400 minutes a day is roughly what most students spend in school. After 180 school days, my 1st graders will have spent 72,000 minutes in our learning community (given that they are not absent) and move onto 2nd grade.What will they have learned? Who will they be at the end of that time? Will our …
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? Today was their opportunity to present their knowledge and efforts in our unit, how did that make them feel? At …
Sometimes I wonder why we spend so much time discussing and deliberating Central Ideas and the nit-picky debates over the conceptual understandings. Why not just copy the sample Programme Of Inquiry that is inside the Making the PYP Happen document or other go-to places to find tried and true units of inquiry? We would be …
“Think about it– we (teachers/educators) have never left school. What does that say about us?”, Chad Walsh leans in to tell me. Chad is always asking provocative questions, and his curious idea lingers in my head all day long as we explore collaboration during our professional development days. I’ve never heard of the work done …
Everyone needs a kick in the pants sometimes. Recently I went on a Writer’s Workshop professional development training in Yangon, Myanmar. Since I’ve been in the Early Years for such a long time, it was fantastic to get a refresher course on this unique philosophy and approach to teaching writing and reading. I love it because …
Recently I had someone grilling me about writing journals, and I was deeply surprised and amused since we have so many notebooks and journals for our students that they can’t even fit into their cubbies. And yes, sure, it’s a common practice to have students hold their ideas in a journal, but I believe writing is thinking; …
How do we professionally end up in the “Learning Pit”. Well, “if we are deliberately growing and changing as professionals, our cutting-edge beliefs are often ahead of our practices.”
I had an Aha-Moment this week and I am bursting to share it! You see I grew up and was trained in the American school system so most of my pedagogical schema is steeped in a Standards-Based Approach to teaching and learning. Lessons must have learning objectives, which usually are framed around the State’s curriculum …
Anyone who teaches the Primary Years Program knows preciously what I mean by the word unpack. But just for clarity sake, let me explain: Unpack (verb): to explain and define the key conceptual understandings and “big words” used in a central idea and lines of inquiry, usually as a part of “tuning into” a new …
I love the International Baccalaureate but the jargon really can get you jumbled up, especially when you are new to the program. In the PYP, we use a lot of terminologies that others would just call “best practice”. However, there is a word that pops up quite a lot: provocation. Now someone might call it the …
