The Story of our New PYP Planner

It’s the start of a new academic year, and we are ready to pilot a new, home-grown PYP Transdisciplinary Unit Planner. I tweeted about it, and a few people were curious to see the full planner and also hear more about the process we went through.

So here it is!

The Backstory

Last year our faculty spent a lot of time doing individual reflections driven by the new IB Standards and Practices. We then took all the individual reflections and mapped it out to try and identify collective areas of growth. One of our biggest areas where teachers self-identified that they were “developing” or “approaching” was using a planner based on the PYP planning process in all subject areas. So we saw this is an opportunity…

The Process

Our first step was to pull together a “task force”. Myself and the principal I work with strongly believe in teacher voice and shared decision making. This was a little tricky last year – as we were smack-dab in the middle of a global pandemic – but we still wanted to at least put it out there for those teachers who were interested and felt they could donate some time towards this project.

So in February of last school year, we advertised the “task forces” in our Morning Message.

We were lucky to have some people step forward; we were small, but mighty!

From there got together initially and got on the same page. We laid out our purpose and the process we would follow.

First, we clarified that the PYP Enhancements require that we follow the PYP planning process, but don’t require that we use a specific planner.

We were clear about our mission.

And we laid out our predicted timeline for the work and the related steps.

Week 1

We started by ensuring we had a shared understanding of both the IB Standard & Practice driving our work, as well as the PYP Planning Process that came from the PYP Enhancements.

Week 2&3

Next we started to explore different options. Everything from what we had been previously using or had used in the past at our school, the PYP Sample Planner, and some that other PYP educators around the world had share. We started out with and individual analysis of each and then synthesized our pros and cons.

Week 4

Finally it was time to work towards a decision. So we individually reviewed the collective pros and cons from previous weeks for each planner we analyzed and each put forth some recommendations.

Then it was time for me to take those recommendations and build a mock-up. Which I did…

Next it was time to take it back to the task force to “tune” it. I used an adapted version of the SRI Tuning Protocol to facilitate that process with them.

Then I went back and made the changes that came from the warm and cool feedback.

I am very fortunate to have two colleagues, one who has a magical eye for aesthetics and the other who is ninja-level when it comes to Google Slide design work and they took my basic – and let’s be honest ugly planner – and turned it into a work of art!

That brings us to where we are today. We have “finished” the unit planner and are ready to try it out! My original plan was to slowly roll it in to the collaborative work I do with each team, but I with work so many amazing risk-takers, a few teams are piloting it right out of the gate of the new school year!

The “Final” Product

Here is it, accompanied by a few words about how we plan to use it!

The planner is broken up into 7 sections:

• prologue
• initial reflections and pre-planning
• single-subject integration
• ongoing reflection, design and implementation
• final reflections
• “other slides” (as needed by the team)
• appendices

Section 1: Prologue

The title side allows teams to document: the Transdiscplinary Theme, the timeline and the collaborative team contributing to this specific Unit of Inquiry. It also has linked tabs at the top to allow for shortcuts to the different sections of the planner. You also may notice a teeny, tiny little PYP document along the right side. Throughout the planner we have embedded qucklinks to certain sections of the PYP documents that pertain to that specific element or guidance for that part of the process. In this instance, it takes team to the guidance about the different approaches to unit timelines in the PYP Enhancements.

Next there is a slide that reinforces the approach to planning at our school. All planning is driven the by PYP planning process and we do that by delicately balancing 4 things: thinking of our learners, acknowledging what is going on in the world at the time, keeping our finger on the pulse of past learning and consulting our learning outcomes.

When teachers are “considering past learning” they are taken to another risk we are launching this year called Learner-Centered POIs.

This allows them to see their learners’ POI across the years they have been at the school. It has a screen shot of each year’s POI for that cohort as well as a summary of articulation points, such as the TD theme, key concepts, Learner Profile Attributes, Related Concepts and ATL skills to date. This allows them to always keep vertical articulation in mind, but in a living, breathing, emergent and responsive way.

Section 2: Initial Reflections and Pre-Planning

Initial Reflections and Pre-Planning is broken into 3 steps. The first one is focused on the 4 balancing factors I mentioned above that inform our planning. This culminates in a decision about the TD theme as well as the descriptor that will be the primary focus within that theme. Again you will notice in the top-right corner, a shortcut to sections in Teaching and Learning that support this process.

One of the things from the IB sample planner that the whole task force loved, were the guiding prompts. However, they felt embedding the guiding prompts into the planner itself can make it too long and often feel daunting. So we decided to embed guiding prompts as pop-outs when and where needed.

Step 2 of this sections is focused on getting the learners involved in the co-construction of the units and also the finalization of what we have come to call the “big bones” of the unit.

Again there are some guiding prompts for this step that are hyperlinked.

Step 3 of this section is beginning to think about approaches to teaching and assessment.

You may notice this section has many hyper links throughout that support teachers to reference other helpful documents for this stage of the thinking, such as a guide for inviting students into the planning.

Section 3: Single-Subject Integration

Single-subject integration at any PYP school can be tricky. When multiple teachers from different disciplines are all working from the same planner, those planners can get massive and can become less workable. It also means that single-subject teachers may have up to 7 different planners on the go at one time! So we decided to try something out. We have the specialist subject planning linked, but in a different set of Google Slides. We also were inspired by Andy Vasily’s approach to different levels of integration, so we included a section where that can be very clear.

The links then go to that subjects’ planner where they can see any glance to what level they are integrated at the different grade levels and also space for planning that acknowledge’s their discipline specific needs. (This is also a new planner that was the product of a task force… but more about that later!)

Section 4: Ongoing Design and Implementation

One of the things we love about the PYP Enhancements is the big push to move away from planning a whole unit before you launch, and move towards more responsive and adaptive planning. This fits perfectly with our schools’ PLC and RTI processes. For every week that the unit lasts, teams can reflect on and document what the learners’ have revealed and how best they can respond.

Again, there are some additional guiding prompts for teams who need or want further guidance.

Section 5: Final Reflections

Finally, there is space to house the reflections that arise upon the completion of the unit with space not only for the teachers, but also for the learners to think about how the unit went.

And of course… some guiding prompts!

Section 6: Team Needs

One of the things that came strongly from the teacher voices in the task force was the benefit of having a place to add and embed other things beyond the systemitized part of the planner. This supports teams to have “everything in one place” and allows them to make it work for them.

Step 7: Appendices

The last few slides are some supplementary tools our teachers use such as conceptual rubric templates and provocation design templates so they are there and easy to find when they need them.

Next Steps

As I mentioned above, now that we have it built this year is all about piloting it. Those teams that are ready and willing have already jumped in. Those teams who aren’t ready quite yet, can begin to explore and experiment with it with my support when the time is right. Ideally by the end of the year all teams will have had some solid experience with it, to then be able to provide some feedback about how we can further refine and improve it for next year!

We also followed a similar process for our single-subject planner, stand-alone math and stand-alone literacy planner too!

I know many school around the world have gone through similar processes and designed their own unit planners. We would love to see and hear all about your process and planner, so please leave a comment so we can continue to learn and grow together as a global community.

Reimaging “mentoring” in PYP Exhibition

This year as we gear up for PYPx 2021, we have been dedicating a lot of time to reimagining the role of “mentors”. We have been thinking about “mentor” as a noun – traditionally a person statically assigned to an individual or group for the entire Exhibition process. And we have been thinking of “mentoring” as a verb – connecting with that just-right person, at that just-right time to help with that just-right thing!

We are not alone in these conversations, many PYP practitioners and schools around the world have also been reimagining what support looks like for learners throughout exhibition. Some posts that provoked our thinking on the matter include:

• Authentic Collaboration in PYPx
• Redefining Collaboration in the PYP Exhibition
• Breaking the mould of PYPx
• We are the champions
• Personalized Units of Inquiry

We got to a stage in our planning where we decided this was going to be the year we said goodbye to a static, pre-assigned mentors and instead, be risk-takers, to figure out how we can embrace a more organic, responsive, personalized approach to “mentoring” learners through their Exhibition journey. We felt that the shift from “forced help” to “found help” was a more life-worthy learning experience and that learning how to “gather” support, intentionally and purposefully, as opposed to being simple “given” support would help them grow the most.

So, we decided to build a PYP Exhibition Human Library… and because of the unique context of not knowing whether we will be on campus or learning from home – or a mixture of both – we decided to set it up as a digital database. We also decided to open it up not only to faculty and staff at our school, but also parents and older students. Anyone who might have something to offer to the learners along the way.

First we collected the data: We used a simple Google Form, which allowed us to…

collect information about who they are in the community

… languages and areas of expertise

…specific Approaches to Learning Skills they would feel comfortable helping the Grade 5 learners with

… any of the PYP-ish stuff that supports the Exhibition journey

… and details about the extent to which they are able to support and how best for learners to contact them.

Next we collated the data: We decided to use Google Slides to harness the capability of internal links to allow for smooth and independent self-navigation for the learners.

The first slide acts as a table of contents to allow learners to self-identify in what area they require support

From there they are taken to a sub menu, that either breaks down the skills…

or the languages…

Or the specific topics…

Any of those sections then lead to a list of people to help and contact details for arranging the desired support.

Now that the library is built we are at the stage of thinking through the systems and processes to support the use of this tool:

• ensuring balance of who learners contact
• coaching learners to look for a mentor when they struggling, facing a challenging, or wanting some feedback
• contact expectations (CCing their homeroom teachers on email communication)
• zoom protocols (ie going through the homeroom teacher’s account) to ensure child safeguarding

Once these things are fine tuned, we will be ready to put this Human Library in the hands of the learners in hopes that they are able to use it to find the right people, at the right time, to help in just the right way!

Wish us luck! We will report back about how it goes!

Goal Setting and the S&Ps

At our school we are really trying to amplify the role of the new IB Standards and Practices across our whole school community – with leadership, with parents, with the Board of Directors and with faculty. We are trying to have the S&Ps be our lighthouse, our beacon, our goal post to create a shared direction and have that beautiful ‘sunflower effect’ where everyone in an organization is pulling in the same direction.

So one of the actions we have taken to try and work toward this vision, is to use the new IB Standards and Practices as the reference point for goal setting.

This year especially, we know that everyone is stretched so thin and working harder then they have ever likely worked before! So we wanted something simple and straightforward, but still impactful in helping our faculty along their ongoing journey as PYP practitioners.

Here is what we did and how it went:

First we explained the why, how and what to our faculty

Then we explained each of the three parts: self-assessment, reflection, and goal setting

Self-Assessment

For the self-assessment part, we used the proficiency indicators we use to measure student learning and applied them to ourselves as learners

We pulled as many Standards & Practices as we could that are relevant to the role of a faculty member at an IB school

Reflection

We used a simple framework to synthesize trends from their self-assessment

Goal Setting

We used a simple framework to commit to one goal, advocate for the support they desire as a learner and articulate what success will look like for them

And, as always, we emphasized that we are looking for progress, never perfection!

And the result was some beautifully honest, vulnerable and genuine reflections…

Which led to personalized goals that link their own individual improvement as a PYP practioner with our school’s collective improvement as an IB school.

From there, I was able to collate all their individual self-assessment data to see trends across the school. This was helpful in my role as PYP Coordinator because it not only allowed me a deeper understanding of where each individual PYP educators thinks they are in their journey; but I could also see commonalities in strengths and areas for growth within teams, subject areas, and across the whole staff. This provides me with great guidance in terms of how to individually support each faculty member with their goal, but also the bigger projects and initiatives I can work on with the whole staff in specific areas.

I was also able to collate goal areas and types of support, which again, not only allowed me to get a good handle on what each individual faculty member is striving towards and what they need from me, but also where there are common goal areas to help those individuals connect with one another over the course of the year to learn together and support one another in their shared purpose.

*Note – This is hot off the press! We just started it two days ago… so there is still some data rolling in!

So what are my next steps?

• share this data with my partner – the PYP Principal – so we can have a shared understanding of where our staff is and how best we can help them grow
• begin to reach out to individuals for calibration conversations, offers of support, and follow-up probing questions
• look for individuals who have common goals and work on helping them make connections with one another

We are just at the early stages of this journey, but it feels like we are off to a good start! As always, I welcome your thoughts, feedback, suggestions, ideas and stories from your own practice and experience with using the IB Standards and Practices as the common reference point for professional growth and development.

Re-Opening Voices

I think by now, all us educators are acutely aware of the small crack in the door that has presented itself for truly re-imagining education when we re-open our school campuses.

It’s an exciting opportunity, but can also feel like a one-shot chance for pushing the envelope and shifting the paradigm.

“The Quest stands upon the edge of knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail.”

Although we’re not setting out with Gandalf to save Middle Earth, Galadrial’s words help us remember how important, and likely, fragile this opportunity is.

So how can we make sure we don’t waste this chance? How can we make sure we don’t repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past? How can we make sure true change is brought about?

I think our answer comes from the second half of that quote:

“Hope remains while the company is true.”

But reflecting on who gets to be part of the “company” on this quest is essential.

What voices are included in making decisions about re-opening? What voices are neglected or excluded?

At our school, we want our re-opening plans to include the reflections, suggestions and ideas of our entire learning community. So before the school year ended and everyone began their holiday, we made sure to ask.

We made sure to ask what lessons we learned from Distance Learning that we could apply to future attempts at Distance Learning. And more importantly, what lessons we learned from Distance Learning that we could apply to to face-to-face school.

 

We asked our entire staff:

We asked every single one of  our learners:

(In written form for the older learners)

(And with videos and voice option for the younger learners)

We asked our whole parent community:

Our next steps are to code that qualitative data from the surveys, draw conclusions from the trends and use those conclusions to inform the work we do over the coming months to get ready to re-open school in the fall.

So now, hopefully, our re-opening plans are not merely the reflection of what a handful of leaders think, but rather the leaders are able to make decisions and create something representative of what our entire community thinks.

What else could we be doing to ensure we don’t waste this chance to push the boundaries of what school could be?

What else could be doing to ensure our planning process is inclusive of all voices?

Something Special…

This year I was new to my role and new to my school.

Well, I should say “new-ish” because before working at this school, I was actually lucky enough to have visited this school the year before; as a consultant.

And when I was there last year as a visitor – I kept thinking to myself, “This staff is something special” Even when I got back to my school at the time, anytime anyone asked me about how my workshop went and what they school was like, I just kept saying “The staff was really special.”

And although I could identify the special-ness… I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what it was that made them so, well, special.

Lucky for me, I joined that school, so I had the whole year to try and figure it out!

Now the school year has come to an end, and I think I have discovered just what is so special about this collection of educators.

They are learners.

All of them. Every single one. Despite their role – teacher, teaching assistant, counsellor, integrationist, pedagogical coach, principal – each and every person that makes up the Primary staff has the heart and soul of a true PYP learner.

All year I was seeing glimpses of this. Enthusiasm for growing, an insatiable desire for support, constant questions. Anytime I would offer optional professional learning sessions or courses – there they would be! Ready to learn.

But it wasn’t until our end of year reflections, that I saw the true extent of this.

Our whole staff participated in 3 end of year reflections that looked through the following  lenses.

How have I grown as an educator?

We asked each staff member to reflect upon and notice and name the ways in which they have grown in their specific role. And either choose an artifact that already exists, or create something to synthesize, summarize and share that growth with the rest of the community. We used a Padlet as a central place to post these reflections.

How have I grown as a learner?

Then we asked each staff member to reflect upon how they have grown as a learner this year. Specifically by choosing 1 skill in each of the 5 ATL categories that they feel they have strengthened or honed. We used Flipgrid as a central place to post these reflections.

How have I grown as a person?

Next we asked each staff member to reflect upon how they have grown as a person. We encouraged them to reflect on what attributes of the Learner Profile they have developed over the past year. Since, this one was a little more personal, we used PearDeck to collect everyone’s reflections more privately.

No convincing needed. No pulling teeth. Everyone just jumped right in!

I was blown away, not only by the willingness to be open and vulnerable to publicly share these reflection with one another. But the actual reflections themselves, revealed practitioners who see themselves as learners, understand themselves as learners, and who approach their own personal and professional growth as a life-long, on-going process. A process in which they have ownership over and see as within their control.

In my role as PYP Coordinator and Assistant Principal, this is treasure!

Trying to help a teacher, become a better teacher, can be challenging.

Trying to help a learner, help themself become a better teacher, is a true pleasure.

Many PYP schools strive to be a community of learners. This year, I had the privilege of living and breathing what that is actually like on a daily basis.

And it was pretty, freakin’ special. ❤️

Pedagogy 101 For PYP Parents

All week long I haven’t been able to stop thinking about a request that one of our parents made during our virtual “Parent Coffee”. Throughout this Distance Learning adventure, our Parent Coffees have provided space for the voices, opinions, perspectives and needs of our Primary School parent community. Each time, I leave with a page full of notes which lead to reflection, action and adjustments. But this time was different. This time my thinking was provoked – in a larger, more substantial way.

She was talking about how, inevitably, parents have taken on a bigger role in their children’s learning, and in most cases are now sharing in some of the roles and responsibilities that normally are fulfilled by teachers in face-to-face school. And as such, requested some help. Help that goes beyond what their children need to focus on and where to find resources and activities. Help more specifically focused on how to support their children in their learning; the pedagogical tips and tricks, us educators have in our back pocket when we are helping learners.

I’m sure parents at any school are likely overwhelmed at the prospect of taking more responsibility supporting their children’s learning. Now factor in what it must feel like to be a parent at a PYP school that is built on inquiry-based, concept-driven, agency supportive approaches to education. Wanting to help their child… but not being sure exactly how to do so.

We have to remember that most parents are not educators. They don’t have multiple degrees in education. They haven’t read endless books and blog posts. They don’t have resumes full of PD workshops. Understandably so, it’s our career – not theirs.

So how can we help? How can we share what we’ve learned through all those degrees, books and blogs, courses and workshops into something manageable and helpful that we can transfer over to them?

Here is my attempt. A pedagogy distilled. Condensed. Simplified.

Dedicated not only the wonderful parents at my school, but to all PYP parents around the world partnering with us during these difficult times to support their children.

1. Take an inquiry stance

Meet a question with a question. Often our first instinct when a child asks us a question is to provide an answer. But this approach can prevent a golden opportunity to have learners not only learn that thing, but also learn something about how to learn. So next time your child asks you a question (“How do you spell ….?” “How do you multiply fractions?” “What are the types of energy?”), no matter what the question is, instead of supplying the answer, try responding like this:

Great question! How could you find that out? What resource could you use to discover that? How could you figure that out?

Be prepared to inquire together. Sometimes, when you meet a question with a question, you get an “I don’t know”. That is an invitation to a great teachable moment! If your child doesn’t know how to find out on their own or what resource to use, you can step in as their partner and respond like this:

No problem! Let’s figure it out together. Maybe we can try this…. Have you ever used this… Let’s see if this resource has the answer….

This way you are still supporting them to figure out what they are trying to figure out, but along the way you’ve also helped develop their skill as an independent learner – so the next time, instead of needing to ask you, they might have some ways to figure it out on their own.

Ask the magic question – “What do you notice?”. No matter what subject, what area of learning, or what age – the secret ingredient to inquiry-based learning is asking learners to think about what they notice. Whether your child is learning their letters and looking at the letter “B”, or building their multiplication fluency by looking at a multiplication table, or developing their scientific knowledge by studying a model of a cell…. that one question works every time, and can always be followed up with “what else do you notice?” to probe for further thinking.

Don’t feel you have to be an expert, just be a learner. It is okay to not know something. In fact that presents an amazing opportunity to model your own approaches to learning. Feel confident to say, “I don’t know” or, “I have no idea”. Just make sure to follow it up with, “But now I want to know, so here is how I am going to find out!” or, “Let’s figure this out together!”

2. Support conceptual understanding

Value process. As often as possible get your child thinking beyond what they did and what they learned, and more about how they learned. Some great questions include:

How did you do that? Why did you do that? What strategy did you use? How did you learn that strategy? What steps did you take?

Harness the power of the key concepts. In the PYP we have 7 Key Concepts, that are secret ingredients to help learners think more deeply and understand… ANYTHING. The beauty of these key concepts, is they work for everything! You can apply these questions to any subject or area of learning. Whether your child is trying to learn about shapes… commas…. a historic figure…. a sports skill… sentence structure…. an art technique…. a water bottle! Anything. Here are the key concept questions you can ask your child at any time about anything they are learning:

What is it like? (Form)

How does it work? (Function)

How is it connected to other things? (Connection)

How does it change? (Change)

Why is it like that? Why is it the way it is? (Causation)

What are the different points of view? (Perspective)

What are our responsibilities? (Responsibility) 

3. Prioritize Reflection

Get them thinking about their thinking. Similar to the Key Concept questions, there are two questions you can ask your child to help them think deeper, about whatever it is they are learning. Again – any subject, any topic. More specifically, they get children thinking about their thinking! Here are two magic questions to support learners deep understanding:

How do you know?

What makes you say that?

Whether they are showing you the solution to a math problem, discussing parts of a book they are reading, summarizing information, sharing their perspective on a world event… these questions have super powers!

4. Support your child’s agency 

Invite and involve their voice. Don’t be afraid the let them express themselves. Give space for them to articulate what they like and don’t like about learning, and why that is. Listen to when they are advocating for what they need as learners. Listen for what they really care about and matters to them and try to understand and find ways to support it.

Respect and support their choices. Be aware of what choices you are making for your child, that they could probably be making themselves. Choices may include when they learn, where they learn, what they learn, and how they learn. Coach them to make informed choices, by making the decision making process explicit (What choice are you making for yourself?), then follow up with a reflection about how effective that choice was and whether it’s a good choice to be made again in the future (How did that choice work out for you? How do you know? What will you choose differently next time?).

Emphasize ownership. Sometimes learning can be something that gets misrepresented as something done to learners, or around learners. This creates a false sense that they are passively drifting through the process, and have no impact on their own learning. We want learners to know it’s their learning, they own it, they impact it. It is something done by them, for them, and we are the supporting actors. Use words and phrases that build that sense of ownership over their learning:

It’s your learning.

You’re in the driver’s seat.

Your learning, your choice. 

5. Be purposeful with feedback. 

Teach to fish, don’t give a fish. As much as possible, when you give feedback to your child, think about how to give advice that will go beyond that one moment. As teachers, we often use phrases like, “teach the writer, not the writing” to help us give tips that will impact that learner in a bigger, more sustainable way. Instead of just telling them how to fix something. Here are some examples of ways you can phrase that type of feedback:

“Readers…. (often go back an re-read what they don’t understand; share their opinion about what they read; break words into small chunks to help them sound it out etc.)

“Writers…. (read their writing outloud to themselves to try and find their mistakes; use capitals to show the reader a new sentence is starting; support their opinions with facts and evidence; add details to make their writing more interesting etc.)

“Mathematicians…. (double check their solutions for accuracy; use objects and drawings to help them solve problems; use short cuts and tricks called “algorithms”; use special words etc.)

This helps phrase feedback in a way that will help them in that moment, but also help them in that area beyond that moment as well. Feedback that not only fixes mistakes but helps them grow and develop as readers, writers, mathematicians, scientists, historians, artists and athletes!

 

As PYP educators, we need to see this as more than a short-term investment. The time and energy we spend supporting parents who are looking for help in this area, will pay long-term dividends when life returns to normal and we have a coalition of parents who not only understand inquiry, concepts and agency – but have experience living it.

What other points of pedagogy could we share with our PYP parents?

How can we help them, help their children?

What tips and advice can we impart unto our parent community as they become pioneers of at-home pedagogy?

Learners or Students?

Lately I’ve been wondering if in our attempt to create life-long learners, we are accidentally creating life-long students.

Does what we do each day at school help learners, learn how to learn?

Or how to be taught?

The unexpected and unfortunate circumstances of Distance Learning has presented an interesting litmus test for answering this question.

How has the experience of distance learning differed for:

Children whose time at school has helped them to know:

• what their own interests, passions, purposes, curiosities and needs are
• how to set their own intentions, criteria for success, goals and finish lines
• how to find, curate and judge resources that are most helpful for them as learners
• when, where and with whom they learn best
• how to make decisions about the best way to capture, document, and collect what they learn along the way
• how, when and from who to ask for feedback, support, help and guidance
• how to self-assess and triangulate perspectives on how they are doing and what their next steps are
• how to take their learning public – the different tools, approaches, and forums for doing so
• how to self-manage: to organize their time, tasks, and materials

Compared to…

Children who show up to school each day and are used to being told:

• what to learn
• why to learn it
• when to learn it
• how to learn it
• where to learn it
• with whom to learn it
• what resources to use
• how to capture and document
• how they are doing and what their next steps are
• when, how, with whom to share it with

Obviously, the goal is not to prepare children for Distance Learning. But Distance Learning gives us a unique snapshot into learning without school, learning beyond school and how learners approach learning when we’re not there with them.

What we do as educators each day can either contribute to an internal or external locus of control for the children we work with. Learning can either be seen as something done by them or something done to them. If children leave their years at school, thinking learning is only the by-product of teaching, then what happens when all of the sudden they no longer have ‘teachers’? Then there’s no more learning? Let’s hope not!

So what can we do, as educators, to be sure we are creating life-long learners?

1. Unpack the difference between learning and school:

 

2. Spend more time, learning about learning:

What does learning look like?

What does learning feel like?

What do you believe about learning?

How is learning unleashed?

Understanding learning

Work or Learning?

An inquiry into learning

 

3. Ask this simple, powerful question of ourselves:

Credit –John Spencer

 

4. . Take small steps sharing, and eventually shifting over, planning for learning

Link to resource

 

5. Elevate the importance and role of ATL skills in everything we do

Credit – Orenjibuta

 

6. Help learners take back ownership over their learning.

Credit – Barbara Bray and Sylvia Duckworth 

7. Be careful not to confuse compliance and engagement.

Credit – Barbara Bray and Sylvia Duckworth 

8. Be careful not to conceptualize “independent learners” as students who follow our directions by themselves without reminders

 

9. Take lessons learned from Distance Learning back with us, to keep pushing the envelop and breaking the mould of what school could be

 

10. Pull wisdom from the famous adage: Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. 

“Give a child their learning, and they’ll learn for a day.

Teach a child how to learn, and they’ll learn for a lifetime”

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So whether you are still in Distance Learning, heading back to IRL school, or already back in the normal swing of things, now is a chance for all of us to reflect and take stock of whether our intentions and actions truly create the life-long learners we hope for.

 

How do you ensure you are supporting the growth of life-long learners?

How do you prioritize learning how to learn?

How do you help learners discover who they are as learners and how best they learn?

 

Starting the Year with the PYP Enhancements in Mind

Our PYP community is in a unique situation. We welcomed in the PYP Enhancements last school year – but for many of us, it was mid-way through the year. Which means this is the first time lots of us are planning our first weeks with the enhancements in mind.

I’m sure many of these considerations were already present in our previous approaches to back to school planning. But now we have a solid, common, intentional framework from which to plan our first day, our first week, and even the days leading up to the first day.

So as we plan our start to the year we need to be sure to ask ourselves and each other:

Are we thinking about The Learners?

Are we thinking about Learning and Teaching?

Are we thinking about the Learning Community? 

To help us all in this collective goal I’ve shared some ‘start of the year’ blog posts organized around those 3 categories:

The Learner

Relationship Building 

Why We Must Invest in Relationship Building First

An Inquiry Into My Students

Connecting with Students 

Learning and Teaching

Sowing the Seeds for a Great Year – 10 Tips for an Inquiry-Based First Week 

What Does an Inquiry-Based First Week of School Look Like?

What Could an Agency-Supportive First Week of School look like?

Best First Week of School Ever!

Best First Month of School Ever!

My Plan For  a More Fair and Free Place to Learn

Starting the year off slowly

The Learning Community 

Reaching Out to Families

Getting Parents On-board 

How are you ensuring the PYP Enhancements are guiding your back to school planning?

What other resources would you add to this list to help strengthen our focus on The Learner, Learning and Teaching and The Learning Community?

The Problem With a POI

For those of us who work at PYP schools, we are all too familiar with the “POI Review”. Some schools conduct it yearly, others every few years, some only when an evaluation visit is looming. But we all do it.

A typical approach to a POI review usually involves an analysis of horizontal articulation (balance within a grade level) and vertical articulation (balance across the grade levels). This usually consists of identifying, tallying and cross-referencing concepts, skills, sections of the TD themes etc. all in order to guarantee that there is balance in what is being taught each year.

I think if you are at a PYP school that creates a POI based around teacher-planned Units of Inquiry and then never changes that POI… then this traditional approach to vertical articulation makes sense.

But if you are at a school that is constantly reflecting upon, changing and evolving your Units of Inquiry; planning in response to learning; building units after getting to know your students; co-planning UOIs with your students; and eventually supporting your students to plan their own personalized UOIs… then a traditional approach to vertical articulation presents a few significant challenges.

I work at school that is much more the latter, than the former. So when I sat down today with a team of colleagues to analyze our vertical articulation, we ran face-first into many of these challenges.

Challenge #1 – Personalization

We noticed that as our students move through their PYP journey at our school, they become more involved in the direction their learning takes within a Unit of Inquiry. So when we got to the grade-levels with purposefully open-ended central ideas, we found it difficult to tally the concepts, knowledge and skills because we knew that different groups of students had taken their learning in different directions. It became even more challenging when we got to the grade-levels where students are planning their own personalized Units of Inquiry, because that meant all 120 students had branched off in completely different directions, multiple times throughout the year. And although there have been efforts made within those grade-levels to track the balance of their learning, we realized it became difficult to bridge those systems of articulation with the other systems of articulation that made sense for ensuring balance across teacher-planned UOIs.

So how can we build one coherent system that can track balance regardless of whether a UOI is teacher planned, co-planned or student-planned?

Challenge #2 – Constant Change

We are a school of risk takers and reflectors, which means we are in a self-perpetuated, constant cycle of re-working our Units of Inquiry: to grow and change as we grow in our understanding of teaching and learning; to grow and change as the world grows; to grow and change to attempt to better suit the needs and interests of the current cohort. What we end up with it a constantly changing POI. Which is a GREAT thing! But definitely presents a challenge when it comes to vertical articulation analysis. Because even if you can show that the current POI is vertically balanced – that specific POI is not static, and not necessarily representative of the learning for that group of students from the year before, or the year before that. So what we’re doing is ensuring balance at one point in time for students in all different grade levels, but we’re not necessarily ensuring balance for one group of students over time.

And we have to be careful not to let the tail wag the dog and stop reflecting upon and changing UOIs, just to ensure that vertical balance that we were able to tally and track at that one moment in time. It’s not static and it shouldn’t be static.

So how can we ensure vertical balance in our students’ learning in a way that grows and changes as our UOIs grow and change from year to year?

If we are re-imagining ways to approach the planning of Units of Inquiry that make up our POI; then we should probably also  be re-imagining the ways we analyze and track balance within that POI.

What if…

A POI was personalized to each student.

A POI followed the students through their PYP journey.

A POI was more focused on what was learned, instead of what was taught.

A POI wasn’t impacted every time a UOI changed.

One idea my colleague and I had was a more adaptive, personalized and emergent approach to ensuring there is balance within a students’ PYP journey.

We had an idea that stemmed from a system we use within our grade-level to help students reflect upon balance within their learning over the course of the year. We have students pause and capture the different sections of each PYP Theme they have explored so far, to help them notice their own gaps in their balance. This data is then used to stimulate conversations of where they might take their next unit.

We had the idea to take this approach and imagine what it could look like across ages and grade-levels, to create one synthesized, coherent, but personalized record of vertical articulation.

In grade-levels where teachers are planning the Units of Inquiry, teachers could hi-light the parts of the TD themes that the students explore.

Then, that same document can move up to the next grade with the students and their new teachers can update their new learning, by hilighting new elements of the TD themes that have been explored over the course of that year. Then even if the grade below them changes the unit the following year, the learning from the unit that actually took place for their current students would be tracked and documented.

Then for the grade-levels where students and teachers are co-planning Units of Inquiry, editing access could be shared with students – made simple by programs like Google Classroom that allow you to take one document that already exists and push it out to all individual students to modify.

That way students can accurately reflect the learning that took place in their unit, even if it was different from other students in their class. It would also provide great data for students and teachers to be able to work together to notice gaps in balance to inform their co-planning.

Finally, when students reach the stage of completely planning their own UOIs they would take over responsibility for tracking their balance  and using the data that represents their journey as a learner so far. Regardless of whether the learning came from a teacher-planned UOI, a co-planned UOI or a self-planned UOI. They would have ownership and access to a document that had a complete record of their learning over the full course of their PYP journey.

Obviously, this idea is very new – and very raw and undeveloped. We realize there are many complexities and nuances that would need to be thought through before launching something like this.

What about new students?

Could new students not update the knowledge they gained from their previous schools on to this record?

What about specialist-subjects?

Could specialist teachers not also add to this centralized document?

What about “repeats”?

Could we not think of a way to code parts of the TD theme that are revisited at different times in different ways?

What about concepts, skills, etc.?

Could a second slide be added for concepts? A third for skills?

What about PYP evaluations?

Could there be a way to display and explain this approach to articulation that still adheres to and satisfies their Standards and Practices?

There are also the difficult discussions about whether balance means “equal coverage” or whether pursuing a balanced POI trumps students following their own motivation… but these are important discussions for all schools and teams to be having, regardless of how they are ensuring articulation in their POI.

I’m not sure if this is the answer (I think it would be pretty interesting to try though!) but I think there must be ways for us as a PYP community to re-imagine our approaches to ensuring balance in a our students’ learning in a way that better reflects our emergent, organic, adaptive and co-constructed approaches to planning.

What are your “what ifs” for the POI review process?

What challenges do you see with horizontal and vertical articulation?

How else could we evolve our approaches to tracking and ensuring balance?

Bringing Parents into the Conversation

It’s no secret that the grade level I am involved in does things a little differently. Ok, “a little” might be an understatement. We are very different. And as a result, sometimes parents need support understanding and feeling comfortable having their children become part of our pilot program. With only a few months left in the school year -and next year right around the corner – this is one of those times.

Parents from the grade level below us started to share some worries and concerns with the school about next year, so we decided to get out ahead of things and offer an evening parent session for all of the parents in the grade level below us. Our PYP coordinator contacted the parents and invited them for an evening with us.

It was important for us to collect their concerns, questions and worries to inform our planning for the session in response to their needs. So we asked them to fill out a short Google Form to help us gather that information.

Then as a team, we analyzed their responses.

After analyzing their responses, it was clear most of them were looking for specifics about how things work and what exactly happens on a day to day basis.

But jumping into hows and whats without investing first in the why is not really our style… and not something that we felt would help to build sustainable buy-in for the long run. We believed the overarching goal should be to bring parents into the conversation about education, to help them develop themselves as critical thinkers. To be able to look at the current paradigm and question it, challenge it – hopefully even criticize it! So we had to figure out a way to address what they wanted from the session with what we felt was important for the session.

We decided to frame the evening as “Starting the Conversation” with a heavy focus on the whys, followed by a brief overview of hows and whats – with transparency about our plan for continuing the conversation in order to ensure they felt their voices were heard.

We had a great response! We had 40 families RSVP for the event.

And true to our collaborative approach, we had 10 representatives from our team there, each of whom took ownership over a small section of the presentation. It was important for us to show Who We Are in the way we work together in each and every thing that we do.

Section 1: Provocations

If our main goal was to bring parents into the conversation, it was essential to begin by poking and provoking their thinking about education. Both by ‘stepping in’ in order to connect with their own experience as a student and ‘stepping back’ to attempt to objectively look at the system of school from a distance.

We decided to use a chalk talk with a range of provoking questions to stimulate these types of thinking.

Then we brought the whole group together to pull out the big ideas from each of the provocation chalk talks. At first the parents were hesitant to contribute, but once we got the ball rolling lots of great ‘noticings’ were shared.

We finished the discussion with what parents hoped for their childrens’ future, which acted as a great segueway to our next provocation about skills. Instead of telling parents what skills are currently valued, we wanted them to make those discoveries for themselves. So – in the vernacular of our students – we had them “search it up”!

All the parents took out their phones and did a little research about what skills are currently valued in post-secondary and the workplace. After some inquiry time, we had parents shout their discoveries. Some began to make connections with responses from the chalk talk, which was an unexpected bonus!

Then we shared a provocation from the World Economic Forum to provoke their thinking about how rapidly the landscape of skills continue to change…

Which walked them right into one of our main provocations….

If the nature of desired skills keep changing so rapidly, who amoung us knows exactly what will be needed by the time their child graduates in 2030?

Which helped us usher in AJ Juliani’s quote:

Section 2: The “Why”

Investing a large chunk of time into provoking parents’ thinking, let us transition smoothly into talking about the “why”.

We touched on that nature of the industrial model of education…

We touched on the growing body of educators standing up to say that something is wrong with the traditional paradigm of school…

And we ended with the need for a radically different approach.

Section 3: The “Hows”

Even though our main focus was the “why” behind our approach, we also wanted to honour our parents and most of their worries and concerns were centered around “hows” and “whats”. So we made sure to briefly touch on some of the most important “hows” without going too deep into the details.

We explained how our mission statement drives everything we do as well as the time, thought and energy that went into developing it.

We explained how we have a broad view of “success” and how we make sure success in one area does not come at the expense of another area.

We hilghted the importance of learning how to learning and how we use the PYP ATL skills to support that.

We touched on how we use Dan Pink’s work on motivation as a driving force behind what we do.

We explained how we work as a team with parents and students to ensure everyone’s voice is heard and perspective is valued.

We shared how Learning Support, Challenge and Enrichment and EAL support works in our model.

Section 4: The “Whats”

The one part of the presentation that the parents wanted the most, was the one part of the conversation that we chose to dedicate the least amount of time to.

The majority of the worries and concerns that parents shared in the aforementioned Google Form were about ‘what’ exactly happens on a day to day basis. And although we wanted to honour their voices, we also wanted to be careful not to oversimplify this part or give off the idea that it is static and concrete. Because the truth is that the “whats” are constantly changing. So “what” a typical day looks like now, is not what a typical day looked like a month ago, and will not be what a typical day will like for their child next year. So we decided to acknowledge the whats, without committing to any specifics.

For example, we addressed the fact that our approach still includes transdisciplinary Units of Inquiry as well as stand-alone math and literacy…

We explained that our approach includes many different pathways for learning…

We acknowledged many of the nuts and bolts of our approach, but were transparent about the fact that even though the function of these elements stay the same, the specific form is constantly growing, changing and evolving.

We were open about the role of our own reflections and action research as a vital part of what we do, and linked that back to our non-committal approach to explaining the “nuts and bolts”.

Part 5: Next Steps

Before wrapping up the session, it was important for us to explicitly acknowledge the worries and concerns that came through the Google Form that we chose not to address in this first session. Again, we re-iterated that the session was just the “beginning of the conversation” and clearly explained our plan moving forward to ensure they knew that all of their needs would be addressed at later times.

We also focused their attention on what specifically they could do now, in the interim, to prepare themselves for the experience of being a parent in our model next year. We hilighted the importance of having them join the current conversation about changes needed in education.

In order to support them in this, we shared a resources document with them that included any source we referenced throughout the presentation, as well as other resources we felt might help them along in their journey to think critically about the education system.

Overall, it was a really successful evening! The energy in the room was great – parents were engaged in the conversation, sharing stories, reflections, thoughts and discoveries. Of course there were a few parents that hung back to speak to us one on one about further worries and concerns – and we were glad they did! Our goal was to start the conversation, so we were happy to have parents engage further with it right away!

Sadly, I won’t be there next year to continue the conversation with this group of parents… but I hope one of my colleagues picks up the mantle and documents the rest of this journey!

How do you bring your parent community “into the conversation”?

How do you support and challenge your parent community to develop a critical thinking approach about the current educational paradigm?