Lately, I’ve been having a lot of conversation about the use of technology in the classroom. At our school, we have to put app selection through the lens of the SAMR model before it can be purchased for classroom use. Naturally, it got me thinking about what IS really an educational app. Is using SAMR …
I’ve opened a can of worms. After our last Sharing the Planet unit, I felt exasperated and wanted to shift some units around so we could develop more conceptual understandings in science. We have 3 units left since it’s the end of the term, so the choices were: Where We Are in Place and Time, How …
In the purest sense of the PYP, everything is the Unit of Inquiry (UOI), right? One of the greatest suppositions of transdisciplinary learning is to try to create enduring understandings that connect as many dots with the discrete subject areas. For example, when we think about how young children learn, when they play with blocks, …
It doesn’t matter if you have been teaching for 8 months or 18 years, you will experience a bombed lesson from time to time. But a bombed unit-well, that I have yet to experience until now. And it has been the most frustrating 6 weeks of my life, as I have worked relentlessly to cultivate …
In our last planning retreat, we spent a lot of time discussing provocations so that students would develop a genuine appreciation and care for the blessed planet we live on instead of retreating indoors to their “screens” and engaging in a “virtual reality” that our digital lives seem to provide. We pondered what was more …
Sometimes you teach what you know well, and sometimes you teach what you want to know better. Mindfulness is definitely a skill that is under development and I am learning right along with the students. As a digital immigrant, my life has transitioned from simple face-to-face interactions and long conversations on the telephone to pop-up …
It’s hard to imagine that the Innovator’s Mindset MOOC is coming to a close.  I’m ever so grateful for this IMMOOC community as this came at just the right time when I was going through a rough patch in my teaching career when our 1st-grade team was falling apart due to illness and these blog posts …
Our attitudes steer our decisions and build momentum in everything we do. A space is at its most sublime when it reinforces and encourages desired values. The first step in designing a space to support particular attitudes is to define those attitudes. – From the book, Make Space, by d.School I have come to …
It’s only Wednesday, and the week has been full of highs and lows. And the funny thing is that it’s not with the students, it’s within me. I have just come off an incredibly proud moment for the students in which they built a city which was incredibly creative and collaborative. They did such an …
The Sharing the Planet theme is usually one of the most difficult to teach because the topics are so heavy and there’s quite a lot of knowledge base that needs to be developed as we inquire into the rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and living things. Think of …
