Tag: concept based learning

The PYP Planner: A Shift in Our Approach to Planning Inquiry (#enhancedPYP )

The PYP Planner: A Shift in Our Approach to Planning Inquiry (#enhancedPYP )

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Quick Quiz: What is the first “box” in the PYP planner? Did these things come to mind?:

What is our purpose?   To inquire into the following:

  • Transdisciplinary theme:    
  • Central idea :  

summative assessment task(s):

What are the possible ways of assessing students’ understanding of the central idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?

Now with the enhancements in the Primary Years Programme (PYP), we can redesign our planner which has to lead to an overhaul of our collaborative planning. If you notice in the Box #1, aside from clarifying our theme and central idea, we would start planning our summative. However, we haven’t done any assessment of student’s prior knowledge, and I often found that determining the summative assessment before we have even launched a unit of inquiry (UOI) has always led to more teacher direction in our units, as if we are nudging and, sometimes pushing the students toward our end goal–The Summative Task. Think about it, when we plan in this way, we are already dictating the terms of what we want the students to Know, Understand, and Do (aka: KUD) before we have even gotten them to SHOW US what they already know, understand and do. A bit presumptive of us, really, eh?

Needless to say, since the reigns are off, and schools get to design PYP planners in the Enhanced PYP, there’s been a shift in how we approach planning. And the new “Box 1” (figuratively) is about planning our provocation FIRST so we can let the students reveal to us what they know and lead the direction of the UOI, rather then us marching them towards the summative. It may seem trivial, but when you consider how AGENCY is the new core of our curriculum, we need to be approaching our units in different ways.

Let me provide a context, looking at our Math Stand Alone:

Patterns and sequences occur in everyday situations.
-Patterns can be found in numbers.
-Types of number patterns
-Patterns can be created and extended.

Key concepts: Connection, Form, Reflection

Related concepts: pattern, sequences, collections/groups

As a team, including our Math Leader of Learning (Olwen Millgate), we sat down and discussed the many different ways that we could plan a provocation around this central idea. At the end of the day, we determined that the most open-ended, the better, so that students could exercise as much creativity and skills as possible. We would just be the “researchers” in the classroom, observing and noting what the students came up with when given the challenge–Create as many patterns using one or more of the materials provided. 

As teacher researchers, we divided up the students so that we could take notes, making sure that all students were given the time and attention to “show what they know” about patterns. Here is the simple observational sheet that was created for this provocation: (Free to use)

We gave the students a variety of math tools to work with:

  1. counters
  2. ten frames
  3. unifix cubes
  4. Cuisenaire Rods
  5. beads
  6. pattern blocks
  7. peg boards
  8. tanagrams
  9. popsickle sticks
  10. white board and markers
  11. stampers and paper
  12. dominos
  13. magnetic letters and boards

As you can see, they had a plethora of options, and the students engaged freely, making their own choices and creations. Some students preferred to work by themselves while other collaborated–another aspect that we noted along with capturing their conversations. Here are just a few of those creations:

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There was a very loud and animated group at the Unifix cube station–which surprised us all by how excited they got about building “tall patterns”, with a lot of debate about whether they were just snapping cubes together or generating a true pattern. Although to outsiders, it may have felt chaotic, there were fantastic conjectures going on, which we saved a few examples to use for future provocations. (The Guiding Question: Is this a pattern? Why or Why Not?)

Later, our team met to discuss what we observed and we were able to sift through our documentation. We unpacked the provocation, and shared our photos and notes, describing some of the interactions that we had with them. Then we went to our curriculum and examined the phase the students might be achieving at in their conceptual understandings. Our central idea comes from the PYP Maths Scope and Sequence in Phase 1, so we needed to challenge it —is this the phase they are actually in or are we seeing evidence of Phase 2 understanding? We decided to stick with our central idea and lines of inquiry because we felt like we saw and heard evidence that most of our learners were on the tail end of this phase, applying their understanding of pattern.

After this conversation, we went on to determine what our next steps could be. Most of the patterns were ABABAB–do we encourage them to make ABCABCABC or other more sophisticated patterns? At the end of our deliberations, we decided that rushing them might create conceptual gaps so we wanted to stick with their ABABAB, but create a series of opportunities to look at how we could manipulate only 2 variables to generate a variety of patterns. What can we do with only 2 attributes?–This became the guiding question for our upcoming provocations.

So here we are, in Week 2 of this unit and we still haven’t nailed down our summative task. Gasp, right? But, on Friday, after this week’s follow up provocations, we can safely appreciate our learners, where they are and where we can take them during the remaining weeks of the unit. I find that thrilling. We will create our conceptual math rubric, using this generic one as our guide:

math standalone 2

Hopefully, you can see that we are thinking about planning not as boxes but phases in our inquiry. We are using this “tuning in” period to dictate the terms of our how we will ultimately assess students. And we are spending more time researching and planning our provocations so that they can make the children’s thinking visible and expose their understanding of the math concepts. I believe that as this approach to planning evolves, our attitudes toward our students also evolve when we are observing how they are competent and creative when expressing their ideas.

I’m wondering how other schools have begun to consider the impact of planning on agency and how it will look in the Enhanced PYP. The planner has always been a tool for us to shape our collaboration and thinking about how best to meet our students’ needs in the inquiry. I think it will be fun to see how schools begin to shift as they reflect deeply on the importance of it–it’s more than just an exercise in paperwork, it is an artifact of learning.

So what’s your “Box #1”?

#Inquiry in the #PYP: From Paper to Practice: 5 Approaches for Provocations (that “Stick”)

#Inquiry in the #PYP: From Paper to Practice: 5 Approaches for Provocations (that “Stick”)

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Even though we all use ‘the framework’, we have all sorts of curriculums in our schools.  Some schools use the PYP Scope and Sequences, others use their national curriculums and yet others look at curriculum like a buffet- take a bit of AERO Standards, some of this from the Common Core and a portion of  NGSS (Next Generation Science Standards). (Nevermind that most schools don’t even acknowledge any Technology Standards) Whatever approach you take to the “Written Curriculum”, you have to bridge what you put on paper with what is the “Taught Curriculum” is going to look like and how on Earth are you going to let student agency influence it.

This sort of tension is what I am really thinking about and concerned with–how are we going to shift our thinking about the “Written Curriculum” being the driver into it being the “map” that we can use to go on divergent paths created by student’s interests. And I think solid provocations are the “starting line” from which are learning journey begins. Although I have written about provocations before, I wanted to come at from a different angle from the ideas presented from the book, Made to Stick. (I am a huge fan of the writing of Dan and Chip Heath). Because at the heart of a provocation, we want it to leave an indelible mark and make a real impact on students’ thinking in order to create action and authentic agency.  They would call this type of learning “sticky”. (Don’t you love that?)

But the challenge of creating a provocation is that you know too much. The Heath brothers term this, the Curse of Knowledge. Here’s what they mean:

It’s a hard problem to avoid—every year, you walk into class with another year’s worth of mental refinement under your belt. You’ve taught the same concepts every year, and every year your understanding gets sharper, your sophistication gets deeper. If you’re a biology teacher, you simply can’t imagine anymore what it’s like to hear the word “mitosis” for the first time, or to lack the knowledge that the body is composed of cells. You can’t unlearn what you already know. There are, in fact, only two ways to beat the Curse of Knowledge reliably. The first is not to learn anything. The second is to take your ideas and transform them.

Stickiness is a second language. When you open your mouth and communicate, without thinking about what’s coming out of your mouth, you’re speaking your native language: Expertese. But students don’t speak Expertese. They do speak Sticky, though. Everyone speaks Sticky. In some sense, it’s the universal language. The grammar of stickiness—simplicity, storytelling, learning through the senses—enables anyone to understand the ideas being communicated.

(From Teaching, Made to Stick, by Dan and Chip Heath)

I can really relate to this, especially when I taught older students because I thought they already “knew stuff”. With that in mind, provocations can really reveal what students are thinking and feeling.  So now that you have the context of why provocations can be so powerful and transformative for student learning, I’d like to share with you 5 approaches for provocations (that “stick”):

1.Unexpected: Create curiosity and pique interest with unexpected ideas and experiences that open a knowledge gap and call to mind something that needs to be discovered but doesn’t necessarily tell you how to get there.

Example-Central Idea: The use of resources affects society and other living things.

Take out all the classroom resources that are made from petroleum products after school one day. The next day,  have the students come in and be shocked?-where did all those resources go? Then have them consider what these resources have in common. And then have them consider the impact on society if these non-renewable resources went away.

2. Concrete: Ground an idea in a sensory reality to make the unknown obvious.

Central Idea: Economic activity relies on systems of production, exchange, and consumption of goods and services.

Create a classroom economy by “printing” money and having students create businesses. Turn all of your classroom resources into “commodities” or by providing services (like sharpening pencils) to illustrate the conceptual understandings. This provocation goes on for weeks, by the way, so that they can experience the related concepts of scarcity and marketing.

3. Credible: Demonstrate ideas and show relationships to “prove” a point.

Central Idea: Informed global citizens enhance their communities.

CRAAPgraphicGo through news articles either on a social media news feed or through an internet search on a topic that is relevant and interesting to your students or controversial (ex: climate change). Have the students examine at least 3 websites or sources of information and put them through the filter of the CRAAP test.

4. Emotional: Powerful images, moving music, role-play–anything that incites either strongly positive or negative feelings.

Central Idea: Homes reflect local conditions and family’s culture and values.

Using images from photos of children’s bedrooms from around the world have the children try to match the picture of a child with a picture of a bedroom. Why do they think those images go together? What evidence in the photo might suggest the values and culture of that child’s family?

5. Story: Use a story, whether from a book, a video or from your own life, to illustrate a challenge or provide a context worth exploring.

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

Share the story of One Plastic Bag and have students reflect on the impact her small action had made in her community. What would you do with a plastic bag? (During our  1st-grade classes’ personal inquiry time, students were invited to take some plastic bags and play around with those materials. It is interesting to see who and how they took action.)

So there you go. These are just 5 approaches to 5 central ideas. Crafting provocations are probably one of the best things I love about the PYP and when we share insight into how we can approach these central ideas, I think it elevates everyone’s schools because of the insights gained.  I’d love if others could share and post ideas for provocations to further illustrate the importance that they play in deepening our students learning and inspiring authentic connections and action.
#ChangeInEducation: Setting a Match to the Report Card? A Couple of Questions on #Assessment in the #PYP

#ChangeInEducation: Setting a Match to the Report Card? A Couple of Questions on #Assessment in the #PYP

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I hate report cards. Hate is a strong word, but I think they are an outdated form of educational technology and we need to set a match to it. 31479586_199389720679114_1677575111550435328_nI can’t believe they haven’t gone by the waste side yet, like horse-drawn carriages or 8-tracks. It doesn’t serve where we are in education and what we know about learning and teaching. And, as a parent, the letter A (approaching), M( meets) and E (exceeds) next to a subject area with a couple of sentences that explains the justification of those letters really doesn’t help me figure out how I can support my child. And, as a writer of those comments, knowing that parents are intended audience for these report cards, you end up summarizing the skills gained vs. the conceptual understandings–because at the end of the day, parents just want to know if their kids can read and do math up to the “standard” of their peers. So really, the report cards provide late feedback that schools may feel “report” the learning but ultimately doesn’t serve any of the stakeholders involved, students included.

Let me elaborate a bit more. I am risking embarrassment here for the sake of all of us to reflect and consider how messy and difficult it is to create “reports”.

Here is an example from our school of how we are to create continuums of learning of our conceptual understandings.

vis template continuum

This is a template, an exemplar, if you wish, so how does THIS match our report cards? Well, I have to comment on the subject areas and the learning outcomes of the unit and this model really haven’t helped me decide how to grade them in Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening, let alone Transdisciplinary Maths, Social Studies or Science. So in our current How We Express Ourselves, we changed the headings a bit and tried to offer more specifics into assessing their conceptual understandings.  I still feel like this is an epic fail.

express oursleves

So now that I shared with you the pseudo-continuum for students,  would you like to see what a typical report card is on this unit?

Here are the outcomes that I have to grade:

manageBac
Parents don’t actually see the learning outcomes that we are grading against. They just see those letters next to the strands.

Now here is a comment, written for the parent’s interest, as it related to the Strands that they will see. (Math comments were made in the Math Stand Alone section of the report)

Strengths

Student X is a wonderful communicator so this has been great unit for him to expand and improve his skills. In particular, he has learned how he can interact and provide constructive feedback on other’s work, as well as reflecting on the comments other’s have made on his.

Learning Target

Although Student X has grown a lot with recognizing and writing words, he has a challenge with staying focused on longer texts. This impacts his ability to read fluently at higher levels.  As a writer, he is developing his ability to expand upon and give details in his writing so that a reader can “see” the setting and conflict within a story.

Now I warned you that this is an epic fail!–Can you see my point??? What would you do if you were in my situation, short of writing pages of commentary?

My school encourages us to come up with conceptual continuums but then want us to write concise and helpful comments that provide suggestions for next steps that parents could use for supporting learning at home. Total mismatch. And this isn’t a bad reflection on my school–this discrepancy is in nearly EVERY school! I believe this isn’t a one-off derelict example–this is a normal challenge that I reckon PYP schools have. We use a concept-based curriculum and yet we have these report cards focused on skills and knowledge. What are we to do?

I’d really like to challenge our schools to think a bit more deeply about how this communication tool, the report card, could look as we think about how our PYP schools share this philosophy around life-long learning.

What would it mean if we were to think about this through the lens of constructing meaning over time?

Do we need to have “reporting” due dates? What if our communication with parents was more detailed and frequent? Would this thing called the “report card” even be relevant?

And another question that pops into my head, as I think more about this is:

How might we co-construct meaning when we include The Learning Community?

So instead of report cards talking about the student, what if they included student voice, choice, and ownership? And what if families could chime in with evidence of learning? Again, would report cards even be relevant?

I just keep thinking about how assessment is going to look with our transition in thinking of data to inform learning and teaching with a collection of evidence vs summative tasks that help us mark those boxes in our report cards. Jan Mills refers to this as creating a “tapestry” of the children’s learning.

I have strong feelings about this–if you couldn’t tell. And I’d like to set a challenge for myself to really push my thinking about what could and SHOULD replace the report card. Yes, digital portfolios like SeeSaw help to bridge our next steps, but this institutional tool needs to evolve. Badly! I really want to do some deep thinking around this. Anyone else with me on this quest?

 

#PYP: What is a Successful Programme of Inquiry?

#PYP: What is a Successful Programme of Inquiry?

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This question was recently posed to me and I believe it plagues many curriculum leaders so I am going to address it in this post.

In my opinion, the Written Curriculum is the driving force behind dynamic teaching and learning. So, a successful Programme Of Inquiry has to be viewed through the big picture of the school’s context and the more microscopic lens of the grade level. [bctt tweet=”Teachers engaging and challenging central ideas are vital and we need more single-subject teachers voices to be heard in order to have a more transdisciplinary programme of inquiry.” username=”judyimamudeen”]

However, it’s a process and it’s ongoing. Yet, I’ve tried to summarize some essential practices when determining how close a school is to achieve a “perfect” POI: Coherence and Learning Power. 

Macroscopic: How Do We Develop a Coherent Programme of Inquiry?

Most of the “big stuff” is answered in the PYP document, Developing a transdisciplinary programme of inquiry such as examining the vertical and horizontal alignment of concepts and subject-areas, as well as closely looking at the language of the central ideas so that they are not value-laden and provide for multiple perspectives.   This is the go-to document!

Transdisciplinary-themes

Just a few more thoughts on some minutia for curriculum leaders to consider…

  • The “coverage” of the transdisciplinary theme indicators. For example, looking the Sharing the Planet theme, at what year level are they inquiring into ‘rights and responsibilities”, “the struggle to share finite resources with other people”, “access to equal opportunity”, and “peace and conflict resolution”? By the way, these indicators are NOT in any sequential order so the central ideas that are created around these would reflect the developmental appropriateness of the students.
  • The “coverage” of Key Concepts within a theme. For example, as you look vertically at whole school POI, does your school’s  How the World Works units only examine this theme through the Key Concepts of Form, Function, Causation, Connection, and Change–are you lacking Responsibility or Perspective or Reflection? Cross-check for this. This same examination could also be applied to the Learner Profile and Attitudes.
  • The “coverage” of the subject level strands. For example, what science strands are you missing?–do you have biological sciences, chemical sciences, earth and space sciences, forces and motion and scientific thinking and skills? What about your arts?- what is the balance between creating and responding units? How about “coverage” of social studies?-do you have organizational systems and economics, geography, development and movement of cultures, personal identity, and civic responsibility, and technology and innovation?
  • How does mathematics fit into you POI? Are there opportunities to apply mathematical thinking and skills into the UOI so that it can be naturally embedded and transdisciplinary? What needs to become “stand alone”?–explore data such as standardized testing may help to articulate the needs of your programme.
  • How can we connect dots? What units in the early grades support inquiries in the upper grades. For example, you can’t have an entrepreneurship unit in Grade 3 if they haven’t been exposed to the basic concepts of money and economics in Grade 2 or Grade 1. Or an ecosystem unit in Grade 4 if they haven’t learned about habits and cycles.  What are the prerequisite concepts that students need to explore before doing more active or abstract concepts?
  • Do you need to map the TD Skills/ATLs? You don’t want kids to come to Grade 5 and be in shock when they do their Exhibition. We should be thinking about how to develop research, self-management and communication skills, in particular so that students can become life-long learners.

Microscopic: 6 Questions to determine the Learning Power with Grade Level UOIs

  1. By Whom?-Teacher have excitement and interest: Has teacher friendly central ideas that are broad enough but not too ambiguous so that teachers know how to launch the inquiry and plan provocations.  I personally find that using related concepts in central ideas really help to create focus and address this challenge and is recommended in the Developing a transdisciplinary programme of inquiry guide.
  2. For Whom?-Students need to “Get It”: UOIs should be some “mystery”–students should understand what they are learning about. So it has to have student-friendly language in a Unit Of Inquiry to decrease the “unpacking” of the language of a central idea. The language used in a central idea should develop a deeper understanding of a concept but not be full of so much adult-speak and gobbly-gook that kids can’t access the intention of the learning. The “big words” should be the related concepts that you are exploring.
  3. What?-Go Deep Over Wide: Too much knowledge to develop in a unit of inquiry? Going deep rather than wide is an important feature of a unit. If you have to spend a lot of time “teaching” the unit’s content knowledge, then you either have to disperse the knowledge into weaker units which you can strengthen with building knowledge and skill, or you have to prioritize and streamline.
  4. When?-The Sequence Matters: There are lots of approaches to this, so looking at your school calenadar will help you reflect on when certain units work best. But, my general rule would be to place the easiest conceptual units in the first term and the very hardest unit in the 2nd to the last unit is an important consideration.  (The last unit always gets side-swiped with school-wide benchmarking and celebrations, etc.., so it usually gets cut short hence the suggestion here.)
  5. How?-The Process of Learning Matters: Units that dovetail into one another really help build upon the conceptual understandings of one another and there is a seamless segue of learning. Perhaps units could even be combined because the importance of ideas overlaps and compliment each other. I usually pick a general concept that acts as the uniting theme for a year level. For example, in our current POI revision, Grade 1 units are linked together through the conceptual lens of Relationships:
    • Who We Are:  Our choices and actions as individuals define who we become as a community.
    • How We Express Ourselves: The language we use can communicate messages and develop relationships.
    • How the World Works: Understanding sound and light can transform experience.
    • Sharing the Planet: The cycle of the earth impacts living things.
    • Where We are In Place and Time: Homes reflect cultural influences and local conditions.
    • How We Organize Ourselves: The needs and wants of a community determines how it’s organized                                                             *Hopefully, you can see that there is an intention that the central ideas show a congruence to the year group’s conceptual thread of RELATIONSHIPs in the inquiry.   In this case, I am asking What is the relationship that we are exploring in this theme? 
  7. Why? Student Engagement Matters: The units must be meaningful and create “sparks” of curiosity and student action. If the teacher has to drive the inquiry in order to pull it off, then it has to be scrapped and rewritten. Period. End of discussion.

These are just broad strokes of ideas, but it would wonderful if others could chime in with their suggestions and considerations.

One more thing that I’d like to add is that in schools that have the MYP and DP, I believe we need to extend these conversations beyond our PYP staff and try to develop improved articulation of our school’s programs. Backwards planning from the DP is one way to approach this but I have yet to have this experience.

I’m curious what ideas am I missing here? Can you think of other examples of evaluating the POI that has made it more impactful?

Mathematics in the Primary Years Program (PYP): Negotiating Transdisciplanary Vs. Stand Alone

Mathematics in the Primary Years Program (PYP): Negotiating Transdisciplanary Vs. Stand Alone

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In the purest sense of the PYP, everything is the Unit of Inquiry (UOI), right? One of the greatest suppositions of transdisciplinary learning is to try to create enduring understandings that connect as many dots with the discrete subject areas. For example, when we think about how young children learn, when they play with blocks, they never think that they are “doing math” or “creating art” or “testing hypotheses”.  So it is our duty to match their curiosity and creativity which curriculum that is relevant, meaningful and engaging. However, as children develop and their thinking matures, we need to challenge them with more complex ideas in our inquiry-based and concept-driven approach to learning. But with Math, it is probably the one subject area that can be the most difficult to naturally incorporate into UOI and make transdisciplinary due to the demands of the mathematical concepts. 

For example, here is a How We Organize Ourselves UOI for students age 5-6 years old that works great for math:

Systems help us to make meaning and communicate.

  • systems in our community
  • ways we use systems
  • our responsibility within systems

Now, this is probably a great unit to develop the conceptual understanding that numbers are a naming system and, for a set of objects, the number name of the last object counted describes the quantity of the whole set; which can then help students to connect number names and numerals to the quantities they represent. (Phase 1, Number Strand of the IB Math Scope and Sequence).

 But then, in this same year group, you have a How We Express Ourselves unit like this:

Creating and responding to art develops an understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

  • what art is
  • how the arts communicate different messages
  • ways we respond and react to art
  • the different ways that can express ourselves through art

At first glance, you are probably thinking, duh!–this is an “art” unit, it’s gotta be Pattern…….or maybe Shape and Space for Transdisciplinary Math (TD)? I could do both, right?

Well, you could, but then you would be “exposing” students to these ideas but not necessarily really developing their conceptual understandings. To further demonstrate how challenging this decision is, think about this conceptual understanding: Shape and Space Strand: Shapes can be described and organized according to their properties;  Pattern: understand that patterns can be found in everyday situations, for example, sounds, actions, objects, nature. So now I am wondering which what part of the central idea or lines of inquiry supports either one of those strands?

You can see that unless you write central ideas and lines of inquiry that consciously make an effort to incorporate math, it can easily get nudged aside during UOI. 

Now, this example is in the early grades, imagine how difficult it gets in the upper grades! How would you write a UOI that could be a “good fit” for teaching decimals, the conversations of fractions and understanding exponents? You could, but you’d have to have a POI that leaned toward STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) and have staff that is incredibly skillful at writing this curriculum so that Social Studies, the Arts, and PSPE don’t get sacrificed in the process. Most schools don’t go to such efforts. 

So thus we create “Stand Alones”, which are separate subject-specific units of inquiry, that we put into the PYP planner. There are many schools that do this for Math. Some schools do one-off or piecemeal planners for certain mathematical concepts that don’t fit into the transdisciplinary units while other schools just do this for upper year groups, yet others create a whole school Programme of Inquiry for math. (I won’t open up the conversation of how you might create a scope and sequence for math for these stand alones but please check out this blog post that details one school’s struggle to do so.)

In our school’s case, it was decided to create a POI that focused merely on Number and Pattern & Function Strands since these are the most difficult to incorporate into UOIs. With that in mind, most grade levels have TD maths running simultaneously with our Number/Pattern POI. As a disclaimer, it’s our first thinking on how we might approach improving mathematical thinking and learning at our school, so be gentle in your judgment. To create a POI for math is a daunting task, and there is no doubt that we will reflect and revise on ours.

In Grade 1, we are starting to encounter challenges when we look through the number of conceptual understandings and learning outcomes that need to be developed so we stopped and had a whole planning retreat to delve into this. As we looked through the IB Scope and Sequence and referenced the learning outcomes from other national standards, we wondered how much classroom time would it take to accomplish both Stand Alone AND TD Math?  Furthermore, is having essentially “2 Maths” (2 Math Strands) going co-currently a sensible idea-and how might we make it fit better? At the end of our discussions and debates, we mapped out the rest of the year’s TD Math. In one UOI (Where We Are in Place and Time, CI: Homes reflect cultural influences and local conditions.), we decided to not make a TD Math link because it might be “a stretch” to do so and instead to just focus on Number. Here is the Number central idea and lines of inquiry that we will cover during that time: 

Numbers often tell how many or how much
1. The amount of a number determines its position in a numeral
2. How we know when to regroup
3. How grouping numbers into parts can help us find solutions.

CONCEPTS – Function, Change, Reflection
ATTITUDES – Integrity, Confidence
LEARNER PROFILE: Knowledgeable

You can see that this unit has place value and regrouping strategies for addition and subtraction–one of the foundational conceptual understandings that must be well developed in Grade 1 and so needs more attention and time devoted to it. 

Likewise, we decided that we would make one of our units (How the World Works, whose CI we are rewriting), heavy on the TD Maths and a little lighter on the Number POI because we needed to really spend more time on developing the conceptual understandings within the Data and Measurement Strands. This is the Number UOI during that time:

Patterns repeat or grow
1. The ways patterns can be represented.
2. We use pattern to infer and to make predictions.

CONCEPTS – Form, Connection
ATTITUDES – Creativity
LEARNER PROFILE: Thinker

As you can see, our examination and reflection process is just beginning when it comes to negotiating classtime with TD Math and our Number POI. Sharing our grade level’s experience in this blog does not only reveal a bit of our thinking process but perhaps you are contemplating your school’s struggle with striking a balance between Stand Alone Math and TD Math and have an idea that would help navigate this challenge.

I’m deeply curious what kinds of conversations your school has regarding Math and what have you done to address “coverage” of concepts. Since our school is in the early days of developing and refining our Number POI, sharing perspectives and theories about using the PYP framework would be helpful to discuss and debate in our larger IB community because all of us are striving to create the best learning experiences and outcomes for our learners.  No pressure, but I’m hoping you will comment below. 🙂

 

Does your school have UOIs that were particularly successful at incorporating Math so that it was transdisciplinary?

How does your school balance TD Math and Stand Alone Math in the curriculum?

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