From small seeds…

For some people it might seem like things are moving fast and furious where PYP and student agency are concerned. Having worked within the PYP for 15 years, I believe we are on the edge of an exciting shift in practice that is creating tension in schools, but simultaneously transforming practice – reassuringly, as Kathy Short says, tension is an essential ingredient when it come to learning through inquiry!

So as we experience tension and uncertainty, it’s good to remember our students can be exposed to this kind of experience every day in a multitude of ways. If we are honest, many of our students’ experiences are transmitted through adult beliefs & opinions, personalities and moods that manifest themselves through our organisational cultures.

It is therefore important to reassure ourselves that if we are sincere, open and to some degree humble, we can all start to make small inroads to nudging our school cultures in the right direction. Through honouring student curiosity, creativity and believing in agency we will slowly begin to influence those around us who we work with – through a sustained ripple you can shake a movement.

We are not all at that same point in our journey and neither can we all dive head first into personalised learning. Essentially, we don’t all have the same depth of experience, employ highly trained and experienced PYP teachers or, work in highly inquiry driven schools that are well resourced.

However, if we believe in student learning and are motivated to act; we can all make small shifts into improving our schools’ toward empowering learners.

If you don’t believe this is possible, take heart from the quote in the photo… This is an exit card written by a refugee teacher at Kakuma Refugee Camp in Northern Kenya… I was privileged enough last year to spend a week training refugee teachers in child centred pedagogy and practices. If they can “make a shift” with classes of 70 students and over, small classroom spaces and, 90+ degrees of heat to contend with. Perseverance for us should be relatively easy 🙂

 

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A tool to support reflection

Check out my latest post on using a strategy to help students get better at portfolio reflections. It’s a rework of a model I created and shared on this blog, way back in 2010.

Inquiry planning – the spiral metaphor

Here is a post from my new blog about planning for authentic inquiry with teams of teachers

Team Teaching – an all or nothing phenomenon?

Team teaching has the potential not only to raise your game as a teacher, but also to elevate learning for our students, however these outcomes are not easily achieved. Working in IB schools it is easy to marry the values of the team teaching approach with collaboration and the IB learner profile for teachers; after all it challenges your practice on every level!

I once taught in a school where team teaching was not an option, but compulsory. Although I learned a lot, at times I found it frustrating and a bit stifling to my practice. I think if there had been more supporting systems in place it would have been amazing. My personal perspective on collaboration of this nature is; if it’s too forced it can lead to unnecessary challenges that can impair teaching and learning. However, like so many things in life it is possible to identify degrees of practice, especially when it comes to team teaching. If a school as an open mind to teaching many strategies can be scaffolded into the school culture in low stakes ways, like this one…

Tuning in – This works best if the lead teacher does not reveal too much about the unit to the children, as she attempts to hook their curiosity. As the teacher leads the tuning in activity, the co-teacher circulates around the class and asks students; “what do you think the unit is about?” Or, “what do you think you will be learning in this unit.” After the tuning in, teachers debrief and engage in reflective dialogue – the important part! The lead teacher shares what she was trying to achieve through the tuning in and the co teacher shares what she heard the students say.

Of course to utilise such a strategy does not necessarily need a co teaching approach, it could be done as a reflective activity with the students after the tuning in. However, the value added effect of the team teaching approach is making public one’s practice. In turn this supports greater validity of our teaching and creates a context for further collaboration between teachers.

More on team teaching some other time!

How vs What – Curriculum design

I have been synthesising my thoughts and experiences as a curriculum leader lately. As curriculum leaders we spend a lot of time engaging people in the “what” of curriculum… committees, working groups, innovation teams, evaluations, accreditations to name a few. In my time, I have seen so many hours expended in getting people to understand the “what” at the expense of the “how.”

Don’t get me wrong we do talk about the how, but not enough for me. Schools seem to always be in this constant flux of defining and comprehending curriculum instead of designing, applying and interpreting it, especially in PYP!  Although to juxtapose my own thoughts I still cherish those synergistic conversations and discussions I have had over the years with esteemed colleagues, on the ‘what’ of curriculum. But there’s wisdom for you!

To find the balance here are a few ideas that might resonate with you…

Simplify the language – having spent a year once on fusing AERO standards with PYP scope and sequence documents, it led me to conclude that written curriculum is just too SYNONYM-MANIC!  Please just cut the crap, our curriculums are cluttered with synonyms and word-smithing; there just seems to be so much repetition in international schools curriculums. Often the legacy of teacher turnover.

Time and value – Don’t put authentic collaboration on the back burner, define it and give it the time it deserves (yes I know I said less defining before, but this is different). Prioritising times for teachers to step aside from the “what” and share more practice about “how” they interpret the curriculum is valuable. Strategies like Teachers Teaching Teachers (T3) is an easy start to building a collaborative reflective culture.

Let people lead to their strengths – good curriculum writers need trust and creative latitude. Succinct written curriculum does not always need democracy, so be selective about composing your teams and defining their roles.

Let sexy data be your friend – data is not just about numbers, it’s about information and all the diverse ways that it can be unearthed. Teachers reflecting on their practice, students reflecting on their learned curriculum are all interpretations that can lead us forward and in addition, support understanding of our “what” curriculum further.

 

 

Behavioural rewards – the antibiotic of primary education

Having worked in primary education for many years now, I am confident that within 20 min of working with kids I can spot those that have been weaned on stickers and treats to reward their hard work. And it drives me nuts!

When I first started teaching in the UK in the late 90’s behavioural rewards were the cure all for everything that was wrong with inner city problem kids and disaffected learners. Naturally, knowing nothing better I used them myself. In my first year of teaching in a rough UK inner city school it was my go to ammo and it worked for a while. But simply put all I was doing was creating a culture of extrinsic motivation and compliance, that was severely detrimental to learning. So when I still see them being used by teachers these days it gives me a sinking feeling.

A turning point in my practice was an article by Shirley Clarke entitled “Raising Children’s Self Esteem.”  Although a little dated around the edges, it’s a good read on the subject of external rewards (you will even see reference to Carol Dweck’s early work before it became the trendy Fixed/Growth Mindset bestseller).

I will add that on the odd occasion in severe behavioural cases, extrinsic rewards have their place, however they must be used very sparingly and replaced as soon as possible by equipping children with internal coping strategies. If it’s one thing we know about learning it is that we have moved on from Pavlov’s dog!

The mutually inclusive nature of teacher and student reflection

Here’s something you could try with upper elementary students and any PYP unit planner – get them to help you reflect on the inquiry!

I just had the pleasure of leading a  group of students through reflecting on the PYP exhibition planner. I chose a small sample of six students and worked through the most accessible stages of the planner. The students gave some incredibly insightful contributions (sometimes more probing than the teachers:-). In summary this is what I heard:

Students value the reflective process and appreciate how it helps them as learners. They stated they would have liked more frequent, shorter reflections.

Students value assessment that helps them improve. They identified opportunities where peer assessment could be better utilised to inform conceptual understanding and not just skills. Students noticed when the teachers’ feedback was not equitable – some kids got more teacher attention than others.

Students care about their learning and the actions they take. They talked about a couple of activities that did not help them learn. They asked to be given more time to work on their action; regrouping with their plans after the exhibition was over. They also wanted to revisit their passions and interests and explore the extent of these new learnings.

Students found the research process a challenge. Interestingly, some were a little bemused that they did not use all the data they collected. They also felt a little hurried by the competing demands of other tasks while researching.

Students value the importance of learning how to learn. They commented on how they would like more strategies and time to break down research findings and synthesise within the context of their guiding questions.

Students value their independence. They do not always want to be told what to do and when to do it, but wanted to have more autonomy to make decisions for themselves about their work habits.

I believe these student reflective insights are equally as valuable as the ones that teachers produce. Ultimately they should make us question the what, how and why of our practices. Unearthed within this reflective process were issues relating to differentiation, skills teaching, research, independence, autonomy and reflective learning to name a few.

As teachers we all have hunches about learning that we attribute to success or failure, the problem in schools is that feelings and pre-conceptions can evolve into undeniable truths with little evidence to back them up. I envision a place where students themselves can have a legitimate voice in what constitutes the best learning. In turn, this student voice represents a type of evidence that can frame a context for authentic teacher inquiry and action research, so that the distinction between teaching and learning becomes seamless.

Learning from the best

Learning from students is always so inspiring and personally, I think they are the one under utilised resource in schools that can illuminate our understanding of the teaching and learning profession. Unfortunately too many teachers think they know best, but that is another story, so let’s keep it light, tight and bright!

Today I had the pleasure of visiting a grade 3 class sharing what they had learned through their unit “how we express ourselves.” Through the creative endeavours of the teachers in this grade, I was really pleased to see how this unit has morphed into a learning experience that captures and extends students passions. I was truly captivated by what the students shared with me; it was diverse, students driven, creative and deeply reflective.

Amongst the many anecdotal highlights, one really caught my attention and made me think about our desired learning outcomes and how we structure curriculum to bring about those outcomes. So please allow me to introduce Vera, whose passion is cooking. When I asked Vera what was one of the most memorable things she learned from the unit, she did not mention any of the fun stuff. Vera said quite openly, she thought she needed to eat a little healthier. I found this quite profound, because it was not quite what I was expecting. If this had been a unit about the human body or healthy balanced living (as is common in PYP schools), many of the students would have probably given a teacher pleasing answer about eating healthier. When I shared this thought with Vera, she said, “yes, I know most kids say that, but then after the unit they just eat even more unhealthy things!”

Interesting… I am sure you can make many connections with this reflective anecdote, maybe ideas about… intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation, flow learning, the power of student driven inquiry and action. However, for me it is another reminder that curriculum and learning need to be a process of negotiation with our students in honour of what they can bring to the table.

Narrowing the lens on understanding

I often read blog posts about how stretched teachers are to facilitate authentic learning and in particular inquiry based learning. Sadly, I tend to agree with much of what is posted and overall I think there is relative incongruence in schools between theory and practice. However, in an attempt find a more positive spin, I would like to share a “time-space” saver that recently worked for me in the classroom.

By utilising the (visible thinking) HEADLINES strategy I was able to build on what kids had learned through their research and thus support the continuity of their inquiries. Again, I found it to be an excellent routine for using during the “sorting out” phase of inquiry; in particular it served as a bridge between “going further” or returning to “finding out.” Here is how I framed the routine…

As a follow on from GEN/SORT/CONN/ELAB, for homework I asked students to use a google doc to collaboratively create three headlines that captured the essence of their understanding of the guiding question. To gamify this a little, the students were told they would have to present one headline (chosen by the audience) and defend their headline through 5 “why questions” in a game the student’s nicknamed the “5 wise why’s.”  (The 5 Why’s is a Kath Murdoch inquiry strategy I adapted). We further authenticated the activity by tagging it as a formative check in for understanding;  presentations were peer assessed using the rubric for understanding that we had developed at the beginning of the exhibition.

Here are 6 thoughts that resonated with me after the experience…

• Inquiry is not dependent on planning lots of exciting activities, it is more authentic when you work with what the children bring to the table.
• Providing regular contexts for students to pause and share their learning creates more opportunities for feedback.
• Using this routine during the sorting out phase of inquiry creates a tangible bridge between “going further” or returning back to “finding out.”
• Valuing students’ independence in their thinking can help to build a sense of community and endeavour.
• Being transparent about formative assessment builds the capacity for students metacognitive development.
• It is important to evaluate the relationship between students’ understanding of the big picture in relation to the factual, content knowledge.

6 Reasons to use visible thinking after research

I have recently been asked to step back into the classroom for 4 weeks to guide a group of 5th graders through the PYP exhibition, and I’m loving it! We have four (and that’s just my class) inquiries running alongside each other, looking at advancements in medical, educational and transport technology, and the influence of robots on well being. All through the transdisciplinary theme of where we are in place and time. When I joined the class the kids were laden with fact upon facts, they were all over the classroom. So one of the first things I did was to check for their understanding of the guiding questions using the GENERATE / SORT / CONNECT / ELABORATE thinking routine. Here are 6 reasons why I did that:

• Evaluate the spectrum of understanding – can they piece facts together to get to the heart of the question? Can they identify concepts?
• Evaluate spectrum of critical thinking (analysis / synthesis) – can they identify relationships, patterns, expand and extend upon their ideas?
• Create opportunities to elaborate – this thinking routine is designed for it!
• Create opportunities to collaborate – activate learners as resources for one another, promote learning appreciation.
• Slows down the learning – Time and space to think deeply and process; thinking is valued.
• Creates context for further reflection – learners can benefit by reflecting on what they don’t understand yet, or what puzzles them.

Used in the context of “sorting out” what this routine showed me was; the difference between knowledge and understanding; the difference between higher level thinking and repeating the same fact in different ways; the difference between collaboration and cooperation, and finally. What I need to do next!