Category: transdisciplanary skills

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

#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!

#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.

Why Schools Should Rethink the Use of Classroom Time

Why Schools Should Rethink the Use of Classroom Time

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Before I begin to ruminate on the title of this post- are you familiar with the work of Cal Newport? His book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, changed the way I think about my use of personal time. I highly recommend it. Its premise is simple, we live in the Age of the Knowledge Worker, in which our highest value to society is the ability to apply our understanding to solve problems and think critically.  Our fragmented attention deters us from doing something well, and thus if we want to work at our highest levels, then we must “drain the shallows” of our life and put the focus on developing the skills the understanding that will move us forward in our work and passions through ruthless command of our schedules and excavating frivolous habits that waste our time and do not produce any benefit in our lives.

Since reading this book, I systematically eke out time in which I can do research and reading to improve my craft as an educator. The more I work with the principles of Deep Work, the more I wonder how it can be applied to my classroom.

As an avid fan of his blog, I have to share an excerpt of a recent post:

A Tale of Two Schedules

In 2009, tech investor Paul Graham published an influential essay titled “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.” In this piece, he argued that the best types of schedules for people who makes things are different than the best schedules for those who manage things.

As Graham elaborates:

“The manager’s schedule is…embodied in the traditional appointment book, with each day cut into one hour intervals. You can block off several hours for a single task if you need to, but by default you change what you’re doing every hour…”

“…But there’s another way of using time that’s common among people who make things, like programmers and writers. They generally prefer to use time in units of half a day at least. You can’t write or program well in units of an hour. That’s barely enough time to get started.”

He then delivers the key conclusion: “When you’re operating on the maker’s schedule, meetings are a disaster.”

Though Graham doesn’t mention it specifically in the essay, we might add that the need to keep up with an inbox or chat channel can be equally disastrous to a maker. The constant context switching, as we now know from research, also prevents the maker’s brain from fully engaging the creative task at hand.

In the years since this essay was published, it has spread widely. The (slightly modified) terms maker schedule and manager schedule are well-known, and most people who deal with both types of workers agree that Graham is speaking the truth: if you want someone to make something valuable, they’ll be most effective if you let them work in long, uninterrupted chunks.

But here’s the thing: almost no organizations support maker schedules.

Speaking of organizations…ahem, let’s talk about schools, shall we? What does your school timetable look like?- Are you creating “makers” or “managers” in your school? And, is one type better than the other, you might ask?–what am I implying here?

This is actually tricky to articulate but I’m wondering about my students’ futures. Managing seems to go with manufacturing, which I believe automation will make so many of those jobs obsolete. So developing their time organization skills seems more relevant as a “maker”.

But I am reminded of the words of Katie Wood Ray, a passionate educator of young writers, who says:

We need to talk about time in our conversations about the teaching of writing. Time is not just when writing instruction happens in school; time must be part of the curriculum, part of what students are learning about as they develop as writing. You see, it doesn’t really matter how many craft lesson or genre studies a teacher plans for students if she doesn’t first teach them how to sit down in chairs, stay there for a long time, and make some work for themselves that leads to writing. With blank paper in front of them, students have to leave how to make something out of nothing, and they must learn to come back the next day and do it again. The curriculum of time is fairly simple: Sit. Stay. Put something on the paper.

Excerpt from her book In Pictures and In Words: Teaching the Qualities of Good Writing

As a teacher of young students, I wholeheartedly agree that we must instill in our students’ a desire and curiosity in order for them to develop stamina and elaboration/experimentation in their work.  They must learn how to focus. I think ahead to next school year, I know I want to create habits of critical thinking and deep work, in which students approach their learning with the willingness to engage in the effort to create something. I know that some schools have Genius Hour or have special occasions such as Day of Design, but what if there were more embedded opportunities within a day to do something like this? Not only am I refreshing myself in the workshop model, but I am spending some time this summer considering how I might cultivate this habit and how I might structure it in the classroom. I want them to have the time to think and create artifacts of their learning that matter to them, that communicate who they are and what they care about. I want them to be intentional with their time.

I believe that we owe to our students to analyze our school timetables and consider if we are helping or harming our students in preparing for their future work. Are we bobbing from subject to subject or are we offering them chunks of the day dedicated to learning? Can we cultivate curiosity and carve out long blocks of time in which students can explore ideas and projects that matter to them and yet still move them forward in developing skills and knowledge?

What do you think? How does your school or your classroom develop time management skills in students? Do you think block time is successful in creating a culture of Deep Work? 

Homework Vs. Deep Work

Homework Vs. Deep Work

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We had an open house this week, and as I sat down to answer parent questions about our Primary Years Programme, I opened up my Powerpoint, prepared to refer to my laundry list of all the ways the International Baccalaureate is wonderful. But then questions came and my presentation took care of itself. I began to get a clear picture of how truly different we are and how rigid so many schools are in China. One mother pined for her 3rd-grade son’s happiness and felt awful that she had to battle him daily to do 2 hours or more of homework a night. Having 2 hours or more of homework?–a parent’s free time also gets demolished as I’m sure they have to sit there with their student to complete the worksheets. You can imagine that both parties suffer burnout and do not enjoy these nightly sessions. So parents feel equally imprisoned by the idea of doing homework, as what they see as a necessary evil.

Yet, this is endemic of living in Asia–so many of the countries here, with their large populations and competitive job markets, staunchly value education as the only means to have a decent life. School is life for young people, and it is also very normal that children, beginning in Kindergarten, get tutors or attend “academy”–a night school that teachers next year’s math or other content knowledge.

Ever since this meeting, my mind is wandering, thinking about my own child.  I love my little person and I want her to come home eager to tell me her tales of school that day. I don’t want to berate her about doing homework.  So earlier this year, I had her think about creating a homework schedule, which obviously has a fair amount of parent input (my daughter never would put in IXL willingly). You can see the final schedule in this post, which amusingly you can notice that the weekend is “Hannah’s to do list”–meaning that mom and dad leave her to her own devices.

However, I am starting to rethink this concept of homework, which is essentially practicing what the skills that they are in the midst of learning that week. I do think this is important and of value, but I’d also like to cultivate her interests, which lately has been coding and Minecrafting. I’m a big fan of Cal Newport and his treatise on Deep Work which can be summarized here (although I recommend you read the book since there are more nuggets inside). cal newport

In particular,  Cal recommends that one “drains the shallows” and create focused, uninterrupted attention on developing a skill, working on a project or task that is challenging and demands ideation to promote innovation in your area of interest. When looking over one’s schedule, it is vital to quantify the depth of every activity–is it moving you towards a goal or achievement? Is it really helping you to cultivate depth of knowledge and expertise? Once you evaluate your schedule, then you recreate it and reallocate your time to doing this “deep work”. The end goal of these accumulated hours is to bring into fruition new and better ways of doing something, solving a problem or producing a product which will have an overall greater benefit on humanity.

With this idea in mind, I asked my daughter if she had to get rid of something on her schedule, what would it be, draining the shallows, sort of speaking. She told me that she’d get rid of the writing on Tuesday. When I probed to know why she told me that she didn’t like writing, she told me that she likes to draw and she never gets to do that in her writing prompts. She’s in 1st grade, the year when drawings are replaced with words to convey ideas, but I could appreciate her struggle with the transition. (Through this conversation, I gleaned some insights and it gave me an idea for next year to try when I teach 1st grade, as I motivate students into using better word choice rather than pictures to describe their ideas.) I told her to redo her schedule and she readily replaced writing with coding. As you look at her schedule below, it was obvious to me that her interests are emerging.

 

Although I’d like her schedule to be refined to maybe 1 or 2 focused items a day, it is a first step towards managing one’s time and developing readiness for “deep work”.
It got me thinking if all students were to be asked to do this task–creating their own after school schedule, what would it be? How could we instill within our students a desire to pursue their interests?–to redirect their attention to work that is meaningful to them. This idea of time management is one of the Transdisciplinary Skills or Approaches to Learning (ATL) that we seek to create in our IB learners. So as much as I want students to practice skills that they are in the midst of developing, I also want them hungry to learn so that they independently and organically augment their abilities. This is a key distinction of learning in the IB. So, I am just wondering if we were to tweak the idea of homework and teach parents to be partners in their student’s passions if that would make for more fulfilled families, overall. Perhaps introducing this concept of “deep work”, reframing homework in a new light, could not only shift the dynamics of home learning but could also inspire greater student selected inquiries into their passions.

 

I’m definitely interested in anyone else’s experiences with transforming homework into a joy rather than a drudgery. Please connect with me @judyimamudeen or leave comments below.

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From Mind into Matter: 5 Ways to cultivate the Mindset of the MakerSpace

From Mind into Matter: 5 Ways to cultivate the Mindset of the MakerSpace

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There is a Zen saying, “to know and not do is to not yet know.”  This seems relevant in today’s shifting views about learning, and I recognize my own struggle as an educator in preparing students for the unknown of the future. One of the skills that seem most intangible for me is teaching students to be more discerning in their learning-how to get them to love the journey and not the destination, so they want to ask more questions and dig deeper.

Lately, I’ve been inspired by the book, Invent to Learn. I think it really speaks to this disposition of curiosity as the impetus for extended learning, in which the child’s mind becomes the essential “makerspace”; our classrooms merely become the concrete representation of this immaterial world of their ideas. Experimenting and creating something is an act of discovering that a thought can be made solid.

It acknowledges that the power of making something comes from a question or impulse that the learner has, and is not imposed from the outside. Questions like “How can my car go faster?” or “I like the way this looks, can I make it prettier?” are treated as valid, and in fact, potentially more valid than criteria imposed by anyone else, including a teacher. Learners are empowered to connect with everything they know, feel, and wonder to stretch themselves into learning new things. We seek to liberate learners from their dependency on being taught.

Sylvia Libow Martinez, Invent to Learn.

As I reflect on the quote above, I think about how important it is to catch students in the act of curiosity so that I can implore them to engage in their ideas. In this way, I am no longer the guide but their champion. I wonder if this encouragement can compensate for the attitudes in our societies, in which quick fixes are highly valued. I believe it’s important to have students develop their stamina and see failure as an important element for their inevitable success.

Making things has changed the way they look at the world around them, opening new doors and presenting new opportunities to get deeply involved in processes that require knowledge, skill building, creativity, critical thinking, decision making, risk taking, social interaction, and resourcefulness. They understand that when you do something yourself, the thing that changes most profoundly is you. (Frauenfelder, 2011)

There are several units in our POI (programme of inquiry) that could incorporate many of ideals of the makers mindset. I know in the Early Years, this is easiest to do because students at this age have the permission to play. This seems a bit unfair when you think of it. “Play is called recreation because it makes us new again, it re-creates us and our world.” (Brown & Vaughan, 2010). I think this process of re-creation is ongoing and the foundation of life-long learner. Implanting design-processthis mindset into classrooms could not only empower students, but also teachers. Moving out of our instructional comfort-zones then becomes an act of faith, because we have to be trust that students can learn on their own. As soon as I write that sentence, it seems self-evident–of course students can learn on their own–that is their natural inclination!! But how can we nudge them to taking their discoveries from thoughts into doings? How can we translate the ideas of the minds into real learning.

Here are 5 strategies that might help teachers render the MindSpace of the Learner into a reality:

  1. Be curious about what students are curious about. Not all students will present their curiosities as questions–in fact many young students present their ideas as statements. Write and track them, even if anecdotally.
  2. Use self-evaluation for students to reflect and assess their attitudes towards the design mindset. This could be as formal or informal as you like, such as a discussion with a 1-3 finger self-assessment or a journal entry.
  3. Advertise problems and promote solutions, even if they are silly.
  4. Set up a classroom “creation station” with some”junk” to be repurposed.
  5. Share inspirational stories as exemplars. You can connect with other classrooms either in your school or virtually through a resource like ePals.

I know that I will take my own advice as I strive to make my classroom more engaging and student-centered. I wonder what suggestions others might have about shifting our classrooms into laboratories of the mind. Perhaps you can share below what other ideas or strategies you might have.

Until then, stay in Joy!

 
Supporting Inquiry with Apps

Supporting Inquiry with Apps

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Our school does a BYOD  iPad program for grades 3-5, and then we have sets of iPads that are shared with EY-P2. Using iPads for learning has been really beneficial but it’s not all rainbows and flowers. It takes experience and thoughtfulness when using apps because sometimes you spend more time on learning the technology vs. actually doing the project you intended. This happened twice last year for me while using Padlet to do a collaborative mindmap as a part of a formative assessment and then keeping a digital journal using Microsoft’s OneNote.  It was a love-hate relationship, and I learned a lot from the experience.

So now as I support teachers with using apps in their classroom I have to think about how long it might take to teach a new application and if the benefits of the learning outweigh this loss of instruction. Here are some apps that I like that I think can support some of our upcoming Units of Inquiry:

EY 4: People can help our communities by working in different ways.

  • Inventioneers and Busy Water. I love these apps because they have a great STEM link for little ones as they learn how to design and build structures in order to solve problems. Busy water is less challenging, in my opinion, but both games are engaging.inventioneers

KG:  Living things have specific needs in order to grow and stay healthy.

  • Virry: This is a great interactive game with “live” animals (I presume in a zoo setting), in which you get to feed animals like lions or meerkats. The free version just lets the kids do limited basic things whereas if you get a subscription, you have more engagement and learn more about the animals. I don’t mind paying for subscriptions when more content is added, but I haven’t seen that yet. However, it is a very unique game and it is worth the .99 USD for a month of its use.

virry

P1: Personal histories help us to reflect on who we are and where we’ve come from.

  • Aging Booth or Old Fart Booth: The kids LOVE these! This apps give them the impression of what they could look like as an elderly person. And the apps are FREE–my favorite word!

aging-booth

P2: Maps can be used to help people locate places.

 Google Maps and Google Earth are the most obvious choices. And although there are other great apps out there , after reading this website, I think that Google Maps is so rich, there is no reason why other apps are really needed. Quality over quantity! However, teachers could recommend other apps like National Girrafic and Tiny Countries for home learning.

smarty-pins

P3: Understanding movement enhances our creativity.

We have had a lot of conversation about which way this inquiry could go. The Arts teachers will obviously focus on dance and expressing movement visually. The last unit was about covered content like body systems and nutrition so I thought Grade 3 could consider movement in terms of exercise and think about apps like Charity Miles to link creative ways to encourage movement. But if you consider movement with a perspective as a scientist or engineer, then that opens up a variety of other applications. Here are some ideas:

  • Scratch Jr, Hopscotch , or Logotacular: coding comes to mind as a neat way to think about programming movement. However, it really depends upon the teacher and their skill level in order to guide students, but there are a myriad of coding apps (more than I listed here), so it would be easy to differentiate for learners.
  • Simple Machines: I am a fan of the Tinybop developer apps. This one is quite nice but I do think Inventioneers could more engaging for this age group; although the Amazing Alex app would be my first choice–if only it was offered for iPads. Sigh..

charity-miles

I’ve already blogged about using technology in the upcoming P4 unit: Getting Modern about Ancient Times. And P5’s next unit (Humans express their ideas and use persuasion to influence others.) focusing on using surveys, which they use Excel for their results; so their technology concentration is on using spreadsheets and converting data into graphical representations with that program.

But hopefully sharing these ideas will help inspire you about what and how you can use apps in your classroom. I really interested in others’ ideas if any other apps come to mind when looking at our Central Ideas for our inquiries. Please share in the comments below!

Happy Apping!

 

 

 
Stranger in a Strange Land: Research in the Digital Age

Stranger in a Strange Land: Research in the Digital Age

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During one of our collaborative planning meetings,  we were discussing how students are keen to grab their iPads rather than a book when they are doing research. Some of us remarked how we have to make students aware of the books in our classrooms as a primary source of information, rather than going down the rabbit hole of internet research. It became clear that integrating technology with research skills really brings up our “digital divide” with our students. And perhaps one of the greatest challenges is to teach what we, ourselves, have limited experience or expertise in. How can teachers move from being digital voyeurs (people who recognize the shift to digital, but reluctant to embrace it)  to digital immigrants (people who have crossed the chasm to the digital world, and learned how to engage with it)?

digitial-landscape

So the teacher becomes the student!  How can we help students conduct online research whilst developing our own understanding of the blindspots involved in internet research?

becomebetteronlineresearchers

Because I teach in the Early Years, I could not really rely on my own experience and had to do my own digging around on how to research online in order to support fellow teachers.  I started on Edutopia and was relieved to read about the approaches to teaching research skills  by Mary Beth Hertz that provided a good starting place when arming students with tools and strategies. Also, I found these lessons that support online research for students and felt like it could be a good place to begin for direct instruction during our technology time. And then the ideas in this website could be used for a more inquiry-based approach to teaching these skills.

I learned a lot actually in this query into how to teach research skills and I am excited to hear the reflections of our teachers as they negotiate digital learning in their classrooms.

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