Perspectives on PYP Practice

I am always excited when I see teachers pushing the boundaries of curriculum in the pursuit of empowering learners to think deeply about their learning. When this happens students can become the co-constructers of the taught curriculum and in turn, offer valuable evidence of the impact of the written curriculum. An example of this kind of curricular innovation has been happening in one of our grade 3 classes this year.

The teacher has created a pattern of engagement around unpacking units of inquiry that is quite distinct: After the initial  tuning in provocations, the students are presented with a question to elicit further deep thinking – “What do you think the essential elements should be for this unit?”  Using this guiding question the students select the two concepts, two attitudes and one or two learner profile traits (basically, the same number as the teachers developed) that would be most important for the unit. Each group of students presents and gives reasons, justifying their choices. Finally, the students come up with a central idea and lines of inquiry. The outcome is often so closely aligned to what the teachers came up with in their pre-unit planning, it is quite profound. Is this just an exercise in pedagogical pretence? I think not, and here is why…

Through their collaborative discussions the students begin to think more deeply about the unit of inquiry; they engage in conversations about the language of learning by sharing their projections about what might be the important content of learning and which dispositions would be valuable for authentic inquiry. It is a great example of learners constructing meaning. Importantly, these conversations and engagements play a valuable role in nurturing learning relationships; promoting a greater sense of ownership of learning, sharpening metacognitive awareness and paving the way for the development of effective criteria, feedback and self regulation throughout the unit.

When I was in the classroom, I sometimes told students that my goal as a teacher was to make myself redundant to the point where I would not be needed any more, this often provoked looks of confusion. However, enabling students to be self directed learners is a very worthy quest.

In search of a common language

Last year we sculpted our learning principles for the whole school. At the time, I had a feeling that when we begun to put flesh on the bones of the learning principles they would reveal their true merit. But why would a school need a specific set of learning principles? In education our plates often over runneth with different ways to say the same thing to the point of just confusing the practitioner, let alone the learner. So why add more ways to the say the same thing? I believe the true value of the learning principles lay in their succinctness; they are not like a policy document, they have to be unpacked, and like a good central idea they promote inquiry, research and action.

This week we went deeper into unpacking our learning principle about formative assessment. Using the thinking hats, teachers worked in teams of pre-k, lower elementary and upper elementary to uncover what is the language of feedback and thinking we use in the classroom (white hat) what language will we make common across grade levels (green hat) and what student and teacher actions need to happen in the classroom to promote and strengthen assessment literacy (blue hat). To aid this inquiry teachers also brought in samples of assessment tools, strategies and displays they currently use. As the session began to unfold it was interesting to see how at times this exercise caused learning tension; teachers were placed in a compromising situation. The blue hat directed teachers toward making concessions and come to common agreements about how to make assessment literacy more transparent for our learners. To me this is a very important and worthwhile endeavour, we have between 50 and 60 nationalities amongst our students, the majority are ESL learners. If we want students to feel empowered by assessment, doesn’t it make sense to promote and use a common language?

To me dealing with issues that provoke learning tension is a fundamental part of  being a healthy PLC;  in moving from theory to practice, groups achieve coherence and connectedness through collective endeavour that builds and tests relational trust. In turn I think this helps to de-privatise classroom practice and nudges us further towards the holy grail of collective responsibility and understanding.

Attitudes to Reflection

The start of a new school year is always filled with anticipation of the unknown, it is truly an emotionally mixed time for both teachers and students. So, as we embark on getting to know our students as learners it is apt to pause and reflect on how we go about this. The building of a learning community takes sustained nurturing throughout the year, however to what extent do first impressions have a lasting impact and how do we question and process the validity of these first impressions as the year ensues?

I think these questions connect well with the concept of becoming a reflective practitioner. I am a firm believer in the value of reflection for learning, yet also believe reflection in education is undervalued and often over simplified into three distinct components – recollection of events, evaluation of performance and subsequent goal setting / modification. Of course these are important facets of reflection, however when they become the only facets then reflection runs the risk of becoming mechanistic and procedural, yielding little long-term value. Dewey on the other hand summarises four characteristics of reflection and reminds us that it is a complex, rigorous, intellectual, and emotional enterprise that takes time to do well…

1. Reflection is a meaning-making process that moves a learner from one experience into the next with deeper understanding of its relationships with and connections to other experiences and ideas. It is the thread that makes continuity of learning possible, and ensures the progress of the individual and, ultimately, society. It is a means to essentially moral ends.

2. Reflection is a systematic, rigorous, disciplined way of thinking, with its roots in scientific inquiry.

3. Reflection needs to happen in community, in interaction with others.

4. Reflection requires attitudes that value the personal and intellectual growth of oneself and of others.

I particularly like the concept of reflection as a set of attitudes, they are so connected to what we do in a PYP classroom and so important. Attitudes can open the way to learning or block it. Dewey suggests that reflection is best realized when individuals express attitudes of whole heartedness (a passion and curiosity for learning), directness (confidence to question and evaluate without being too anxious), open-mindedness to new ways of thinking and understanding and responsibility to act upon carefully considered lines of thought.

In education circles we need to raise the bar on reflection, yet it is still relatively ill defined and understood. “In an age where measurable, observable learning takes priority, it is easily dismissed precisely because no one knows what to look for” (Rogers, 2002).

For an enlightening read and an intro to the work of John Dewey see:

Rogers. C (2002). Defining Reflection: Another Look at John Dewey and Reflective Thinking. Teachers College Record. Volume 104, Number 4, June 2002, pp. 842–866

The Lesser Spotted Blue Hat…

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After my transition out of the classroom and into a coordinating role in a new school, it was rewarding this week to get back into the classroom to work with the students. In grade 5 at AIS Dhaka we are setting up class blogs and I for one am very excited to see what learning possibilities unfold over the coming months. As ever, the extent to which students perceive themselves as partners in the learning process is equal to the quality of contributions they are likely to make. To value the importance of student ownership in our venture, we wanted to find out how the students were feeling about blogging, what a class blog might be used for and how we should use our class blog. In addition, we needed to establish some agreements that would be binding on all and embrace the important elements of digital citizenship.

The versatility of the thinking hats was perfect for the job of eliciting student ideas and beliefs. Coming back to the thinking hats after the summer break, made me re-evaluate my understanding of the blue hat (previously I had not always managed to integrate the blue hat as effectively as the others). To me the blue hat does take a little more thinking about and so it should I guess, because metacognition needs to be worked at! In this lesson the blue hat played a vital role in helping to synthesise the findings of the other hats and in turn helped us to begin to construct our essential agreements about blogging in grade 5.

Do you use the blue hat in the classroom? If so… how?

The Underrated concept of form…

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It can be easy in PYP to assume that all teaching will include learning about the concept of form, so why have it as a key concept? I have certainly subscribed to this perspective before, however. In my understanding, “form” needs to play a key role when conceptual knowledge is likely to be new and challenging for students. Science based units can be a good example of this.

In a recent UOI under sharing the planet, we looked at the sustainability of natural resources and our actions to preserve them. I have seen many units like this end up with kids making posters about saving the rain forest or presentations about the 3 R’s of environmental sustainability. Of course these are important subjects, but how do kids take action if they have not first uncovered why they need to take action? We wanted students to first make a connection to where natural resources come from, how they are used and develop an appreciation of how limited they are. The prior knowledge of the students showed they had a very ego centric understanding of where “natural resources” came from and how they were connected to them, so developmentally it was a good time to move them to the next level.

In this unit “Form” was extremely useful to support language development, classification systems, and the investigation of patterns. Students identified and investigated the natural resources they used and how we misuse them. This opened up opportunities to build upon personal connections; artefacts were brought in and we explored the school environment as a learning resource.  Using one thinking tool, students were able to add their ongoing knowledge to a huge concentric circles display. The display was an excellent resource for making the learning visible and became an important tool for formative feedback and stimulating further provocations. It felt good to refer children back to evidence of their own thinking in a very visual way and further supported independence of learning. Exploring mathematical patterns as a related concept of form worked really well, we were able to use tables to make predictions about the consumption of resources like plastic bottles and then represent them in visual ways. I enjoyed helping the group of girls who stuck together all the old homework papers and worked out that in a year, if we stuck them end to end we would have the equivalent length of about 4 football fields! (We’ve still got a little way to go to become a green school!

So did the students become more environmentally responsible and take action? We hoped once students had made the connection between themselves and the resources they use they would be better able to appreciate why action is our responsibility. Feedback from parents was useful, conversations were happening at home and a number of students had introduced new practices to their families. On the whole exploring the concept of form definitely enhanced this unit and did not detract from the actions the students took.

What is beyond the student led conference?

Due to unforseen circumstance and chance happening, one SLC took place this week that partially involved a sibling for a some of the conference time.  It was quite heart warming to see how the older daugher did not overpower the expereince, but guided conversation between Mum and son when asked  for, occasionally flipping between French and English inbetween convivial laughter. And it led my thinking to… “How do we dynamically build collective understanding of learning in our communitites?”

My experience of PYP student led conferences has led me to believe they are fairly standardised and for good reasons… the meaning that informs our philisophical leanings toward SLC’s is well informed – it is child centred and hopefully child driven. Whatever family dynamics are in place the structure of the SLC allows uninterrupted quality one on one time. However, widening the lens and considering what the experience represents from a communication perspective is interesting…  it can allow creative thought. What other dynamic ways can we communicate what we are learning? For me , this is a question worthy of further exploration.

The Positives…

Personal Understandings - helps students reflect and process their learning,  more ways to help parents (particularly EAL) better undersand the programme, siblings can be part of a joint learning episode

Collective Understanding - Families share focused  time around curriculum engagement, they can explore conceptual meaning, the skills that infuse understanding and the attitudes that shape actionable direction.

Meta Learning -  Parents learn from kids, teachers learn from parents and kids learn from the experience. In general, we learn more about each others understanding of  the puposes and perspectives of our school cultures.

The Negatives…

Personal Understandings - Family dynamics may compound the presenter by affecting self confidence and reinforce negative schematas. Parents attention is divided. For the teacher, experience fails to achieve desired effect therefore we may not wish to persevere.

Collective Understanding - Families do not gain much from the expereince, may even reinforce negative beliefs and attitudes. Logisitics for administrators and teachers – difficult to organise,   collaboration within schools take time… never enough of it, schools are such busy places… “Is it worth it?”

Meta Understanding - “Nobody understands us!”

I am not advocating doing away with SLC’s, I believe there is potential for exploring even more ways that allow everyone to pause for important learning moments. The more creative we are in our thought, the easier the obstacles are to overcome. Inquiry over advocacy. Why can’t there be more quality sharing like SLC’s in our schools?

Pressing the pause button on learning – the power of collaborative reflection

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Two practices that fundamentally resonate with me as an educator are: pressing the pause button on learning and, empowering students as teachers. Ultimately these two important facets of learning are about metacognition, for the student as teacher it is an opportunity to process what they know and reach deeper understandings, for the student as a collaborative learner it is an opportunity for someone other than a teacher to affirm prior knowledge and extend it in new directions. I believe we do not create enough opportunities in our schools for empowering students to be leaders and co-constructers of learning for understanding. From a teaching perspective, the value of creating opportunities for reflective learning is that it gives you a window into just what and how students are thinking about their learning. Of course we could argue all learning engagements are about this, but often in the school environment “busy work” and coverage can subjugate learning and true understanding. If we are constantly bombarding students with new knowledge and challenges that embrace coverage of the curriculum how do we authentically gauge where students are? Hence the need to press the pause button every now and then.

Today in grade 2 and 3 was a day for pressing the pause button; as teachers we created a learning opportunity for students to reflect, process and extend their understanding about “who they are as writers,” independent of the teacher. By creating a simple visual graphic entitled, 5 ways to find your voice as a writer, the G3 students prepared a short mini lesson. In small groups the students collaborated, shared and appreciated each other’s contributions. On these occasions I thoroughly enjoy being a fly on the wall and listening to the rich conversations that unfold, only intervening when totally necessary to keep the discussions on track.  Following the sharing session we got the G2 students to reflect on the experience by using a HPZ thinking routine – “Connect/Extend/Challenge.

Many of the G2 students were at ease expressing how the G3’s ideas connected with what they already know. Equally they were able to express the new ideas they had learned. Many of the responses were a clear indication of how reading informs the writing process independent of what is directly taught by the teacher (for example, I had noticed over the past few weeks how a number of students had started to experiment with speech marks and exclamation marks; something that I had encouraged, but not taught explicitly). However, in response to the “challenge” part of the reflection, few students were able to articulate questions or areas of difficulty. I suspect this is an indication of the existence of multiple levels of self-awareness – to articulate what you find challenging requires reflection on your own strengths and weakness’.

What are your thoughts on pressing the learning pause button?

Going further with systems thinking – students apply their conceptual knowledge

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Several weeks ago, I blogged about introducing systems thinking by using children’s literature with my grade 2 students. I was really enthused by their receptiveness to the process and how quick they learned, it almost seemed intuitive to some of them. Last week my teaching partner and I came back to the process and used it as one of the summative assessment tasks for our UOI on healthy living.

After a short introduction, we gave the students an opportunity to apply the skill of systems thinking and focus on areas of the UOI knowledge they felt they had learned most about.  We wanted to see how they connected with a key understanding we had identified in our planning – that of seeing the body as an interacting system. I was particularly interested in their response to the challenge of making their thinking visible, so took it upon myself to work with groups of 5 or 6 students at a time and provide support where needed through poignant questioning, challenging their ideas and envoking discussion. Observing the process, I was impressed with how much they had remembered about thinking systemically, it had been several weeks since our last experience with using the process, yet very little instructional guidance had to be given to the students. Another thing that I observed was how flexible this tool is in allowing students to express their thinking, once they had become familiar with the process, there was less time spent on the procedural knowledge of how to do it, which I think freed up the mental space needed to express their understanding. As an extension I asked if any students wanted to transfer their “round and round thinking” to a prezi, here is one student’s example.

Junk food prezi

I can’t help wondering how far you could take the concept of systems thinking and apply it to curriculum mapping models… I imagine the potential of a learner’s development when a school curriculum articulates and promotes systems thinking skills as a core value of their educational pedagogy, particularly if they are teaching for international mindedness. It seems obvious to me that conceptual thinking skills, which are pervasive and yet flexible enough to have positive application in a multitude of content areas and settings, should be a fundamental principal of 21^st century education. Hope I am not in a minority forever on this one!

Conceptual learning in a thinking classroom – teaching for transfer

Image courtesy of http://educononline.com/tag/students/page/2/

I was recently fortunate enough to co-lead a workshop on conceptual driven curriculum in the PYP. During the workshop participants constructed meaning about the nature of concepts, why they are the driving force behind the pedagogy of inquiry and why concepts are so fundamental in teaching children about international mindedness.  Like all workshops, I came away with many new ideas about how to improve my own practice and questions about how we balance the need for meaningful, quality learning over the quantity of content demands.

One question I asked myself is; what is the right balance of conceptual understandings to strive for within a unit of inquiry? As PYP teachers we are co-constructers in curriculum design, our practice is guided by the value of “choose, act, reflect.”  In reflecting, I think the balance of conceptual understandings to strive for within a unit of inquiry is very contextual and dependent upon a number of factors (eg. developmental age, ESL, complexity of the subject, motivation of the pupils, socio/emotional issues…) and yet to what extent do we factor these variables into our planning? I believe neglecting the unique contextual characteristics of the learners in our schools runs the potential of subjugating conceptual teaching to content teaching – simply put, if you are trying to teach too many conceptual understandings at one time you can run the risk of purely teaching factual content. So how can we tell when less is more?

As practitioners we need tools to help us reflect, we need ideals, benchmarks and anchor points from which to draw reference if we are collaboratively to build our understanding of this most important facet of learning. For me one essential way of evaluating how effective our conceptual teachings are is to look at how learners transfer their understanding across subject boundaries and how their learning becomes part of everyday, real life interactions in thinking, problem solving and action. However, transfer can sometimes be elusive and does not necessarily happen at the end of a unit of work, it is not always readily assessed through the formal procedures and the tools we design to record them. Students do not automatically connect, apply, or extrapolate what they know to other learning contexts. So what foundations can we put in place to ensure we are dong the best we can to nurture conceptual understanding and seek its transfer to new contexts? Here is my attempt to map out a few strategies that work for me:

1. Make transfer the big goal of conceptual teaching and learning – always have ideas in mind about how students can transfer their conceptual understandings and skills to new contexts.
2. Concepts over content – think big picture not activities. The exploration of concepts during collaborative teacher planning sessions will lead to a multitude of activities that can be applied in the classroom – the activities will always take care of themselves!
3. Less is more – working with fewer conceptual understandings means that you can use and extend the knowledge and skills students present in a meaningful, formative way – be mindful.
4. Prior knowledge – Take the time to nurture student’s interest and avenues into the concepts you are teaching.
5. Authentic assessment – map out the formative and summative assessment opportunities that are likely to arise through the teaching and learning experiences. Through these opportunities, challenge student’s misconceptions, stereotypes and tendencies toward rigid thinking.
6. Levels of transfer – transfer can happen on a “near” level where contexts can be very similar, or transfer can happen on a “far” level where the context is more abstract and removed from the original learning, some learners are natural abstract thinkers, others are not.
7. Think discriminatively – be measured about when opportunities arise for students to apply transfer, be mindful about when you can make it happen authentically, create opportunities for success and not failure.
8. Value thinking, nurture it and make it visible – train and engage students in a variety of daily thinking routines, use Socratic questioning in discussions to connect new ideas with existing knowledge. Metacognition, metacognition, metacognition!!
9. Nurture the potential of transfer in younger students – (EY- G1) value and reflect upon the meaning of children’s connections in collaboration with others. Make children’s connections visible and a part of discussion for other learners.
10. Homework – getting students to apply what they are learning in class and explore the meaning of concepts to their own lives can provide rich and diverse opportunities for transfer. Infinitely more valuable than completing worksheets!

For more ideas on the transfer of learning see “ten tools for teaching transfer” or look up some of the writings of David Perkins.

“Round and round thinking” in Grade 2

Image from: http://blog.pegasuscom.com/Leverage-Points-Blog/?Tag=feedback%20loop

The focus of our current UOI is healthy living - “what we eat and how we look after our bodies is related to the sustainability of our health.” The concept of causation is a driving force in this unit to help move the students beyond the facts and knowledge. In particular this unit presents a wonderful opportunity of developing in the students an ability to think in sytemic ways.

After reading the book “When a Butterfly Sneezes” by Linda Booth Sweeney, I set about using some of her suggestions of introducing the concept of systems thinking through literature. I first read to the students the HCA classic “The Emporers New Clothes” (quite a few children had never heard this story), we discussed what happened in the book. I then modeled a way to record the significant issues that had clear causal connections, using a simple linear style, and another way that used causal feedback loops. One child aptly made a connection saying “oh it’s like a butterfly,” recalling her previous knowledge from G1 unit on living things. I then challenged students to make their own causal diagrams about any of the issues that seemed to repeat in the story.  The students responded with interest and decent engagement, which does not always happen when I challenge them to think! We repeated the same process with a Dr Suess book – “The Cat in the Hat Comes Back,” again I modeled one example and the students then had a go at making their own loops and connections. On the third occasion I read the book “The Lorax,” this time I did not model the thinking, but used our previous examples as a cue. One child said “oh that round and round thinking,” I liked his way of describing it, because I am often challenged by dumbing down terminology to a G2 level – so we have now adopted the term as part of our systems thinking vocabulary. I plan to continue to develop this thinking skill using literature throughout the unit, but my main goal is to get the students to transfer these skills to show their conceptual understanding of healthy living (a future blog post I will share).

In education we tend to assess what we value and, although I am not a gambling man I think it a safe bet to say, I could walk into most schools and access data that shows the trajectory of a students progress in reading, writing or mathematical skills.  However, would I find the same documentation of a students progress in thinking systemically? Maybe… but I  beleive it would be an exception rather than a rule. Of course thinking skills can and mutually need to be subject specific, but more and more we are living in a world of transferable skills. The ability to think systemically is needed in our world like never before, human evolution, growth and our global interconnectedness, reveals new issues and challenges that demand our attention. Pursuing simplistic cause/effect solutions are like putting sticking plasters on a machete wound – they’re just not up to the job, we need to think on a deeper level. Look at the way many governments tackle road congestion (“take a ride around the M25 the next time you visit London to get my point”).

I believe teaching kids about the skills of systems thinking should be equally as important as teaching kids to learn their times tables. But… Which one gets more coverage in your school?