers, provide feedback to help the algorithm learn and improve. You can do this by rating the responses or providing additional information.

5. Stay on topic: ChatGPT is designed to answer specific questions. Try to stay on topic and avoid asking unrelated or vague questions. This will help the ChatGPT algorithm provide you with more accurate and relevant responses.

(By the way, I actually wrote this blog post… But who knows next time? lol.)

Well now that you have some ideas and tips, the skies are the limit! Let’s go forward into this new era of AI together!

Press Start, Pause or Stop? 3 Ways We Can Approach Launching a Unit of Inquiry

Press Start, Pause or Stop? 3 Ways We Can Approach Launching a Unit of Inquiry

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Bewildered by my outburst, my sleeping dog popped up her head and twitched her ears when I giggled out a “hmmm”.  But I couldn’t help it. I was so immersed in a recording of the Town Hall discussion with fellow Google Trainers. They asked a question about concept testing that made me make a connection with a recent topic that we had been discussing during our grade level meetings, the cycle of learning and teaching.

What was the question they use during their iterative process of concept design?

“What would you expect to happen ...?”

Their research shows that this puts algorithmic thinking into motion, generating potential scenarios that could be incredibly powerful in articulating the effect of our decisions.

What if we applied this same question as we approach a launching a unit of inquiry? I think this could be and effective way to start a familiar unit of inquiry, creating the impetus we may need in order to contemplate and debate alternative approaches with greatest impact for our learning and teaching.

Entry points in The Cycle of Learning and Teaching.

Where do you begin with learning? Do you launch a unit with TEACHING, picking up your PYP planner from last year and “copy and paste” what you did last time? Do your reflect on your past PYP planner and adjust the learning expectations or reinvent the unit with PLANNING provocations and activities to launch new concepts? Or do you pick up your PYP planner and think about how you might ASSESS the learners to figure out what direction you might need to go to support strong concept development and bringing out the best in the Learner Profile and Atls?

I would argue that there is no “right answer” to this because every unit of inquiry is unique and we have to look holistically at the grade level Programme of Inquiry (POI) and the whole school Programme of Inquiry (POI). It might also depend on if the UOI is a single subject or if it is transdisciplinary. That said, I do think that teachers need to sit down and re-read the planner from last year to reflect on what is relevant and meaningful to their current learners. They need to unpack the central idea and lines of inquiry before determining where they are going to jump into this cycle of learning and teaching.

Decisions, Decisions!

Press Start: Teach 

There are some very valid reasons why we might just start teaching. Time may play a significant factor, especially when we know this unit will introduce never explored content in the school-wider programme of inquiry. Also, if there is a project that the students will work on during the unit and the goals of the unit are more about the process of learning so we have to focus on teaching into the Atls such as the self-management or social skills that will be developed throughout the unit. For example, collaboration or time-management may need to be developed right from the word Go so that groups can effectively do research together. A great example of that is during the PYP Exhibition. Teachers might need to start teaching into stress management or technology skills in order to ensure that students can work independently and effectively.

Teachers who are also single-subject specialists may also jump into the cycle of learning and teaching here, particularly if they have younger students who they feel can safely assume that they have no prior knowledge of the concepts. For example, a music teacher who wants to teach the concept of melody to their kindergarten students or a language acquisition teacher who works with newcomers to a language.

However, we really want to think critically about this approach because research suggests that we need to value our learners more than teaching our content, so we need to carefully consider our students when planning and assessing.

Press Pause: Plan

It is good practice to review previous planners for a familiar unit. As you re-read the planner, it’s important to read the reflections first before digging into the resources, learning activities and assessments that you created in the past. I know that this part of the planner often gets neglected, but it really can be critical to understanding how and why you might make changes to a unit, especially if there are new members of a team who may not be as familiar with a unit. It is especially for this reason why you would want to start with planning. Not everyone interprets units the same way, especially when a central idea is broad. So team members need to “unpack” the unit’s concepts and think about how it could be approached differently, particularly when considering the students you have in your class. I’ve written about the importance of this before in this blog post.I think this is the most common way that teams approach the learning and teaching cycle–Teachers getting together and discussing what might be possible during this unit.

However, you can share the central idea with students and unpack it with them in order to co-construct the unit. The questions and ideas that emerged during those discussions with students then become the fodder to re-write aspects of unit in order to develop more student interest and agency. Sometimes that means we go back are re-write lines of inquiry, change learner profiles or switch our Atls. And sometimes it means that the content shifts. It really depends on what happens during the “unpacking” with students.

For example, consider this unit:

Central Idea: 

Circumstances impact opportunity and the ability to achieve.

Lines of Inquiry:

  1. The attributes of empathy(form)
  2. How opportunity is enabled (causation)
  3. The measurement of achievement (perspective)

A team of 4th grade teachers were going to approach this as a “copy and paste” type of unit, in which the focus has typically been on the role of social class in creating barriers or opportunities to success in life. However, when they unpacked it with students, it became clear that they were fascinated with disabilities and inclusion. It required the team to get back to the drawing board and re-design the unit with student interests in mind. Although the key concepts might stay the same, the related concepts shift from Poverty, Social Class, and Opportunity to Diversity, Innovation and Inclusion because students were keen to learn about how disabilities and neurodivergence lead to developing new technology to help people feel capable and involved in their lives.

When teachers respond to students like this, learning is more dynamic and student action can organically evolve from their enthusiasm. I’m sure you can see how responding like this can change the trajectory of a unit.

Press Stop: Assess

Before putting the car into drive, some teachers choose to stop and assess before beginning a unit. Pre-assessment is always a good idea, but since the pandemic, this approach seems like the most sensible for many units. We just aren’t sure where the conceptual and skill gaps may be, so we may need to do some formal assessments to see where students knowledge base lies. Once we have an idea of what students know, understand and can do, teachers can sit down with the data and then examine what concepts and skills make sense before launching a unit. Again, they may need to adjust content, change Atls and/or learning expectations.

“What would you expect to happen ...?”

I think predicting and reflection are 2 key superpowers that a PYP teacher needs when we consider how we can build strong units. As I continue to mull over this question, I think this question can be an important tool to help shake up unit planning and instigate critical thinking in our approaches. Whether it is asked 2 weeks before a unit of inquiry begins or as a strategy to provoke reflective thinking, this question can help us explore new ways that we could approach the unit.

What do you think? Are there other questions that we need to consider when determining the why and how we jump into the cycle of learning and teaching?

When is Inquiry not “Best Practice”?

When is Inquiry not “Best Practice”?

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My co-teaching partner leaned across her desk and asked, “So at what point do we stop ‘inquiry into this’ and start teaching them something?”. I responded with nervous laughter because her question sounded like blasphemy. It was an absolutely valid question though and has lingered in my mind for ages, particularly since I am aware of Professor John Hattie’s meta-analysis on high vs. low impact influences on student learning. According to Hattie’s Visible Learning Rankings, inquiry-based learning has a low ranking on its impact scales. I do recognize that inquiry-based learning comes in a variety of flavors, which is well represented by Sarah Plews’ breakdown in her Concept-based Inquiry Mini-PD course:

So I have often felt skeptical of Hattie’s findings because I think generalizing inquiry-based learning is doing this approach a disservice. However, I have come to accept that some content lends itself better to inquiry than others, and some concepts must be developed in a more structured way. I think the reason why inquiry-based learning falls flat on Hattie’s Impact Scales is that many practitioners aren’t sure when and why we might use different approaches.

So, are there moments in our PYP classrooms when we need to put inquiry-based teaching methods on the back burner and provide explicit and direct instruction? Yes, yes there are! And that doesn’t mean we are tossing out all the other PYP practices. This is not a “either/or” situation–either we teach through inquiry OR we are NOT a PYP school. Having a strong PYP program means that practitioners know what content and skills would be best taught through a variety of methodologies.

Ok……so what content and skills might those be, you wonder? Well, here’s the thing, it’s not just the WHAT but it is also the WHO. We have to consider the needs of our students before we decide HOW best to teach them. So what students benefit the most from direct instruction? I think the guidance below is helpful:

Students who learn and think differently. Without explicit instruction, students who struggle with attention or working memory may not focus on the most crucial ideas in a lesson. With explicit instruction, you cue students in to the most essential information.

English language learners. When you use consistent and clear language in each step of instruction, English language learners (ELLs) aren’t overwhelmed with new language demands. Research has shown that explicit instruction can lead to achievement gains among ELLs.

From Understood.Org

When we consider our students with learning needs, it seems obvious that we might alleviate the cognitive load by providing direct instruction. Consider this-When students have a clear understanding of what they are learning about, they are not using their brain power for meaning-making; instead, they are using their working memory to process this information and store it for later use.  This actually helps them, later on, to engage in an inquiry because they have the knowledge to draw upon during a more open-ended lesson. It’s a support, not a deterrent to more inquiry-based approaches.

Explicit and Direct Instruction for the Key Conceptual Lens of Form and Function

One of the filters I use for deciding when we need to explicitly teach something is considering if this is going to be new knowledge to students. Typically it is more efficient to teach the key concepts of What is it? (form) and How does it Work? (function) through a more direct instruction approach when students are acquiring new understandings of concepts or skills. Students need to know the definitions of things and procedural knowledge. Let’s not leave them guessing or feeling confused.

Think about it- can we just send kids with a stack of books and have them generate theories about how language works and then teach themselves to read? No, that would be professional malpractice! We have to explain foundational concepts to students.

Image from https://www.evidencebasedteaching.org.au

Let’s think about the words “explicit” and “direct”, another synonym is clarity. You might also think of this as “scaffolding”, in which the teacher is explaining and demonstrating a concept or procedure, and then giving students the opportunity to have guided practice. Educational research shows that when we “show and tell” how something works, it has a greater impact on learning.

Students require more explicit instruction with some of the following content and skills:

  • phonics and decoding skills
  • research skills
  • collaboration skills
  • using mathematical tools and strategies
  • safety skills
  • spelling and grammar
  • understanding time and chronology

So what might this look like or sound like in a PYP classroom?

Sounds like: Today we will be unlocking our thinking through the concept of Form and answering the question, “What is a closed syllable?” . We will be successful at becoming knowledgeable of this syllable type when we can:

  • Define what a closed syllable is.
  • Identify what words contain closed syllables and which ones do not.
  • Read at least 5 words with closed syllables in them.

So you may be wondering, What is a closed syllable? A closed syllable is when a vowel is followed by (or closed in by) one or more consonants.  The vowel sound is ‘short’.  This pattern is often referred to as the CVC pattern (consonant – vowel – consonant), although a closed syllable does not always begin with a consonant. Let’s take a look at some examples……

Now it’s your turn, can you sort these 10 words into the categories of Closed syllables and Not Closed syllables? When you are done sorting, read your words aloud, do you hear the short vowel sound in the word? When you think you have sorted the words correctly, you can compare your answers with a partner…..

Okay, before we go today, I want you to whisper to a friend what a closed syllable is and write at least one new word that contains a closed syllable on this sticky note. You can put your sticky on our Definition Chart for closed syllables. And, if you find any other new words when you are reading, grab a sticky note and write it down with your name on it, and put it on our chart.

Looks like:

  • teacher-selected materials and examples
  • the teacher talks more than the students
  • the students are engaged in a specific task, with little agency over how it is done.
  • there is an explicit “right answer” based on attaining the learning goal.

A closing thought

Teaching is complex, especially in the PYP. Although I have made a stark generalization in what Key Concepts might demand a teacher-directed approach, I ask you to think carefully about your unique learners and consider how best they acquire the knowledge, concepts, and skills they need to be successful. There are moments when we are not actively soliciting curiosity, asking students to problem-solve, or generating theories in our PYP classrooms. And if you choose to develop a lesson that isn’t inquiry-based, it doesn’t mean that you are desecrating the PYP principles.

We want to emphasize that being ‘an inquiry teacher’ does not necessarily mean using an inquiry approach for EVERY lesson.

-Carla Marschall and Rachael French, from Concept-Based Inquiry in Action

So, let’s be thoughtful and skillful in our pedagogical decisions, taking a more teacher-centered approach and providing direct instruction when the moment calls for it. Perhaps if we are more mindful of the merit of the precision of explicit teaching, then our inquiry moments will be more profound.

Above and Beyond: 3 Things that Teachers Must Do to Get “Good” at the #PYP

Above and Beyond: 3 Things that Teachers Must Do to Get “Good” at the #PYP

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As a PYP Coordinator, I am involved in the recruitment of teachers and their subsequent professional development. I’m always designing and redesigning the “induction” of new teachers into the PYP, reconsidering what it is that teachers need to get “good” at in order to become successful in understanding and delivering our framework.. You see, I think becoming a PYP educator requires you to have basic teaching skills as the basis of your pedagogical prowess on top of other frames of thinking around how students learn best. You have to go above and beyond certain professional requirements in order to be effective in using the PYP framework. 

Being the nerd that I am, I brainstormed a list of key teaching capabilities that I think make up the tool-kit of a PYP practitioner based upon the 2020 Programme standards and practices and this graphic from page 43 of Learning and Teaching:

Just in this graphic alone, there are 20 practices that PYP teachers need to develop competency in. But where do we begin to support the transition of thinking and planning like a PYP teacher?  After reflecting on this list, I think there are 3 main skills that teachers need to get good at in order to become proficient practitioners: 

  1. unpacking standards/curriculum and developing questions to explore, 
  2. creating learning opportunities that foster content knowledge, and 
  3. listening for learning. 

Although each of these areas deserves its own blog post, I will summarize what these foundational competencies mean to me. 

Competency #1: Turn Objectives into Questions

I am starting with this because it is the most pragmatic skill to develop and encapsulates 2 main aspects of our framework: concept-based learning and inquiry. That being said, it isn’t  necessarily easy to wrap your head around this but it is the heart of what we do when we develop students who thirst for understanding the curiosities of our world. 

Whether we are looking at a “boxed” curriculum or examining our content standards, we have to be thinking about the questions that live in them. Writing these questions down and then prioritizing them helps us to create a scope and sequence for the learning. We then use these questions as the basis of our daily or weekly learning objectives.

Let’s look at an example from the Common Core Grade 3 English Language Arts Reading Standards:

Phonics and Word Recognition:

Although I believe there are many ways to develop teacher questions, I always like to model how we can teach using Key Concepts by using them as the basis of brainstorming teacher questions:

Key Concept Key Question Teacher Question
Form What is it like? What is a prefix? What is a suffix?
Function How does it work? How do readers decode multi-syllabic words?
Change How is it transforming? What happens to the meaning of a word when we change the prefix? 
Connection How is it linked to other things? How can identifying the base word help us decipher the meaning of a word?
Causation Why is it as it is? Why does Latin form the basis of our language? 
Perspective What are the points of view? How are English words spelled differently in different English-speaking countries?
Responsibility What are our obligations? What are some ways we can remember irregular spellings of words?

As you can see, this is NOT an exhaustive list of possible questions from those standards, but it helps to start the generative process and cultivates a lot of discussion into what students need to be able to know, understand and do to acheive mastery in this standard (phonics and word analysis). 

Competency #2: Teach Learning rather than Content

One can say that the Approaches to Learning (AtLs) are when we put the Learner Profile in action. So targeting this skill in our teaching craft is a vital component of our PYP practice.

Personally I think philosophically everyone agrees that we have to teach students HOW to learn, but putting the Approaches to Learning into practice feels a bit like roller skating on a dirt road at first. Moreover, this can be a really big shift for some teachers, especially for teachers in the intermediate grade levels who feel committed to covering the content in a discipline. So practitioners have to develop an understanding that the content becomes the context for learning HOW to learn, rather than merely acquiring knowledge.

We can use the example above with the 3rd grade ELA standards, extending this exercise in creating teacher questions with exploring what AtL is the focus/ could be the focus as we learn this. As we begin to ponder the AtLs, it also supports the practice of “split screen thinking”–that a lesson’s objective is a combination of the disciplinary knowledge/skill and development of the attributes of a learner. 

Answering the question, what AtL is the focus/ could be the focus as we learn this? really depends on the goals of the unit of inquiry and what feels authentic during the learning engagements. Determing whether or not to target Social Skills, Thinking skills, Communication Skills, Self-Management Skills or Research Skills is also great fodder for a robust planning meeting. 

Using the previous teacher question chart, here’s what this might look like:

Key Concept Key Question Teacher Question What AtL can be developed?
Form What is it like? What is a prefix? What is a suffix? Communication Skills: Students can define and give examples of prefixes and suffixes. 
Function How does it work? How do readers decode multi-syllabic words? Thinking Skills: Students can use word attack strategies to read and spell words.
Change How is it transforming? What happens to the meaning of a word when we change the prefix?  Thinking Skills: Students can analyze parts of words to understanding the meaning of a word.
Connection How is it linked to other things? How can identifying the base word help us decipher the meaning of a word? Social Skills: Students can work in partnerships to examine words and identify the base word’s meaning. 
Causation Why is it as it is? Why does Latin form the basis of our language?  Research Skills: Students can take notes and share their understanding of Latin’s influence on the English language.
Perspective What are the points of view? How are English words spelled differently in different English speaking countries? Social Skills: Students can work in groups to generate a list of words that are spelled differently.
Responsibility What are our obligations? What are some ways we can remember irregular spellings of words? Self-management skills:

Students can come up with 3 ways that we can remember irregular spellings.

I’d also like to add that is excercise is a great scaffold for developing PYP assessment practices. When we consider which AtLs will be the focus, then it makes creating learning goals and success criteria more straightforward for teachers. 

Competency #3: Listen More than Speak:

They say that you have to learn to walk before you can run. Well, this skill is in this same line of thinking: You can’t develop a penchant for student agency until you can be student-centered in your approach to learning, and you can’t be student-centered unless you value their voice during classroom learning. 

I think developing this practice requires intention and being honest in answering this question after learning engagement:

What do we know about our learners that we didn’t know BEFORE this learning engagement?

Not only does answering this question help us to build our listening muscles, but is an essential component of teacher reflection and how we approach assessment in the PYP. We need to cultivate the skill of listening for learning in order to unearth possible misconceptions and analyze what needs to be the next step in the progression of conceptual understanding. If teachers dominate “air time” then we can’t make informed decisions. In my opinion, this is a precursor skill to documenting learning and helps PYP practitioners create structures to make thinking visible in the classroom. 

In summary, I think if you want to get good at the PYP you have to develop your competencies to Question, Support, and Listen for learning.

I’m curious, if you are a seasoned PYP practitioner, what do think are the first steps and entry points for new-to-PYP or early-career PYP teachers? Share and add to this discussion!

From Posters to Practice: Cultivating PYP Classrooms

From Posters to Practice: Cultivating PYP Classrooms

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As I walk through the halls of a school building, I am always looking for evidence of the culture and beliefs of the learning that takes place there. When I open a classroom door and peek my head inside, there is a lot of data: the furniture arrangement, where the teacher’s desk is (or isn’t), the classroom “decorations” and signs that thinking is taking place, and whether posters/charts on the wall are fixed or ever-changing, as well as who is creating the “decorations” in the classroom. The whiteboard is actually one of the most telling places in a classroom. It often includes the schedule and topics for that day, as well as the teaching points in a lesson. Sometimes I see student names on the whiteboard, and it makes me wonder why they are on there. 

As a coordinator that was new to my school, these walks made me question where we were as a school in terms of our implementation of the program. You see, I remember in my early days of being a PYP practitioner, my PYP coordinator insisted that I had the Learner Profile on display as well as the Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry. One of my new-to-the-PYP colleagues HATED this and thought it cluttered up her classroom wall space, encroaching upon her word wall and anchor charts.  I personally never resented this ask and always enjoyed finding fresh ways to display unit of inquiry work, but this debate about prioritizing our framework in our classroom environment has left an indelible mark. Should we, as pedagogical leaders, insist on having the framework on display? 

I’ve sat on this question all year long. Carefully observing classrooms and reflecting on whether or not elements of our program are being showcased in our learning areas, and whether or not that translated into better practice. To be honest, my view is still mixed. 

Is it a POSTER or a PRACTICE?

Display posters from Teacher Pay Teacher or Twinkle can just be a static fixture to appease the “PYP Gods”, as one teacher liked to refer them. But when I twisted his arm to post the Central Idea and Lines of Inquiry during the unit, his practices with concept-based inquiry improved. He referred more to our elements and started to use these teacher-centric materials as manipulatives. It could have been an odd coincidence, but I would like to believe that because it was in his eyesight, it was a reminder to ratchet up his inquiry approaches and refer more to our learner profile and approaches to learning as well. However, I had another teacher who had beautiful displays of the PYP jargon but never shifted from a very teacher-centered learning environment. Student agency?-that was only for students who were “good listeners” and “respectful”. So displays are hardly a telling sign of the quality of the practices. 

Why am I reflecting on this, you might ask? Why do I give a hoot about classroom displays? Well, anyone who has recently gone through or will be embracing an onsite IB evaluation visit understands why I am contemplating this. The environment of our schools provides an essential clue into our classroom practices and the overall “strength” of our PYP program. 

What are the telling signs of a constructivist classroom? As a PYP coordinator, making edicts on how our classrooms “should” look like I think would miss the goal of developing our skills as PYP practitioners. Instead, I think if teachers carefully examined the Life Long Learning Strand of the 2020 Standards and Practices, they can begin to think about what this could look like in the classroom environment. Here is a little brainstorming I have done as I think about what might be on “display” in our learning environments.

Lifelong learners 1: Students actively develop thinking, research, communication, social, and self-management skills. (0402-01)

This standard is about our Approaches to Learning–how are students learning how to be lifelong learners. Some examples of “artifacts” in a learning environment might include:

This “next level” KWL chart develops, not only attributes of the Learner Profile but supports the AtLs.
  • Students’ responses to Visible Thinking routines such as See, Think, Wonder, Creative questions, Feelings and Options.
  • Research questions posted
  • Anchor chart with peer feedback sentence starters
  • Student examples of solving math problems in different ways. 
  •  Compliment jars or boxes.
  • Interactive displays that support emotional regulation, decision-making, or collaboration skills.

Lifelong learners 2: Students demonstrate and reflect on their continued development of the IB learner profile attributes. (0402-02) 

This standard is about living the learner profile. Some examples of “artifacts” in a learning environment might include:

  • Student responses to Visible Thinking routines such as Step Inside, Red Light, Yellow Light, or Imagine If.
    From @kjinquiry
  • Split-screen learning objectives. (The “what” we are learning + the “who” we are becoming through the “how” we are learning).
  • Anchor charts with co-constructed success criteria or checklists.
  • Student-designed learning goals.

Approaches to teaching 1: Teachers use inquiry, action, and reflection to develop natural curiosity in students. (0403-01)

An interactive “unit wall”.

This standard is about our approaches to inquiry. Some examples of “artifacts” in a learning environment might include:

Approaches to teaching 2: Teachers focus on conceptual understanding to support students in developing their ideas. (0403-02)

Teaching dictionary skills with the Key Concepts.
  • Students’ thinking that emerged when “unpacking” the Central Idea or Lines of Inquiry.
  • Daily/weekly guiding questions are posted on the whiteboard.
  • Unit of Inquiry “Word Walls” that display the big ideas and key vocabulary.
  • Using the Key Concepts as opportunities to solicit student thinking and questions.
  • Student examples of work math prompt
  • Concept maps, which can be as simple as a mind-map, Frayer model, or more complex like a Visible Thinking Routine like Color, Symbol, Image. 

These ideas are hardly an exhaustive list. Moreover, any simple search on Pinterest will provide LOTS of visual examples of these ideas, and I love heading over to Sharing the PYP blog to see great models of practice. But I think what we really need to keep in mind is that these elements of our PYP program are not just classroom decorations, but living documentation of the robust learning that is taking place within its walls. Steeping our walls in the artifacts of learning shouldn’t be viewed as a chore, but a joy to curate all the wonderful moments we create in our learning communities by putting our PYP principles into practice.

The PYP Planner: The Challenges in Designing an “Enhanced” Collaboration Tool

The PYP Planner: The Challenges in Designing an “Enhanced” Collaboration Tool

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Ever since we decided to give one of the “enhanced” planners from the Programme Resource Centre a try, we have been reflecting on our planning process. Do these planning templates actually “enhance” our planning process? Moreover, how might our planner be a reflection of Who We Are? Between our frustration with the “enhanced” template and our school’s own initiatives, we thought it would benefit our planning if we co-constructed our own PYP planner.

The Process

In order to approach these questions, we used design thinking to navigate our discussions and our guide us on this journey. As you can see from the graphic below, it is not really a linear process but one that involves constant dialogue and reflection along the way.

Empathize and Define

We launched our discussions during teacher in-service days when we had a fair amount of time to explore and worked in mixed grade-level groups. As you might know already, schools can either use one of the planners provided by the PYP or develop their own planner based on the collaborative planning process. We started by examining the current “enhanced” planner that we had adopted earlier that year and had groups discuss its Pros and Cons, carefully considering…

  • The different elements of the PYP framework in the planner
  • The amount of “boxes”
  • The layout
  • Visual elements like colors and icons
  • The leading questions
    • Do they help your planning conversations? Why or Why not?

These conversations lead us to think about what is the purpose of the PYP planner and its role in collaboration. We took some time re-reading and reflecting on the IB’s document about the collaborative planning process before we researched different templates that other schools had created. Groups analyzed the templates and took notes on what they liked about each planner. Based on these conversations, we came up with some criteria that we wanted to in our own planner:

  • The essential elements of the PYP UOI planner.
  • Color coding for collaborative phases to help them know when they needed to be dipping back into the planner.
  • Some links to helpful documents or terms in case people had doubts about what to put in boxes.
  • Sections that clearly defined what the specialists were doing in their classes.

Ideate

Groups began to sketch out ideas and started to create their own versions in their teams. They could use either Google Docs or Google Slides to create their template. Their creations lead to many interesting conversations and lively debates. Eventually, we came back together and teams analyzed each other’s potential prototypes and we voted on one.

Prototype and Testing

The purpose of a prototype is to provide a representation of what a “final” design could be like. It gives the opportunity to analyze potential flaws and where there might be improvements. With this in mind, we gave the agreed-upon prototype a spin during our upcoming UOI planning. After the teams had a chance to use it, I met with them to discuss what they liked and didn’t like about it. I took notes and then made adjustments to create a final draft planner. I shared the draft planner and got feedback on its elements again. I created an exemplar and through that process, I continued to make revisions that supported our school’s goals.

Implement

During the course of this year, we have been using this final version. There are things that have worked and didn’t work with it. So even though we went through many iterative cycles, it’s not easy to create a planning document.

Do Betters

If I had to do this all over again, these are the areas that I think deserve more “air time” in the overall design of the planning document.

Collaborative Practices: To think that a one-size-fits-all planner is going to improve collaboration is naive and, in hindsight, I think an examination of our collaborative practices would have been a better place to start. Not only would it address the EMPATHIZE component better, but would have helped us DEFINE what we really needed in order to truly personalize our planner.

Connecting the head with the heart: Although our template definitely supports more understanding of the content in different subjects, supporting transfer is really tricky. Thinking through how we can get students to acquire knowledge and skills throughout the inquiry and make transdisciplinary connections is really a big goal of our learning framework. Moreover, how might their learning transfer into action? This is definitely something that we have to put front and center in our re-design.

Cultivating and Curating Curiosity: Evidencing the learning on the planner has been the hardest part of the planner to fill out. During the inquiry, teachers rarely remember specific questions that students asked unless they are captured on sticky notes or posters. Using digital platforms to upload pictures or learning artifacts is often a better source of documentation than our planners. This is an area that we must unpack more and consider how we can support assessment practices that develop learner-centered approaches and inform teachers.

I’m sure more ideas and reflections will emerge as we work to co-construct a meaningful PYP planner that supports our goals. I’m wondering what other considerations might be out there, but am hopeful that they will emerge as we move forward during the re-design of the planner.

Creating Machines or Mathematicians? How Might We Use the Learner Profile as a Math Planning guide in the #PYP

Creating Machines or Mathematicians? How Might We Use the Learner Profile as a Math Planning guide in the #PYP

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How would you finish this sentence? Math is…..

  • practical, a part of every day life
  • happening all around me.
  • fascinating
  • a language
  • a mindset
  • an opportunity to build relationships
  • a form of creative expression

These are just a few of the ideas that pop into my head as I reflect on what Math means to me. But I wouldn’t say that I felt that way all my life. There was a time when I wouldn’t answered it as boring or hard. It really wasn’t until I studied Calculus that I realized that the journey to getting an answer was actually where “math” happened. The solution wasn’t as rewarding as the struggle. And puzzling over a challenge can be fun. 

But no one has to wait until high school or college to experience joy when doing math. I feel strongly that we have an obligation to use our PYP framework to intentionally develop mathematcians. Lately I have been thinking, reading and reflecting on how to support New-to-the-PYP teachers in shifting their practices. More than I care to admit, I’ve heard these fledgling PYP teachers retort, “It’s okay to ‘do the PYP’ for Unit of Inquiry time but for literacy and math? Nah?!”

I fight to keep a straight face when I hear them say things like that, while inside my heart goes

The PYP isn’t some jargon-filled, philosophical mumbo-jumbo, it’s designed on best practices. I know that the framework is a lot to take in for newbies, and, as a PYP coordinator, I must be patient. They are learners. And I am a learner too….and sometimes I am learning how to get teachers to not only “drink the kool-aide” before they can serve it to others. 

But I digress…..

Examining the research and approaches to rich math learning experiences, it’s obvious to me that our PYP standards and practices are grounded in not only what is joyful but what is powerful in math learning. Take a look at this chart–doesn’t it just scream our Approaches to Learning?! 

From the book, Everything You Need for Mathematics Coaching: Tools, Plans, and a Process That Works for Any Instructional Leader, Grades K–12

I love how this chart clearly articulates what competant mathematics do and how teachers can create the culture and opportunites for engaging in learning to solve problems through math. For teachers who struggle without a textbook or scripted curriculum, transforming their practice takes a lot of support and compassion. I think we all can acknowledge that most teachers who fear to stray off the pacing guide or curriculum resource is really just trying to do their best to ensure that students get the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. They are not trying to be defiant or stubborn, they are just don’t feel competant enough in their own decision-making abilities to support learners. To call them robots or machines because they can’t teach without a script would be cruel. Chances are they never had an authentic experience in which they embodied the spirt and curiousity of a true mathematician. Whether you are in leadership or just a peer, we have a duty to encourage them to take baby steps and take risks. 

The Learner Profile isnt just for the Students

Since we are in the throes of our IB Review Cycle, I’ve been reflecting on the new standards and practices. In particular, I’ve been thinking about the Learning standard practice:

Approaches to teaching 4: Teachers promote effective relationships and purposeful collaboration to create a positive and dynamic learning community. (0403-04)

Approaches to teaching 4.1: Teachers collaborate to ensure a holistic and coherent learning experience for students in accordance with programme documentation. (0403-04-0100)

Approaches to teaching 4.2: Students collaborate with teachers and peers to plan, demonstrate, and assess their own learning. (0403-04-0200)

The “PYP” isn’t something we do during our Unit of Inquiry time, it’s how we approach EVERY aspect of learning content to ensure a holistic and coherent learning experience for students. Moreover, it’s not something that the students do. EVERYONE DOES it!! Teachers promote….a positive and dynamic learning community. To think that teachers work outside of the jargon is to miss the point. We provide students with an everyday example of living the Learner Profile. But do we use it when we are reflecting on our planning?

As a PYP practicioner, do you ever ask yourself…..

How am I using the Approaches to Learning (Atls) to do math?

Who are the students becoming as I create opportunities to develop the Learner Profile in the context of solving problems using math?

Those questions need to be asked on a daily basis, as an individual teacher and within our teaching teams. When we live and breathe the values and philosophy, it’s easy to communicate it to other members in our learning community. 

Since I am working on supporting teachers who still learning how to shift their mindset and approach to designing learning experiences through the lens of the PYP, I’ve been thinking about how I might try to kill 2 birds with one stone:

#1: Elevate the implementation of our IB Standards and Practices

#2: Use the Learner Profile as a filter/checklist as we plan.

After a lesson, we might reflect, how did I create…

Risk-taking today?

Open-mindedness today?

Thinkers today?

Communicators today? 

etc…

Circling back to the “baby steps” a novice PYP practicioner might take could include embracing one or more of our Learner Profiles as we approach planning math, whether it is a stand-alone unit or transdisciplanary.  For example, perhaps they want to set a goal and become more of an INQUIRER in their math practices. I can help them then paint a picture and start to describe what kind of evidence they might see, hear or feel in the classroom environment to demonstrate that they are achieving this professional goal. Moreover, when I come into the classroom and see the teacher honoring the kids questions about math on a Wonder Wall, I need to acknowledge and provide accolades for their effort to shift their practice. Change isn’t easy and becoming a competant PYP teacher requires intention and a desire to be a creative educator. And, at the end of the day, I want them to experience the joy of engaging in math, not as a machine, but as a real mathematician–even if they have to live vicariously through the students.

I’m curious, can you think of other ways might we help support the development of PYP teachers through explicitly developing who we are as educators through naming and noticing the Learner Profile?  Please share in the comments below! 

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