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?

A week in the life…

A few weeks ago I was leading a workshop and one of the participants asked what a “normal day” is like for me. Although the easy answer is – there is never a normal day – the truth is, at this point of the year, we have settled into somewhat of a routine. However, just sharing one day wouldn’t make sense, because so much of what we do is part of a bigger system or routine. So I’ve instead decided to share what a “normal week” is like for me.

Friday Afternoon

A huge part of supporting our students to take ownership over their learning is helping them set weekly goals. Goals that are personal, relevant and meaningful to them. We spent months and months teaching them how to set goals – focusing on how to know you need to focus on something (using data to inform goals) and also how to know you’ve achieved or accomplished what you set out to (defining success criteria).

We started off small at the beginning of the year having students set one personal goal for the week. Then as the weeks went on and their goal setting skills improved, we began to roll in other goals.

Always partnering the expectation of setting a new goal, with instruction and support for setting a goal of that kind. We spent a lot of time discussing how to know what you need to work on, and how different sources of data can be useful in that process.

For a personal goal it may be your screen time statistics…

Or feedback from a three-way conference…

For a literacy goal, it may be assessment data…

Or something from a personal learning plan…

For math it may be feedback from a math conference…

Or an online assessment tool…

For UOI it may be from a unit plan….

Or a backwards plan…

Now at this point of the year, students are fairly independent at analyzing different sources of data to know what they need to focus on and establishing what success might look like for them for all areas of their learning.

As partners in their learning, we still play an important role in supporting students to set goals. Sometimes we are co-planning their goals with them. Sometimes they plan independently, then conference with us face-to-face for advice and consultation. Sometimes they plan and request digital feedback.

Another essential element, is keeping the parents involved in this process. After students have drafted their goals and received some form of feedback from an advisor, they share their goals with their parents. Both as a way to keep parents in the loop about what their child is learning; but also as a source of feedback to help them further strengthen their goal setting.

Monday Period 1

Each morning I start the day by previewing the schedule with students to ensure we all have a shared understanding of the day.

Then I go through our “ads”. The ads show the array of adult-led and student-led learning opportunities and experiences for that day.

Then we look at the “MOSCOW” for the day. Typically the “musts” are always the same – achieve your weekly goals – but the shoulds, coulds, and wants depend on what’s happening that week or something specific we are focusing on.

Then students plan their day. Each week we push out a day plan template via Google Classroom for each student.

We also share all the advisors’ timetables to allow any students to sign-up for one-on-one conferences, guided groups, supervision etc. with any of the available adults.

Support for students planning their day ranges from planning with an advisor, to planning independently then getting feedback from an advisor to planning independently and seeking feedback from a peer.

Monday Period 8

When we come back together as a community at the end of the day, we have two main focuses: analyzing and reflecting on our day plan and updating documentation of learning.

The first thing students do is colour code their day plan. As a class, we came up with a  system that made sense for us:

Green = completely stuck to the learning I planned for myself

Yellow = Mostly stuck to the learning I planned for myself

Orange = Kind of stuck to the learning I planned for myself

Red = Totally did not stick to the learning I planned for myself

As a community we worked very hard to build a culture of honesty, not fear, when it comes to colour-coding day plans. Students feel comfortable knowing that they can admit to the times when they got distracted or pulled off-course without fearing that they will get in trouble. This culture of honestly lets students get to know themselves better as learners, and allows us as advisors to have some powerful, open conversations with them about what got in their way of learning and what they are going to do differently in the future.

Once students are finished colour-coding their day plans they jump into documenting the learning and curating evidence from their day. Similar to the goal setting, they are fairly independent in this process at this point in the year. But that is a result of intentional focus on helping students see the “why” behind documentation, encouraging their exploration of different “hows” and supporting their awareness of possible “what’s”.

At this point in the year, some students curate their evidence using Seesaw

Others use Portfolios (using Google Slides)

Some prefer to blog

Some are quite creative – like my comic maker who uses his love of comics to capture his reflections and evidence of learning each day!

While students are updating their documenting myself and my co-advisor have one-on-one meetings with students who benefit from additional support to reflect on their day plans or generate and analyze evidence to support their colour-coding.

Monday after school

After the students head home I sift through their colour coded day plans (which is made so easy by Google Classroom!) and make decisions about what type of support each student needs for the following morning based on how their day went.

If a student seemed to have a difficult time carrying out their plans I might have them plan with me or another advisor so we can have long, uninterrupted conversations about their choices and what they plan to do differently. If the student had only one or two areas of difficulty then they will likely plan on their own, but pop by for a conference with an advisor where we could have a quick check in on that specific area of need. If a student had no difficulty sticking to their plan, and is on somewhat of a streak of “green days” then they are trusted to plan and seek feedback from a peer.

After I’ve finished going through their day plans, I sift through their documentation for the day. To help myself stay organized, I have a document where I keep track of where they keep track of their evidence of learning. This allows me to easily find and browse through their documentation as another way to plan support for learning and conversations about learning for the following day.

As I am going through their colour-coded day plans and their documentation of learning, I usually keep a list of talking points for students I am planning with or conferencing with the following day (just to help me stay organized, and maximize my time with each student).

Tuesday

Rinse and repeat.

Wednesday Morning

Mostly rinse and repeat… but since Wednesday is the halfway point in our week, we use it as an opportunity to check in with progress on goals. At the end of the day students use a colour coding system that we created as a class to see which goals they are closest to achieving, and which goals are farthest away from completion.

Green = goal achieved; success criteria met; evidence of success complete

Yellow = goal achieved but need time for success criteria and evidence

Orange = progress made, but more time and support is needed to achieve success

Red = not progress made YET

This routine gives them really strong data for making informed choices the following day about what areas of their learning need the most time, support and additional strategies.

Thursday

Mostly rinse and repeat… but during our planning meeting and conferences in the morning we use the colour-coded goal data to drive our conversations about the students’ day plans.

“I noticed your UOI goal is red, but you haven’t given any time to it today. Can you tell me about that?”

“I see that your math goal is green, but you’ve scheduled a block for math today. What was your thinking behind that decision?”

“I noticed your literacy goal is orange. What time, support and strategies do you need to get it to green by the end of the week?”

Friday period 1

Mostly rinse and repeat… but the focus during period 1 is on evidence and documentation, thus slightly changing the “musts” to really highlight that focus.

Friday afternoon

Before students set new goals, we always build in time to reflect and analyze their goals from the current week. Students re-colour code their goals, based on the action they’ve taken since Wednesday and use that new data to decide which goals need to be carried over into the next week and in which areas of learning they are ready for a new goal.

Then we repeat the goal setting procedure I explained at the beginning of this post.

Friday After school

Similar to the other days of the week, I spend my time after school browsing through their stuff to help me figure out how to move forward. I scroll through their finalized goal colour-coding, their day plans, and their documentation to make informed choices about what level of support might be best for each individual child the following week.

I also take this time to not only focus on the needs of specific students, but also trends that point to larger areas of need for groups of children and sometimes, the whole class. This could be anything from screen time, support with goal setting, taking math learning deeper, stronger documentation, choosing learning locations etc.

If I notice a larger need, I block out my time table to address those areas of need the following week with the specific groups of students struggling in that specific area.

Monday Morning 

The whole thing starts all over again!!!!!

TWO MASSIVE DISCLAIMERS:

1. This blog post is a snapshot of what a ‘week in the life’ looks like for me right now. But it is such an organic, iterative, ever-evolving process, that this is not what a week would have looked like a month back, and will definitely not be what a week looks like one month hence. As a team, we are constantly reflecting, tweaking, analyzing, taking new risks, letting go of old risks.

(As an example of that, this is a current brainstorm from a recent team meeting of what we feel is currently “working” and “not working” at the moment.)

2. This is what makes sense for me – based on my philosophies, my comfort level, my context, my constraints, my resources, my students and my team. So, as much as I am happy to share what I’m doing, it’s also important for me to urge you to figure out what makes sense for you– based on your philosophy, your comfort level, your context, your constraints, your resources, your students and your team. As tempting as it may be to transplant, my best advice is to grow your own innovation. 

I’m still very much at the beginning of my journey. Constantly reflecting on my own why, rebuilding my repertoire of how’s and experimenting with many different what’s. This post is simply a snapshot of what a ‘week in the life’ is like for me right now. I have no idea what my “normal” will be in the future…

But I hope it continues to get me closer and closer to my goal of respecting and supporting student agency.

What is a “week in the life” like for you?

What are the nuts and bolts of attempting to support your students’ agency?

What are the routines, structures and systems that help you make the best use of time, people and resources your students have?

Getting Parents Onboard

One of my big professional goals this year is to do a better job getting parents to understand and support our agency-based approach to learning.

I used to do a pretty good job of this at my old school, but last year – with a new country, new school, new grade, new approach – it fell off my list of priorities. I lost sight of how crucial it truly is.

So this year I’m making a more concerted effort, to not only help the parents understand what is going on in the classroom and why, but more importantly to bring them into to the conversation about why school is broken and get them onboard as allies in the education revolution!

Design by @orenjibuta

Here are a few things I’ve done so far:

1. Embrace and encourage parent meetings

Sometimes as educators we try to avoid, sidestep and minimize parent meetings. This year I’ve tried to shift my perspective to wanting and welcoming parent meetings.

Right at the beginning of the year I sent out an open invitation to any parents who had questions, comments and concerns about our agency-supportive model. I had about a handful of parents reply and set-up a meeting.

If the reason for the meeting was more about their specific child within our agency-supportive model then I made sure to encourage a 3-way conference approach to the meeting. Making it clear that our school philosophy was that meetings that take place about a child, should include that child.

To structure the meeting I used an adapted protocol where child, parent and teacher all had an opportunity to share their goals, needs, worries and suggestions.

Moving on from these initial meetings I had some families that wanted to schedule regular meetings – once a month – to stay connected and involved in their child’s learning. And others who felt that the initial meeting had met their needs.

Another thing that came to light from these meetings was that parents wanted to feel more involved in the model, wanted to better understand the model and wanted help and support learning how to be a parent within the model. This feedback informed many of the following steps I’ve been taking this year to get parents on board.

2. Harnessing the power of digital platforms

It was clear that many parents wanted to feel involved and part of their child’s learning at school, but because it was so different from when they went to school themselves, they weren’t exactly sure how.

So thanks to the power of Google, SeeSaw, Weebly and other platforms we were able to start helping them feel more involved. We got in the routine of digitally sharing assessments, weekly goals, day plans, reflections and documentation.

This not only gave parents insight into their child’s learning but allowed for them to leave comments, suggestions and feedback to become part of the learning process.

3. Make planning transparent

“No secret teacher business” is a pretty common phrase for agency-supportive educators when sharing their thinking and planning with their students – why not with parents as well? What better way to have parents understand not only what is happening in the classroom, but also (and probably more importantly) why and how.

So each Monday I take a screenshot of our actual team planning (which is built around Simon Sinek’s Golden Circles) and record a voice note to explain, in detail, the thinking, reasons and research behind our planning.

There has been a really positive response to these posts from parents!

So this prompted me to start to share beyond the weekly why, how, what to other important systems and structures that we have in place to support students’ learning.

4. Hook parents as allies

One of the most crucial aspects of getting parents on board is helping them become critical thinkers about the current paradigm of education and what needs to change. Each week I send home a provocation – a video, blog, post, article, tweet, or quote – that is meant to poke and provoke their thinking about education.

I’m lucky that I’m part of a team that shares similar philosophies and practices getting parents on board, because we work together to collect and collate parent provocations.

5. Seek and Action Parent Feedback

I think it’s also important to recognize and make space for parents’ thoughts, ideas, and feedback – not just with regards to their specific child, but also in more general ways as well.

Whether it’s taking time to collect their philosophies and beliefs about education…

Taking time to ask them about their child…

Seeking feedback about the new ways you are approaching teaching and learning…

Or seeking feedback about how you are doing as a teacher…

It is important that they have a voice and they feel like their voice is heard and honoured.

My Reflections

One of most important things I’ve learned so far is that the more it feels like an invitation – whether it’s to come in for a meeting, have access to their child’s documents, listen to the thinking behind our planning, engage with a parent provocation or fill out a survey – the more comfortable it feels for parents. That way parents can be as involved as they wish to be. And for some that means very involved and for other less so to not at all.

As a classroom teacher it definitely becomes easier to get parents on board the more your PYPC, administrators and Head of School take similar approaches in the work they do with parents. I’m thankful to be part of a school where everyone shares a similar approach to energize, engage and empower our parent community as an essential part of shifting the educational paradigm. Maybe I can even get my PYPC coordinator, principal or Head of School to write a guest post about their contribution to getting parents on board within their role… Stay tuned!

How do you get parents on board for agency-supportive models of learning?

How are you inviting parent voice into the process?

Differentiation: Not Just for Students

I know what you’re thinking… I’m going to say differentiation should also be for teachers. And although that is very true, I’ve blogged about that before. This time I’m interested in thinking about how we should be differentiating for parents.

We spend a lot of time and effort making sure our students’ differences and perspectives are considered and honoured, but what about the diversity in the perspectives and preferences of the families we work with? If one size does not fit all for students, then perhaps one size should not fit all for the families either.

In the past week, getting ready for a new school year, I have had many thought-provoking conversations with colleagues about how we can better meet the unique needs of every family each family.

Here is what we have come up with so far:

Weekly Updates

Many of us send home weekly information and often get frustrated if it is not being read. When working with students we often say, “If they aren’t learning the way we’re teaching, then let’s teach the way they learn.” If we apply the same thinking to the families then if parents aren’t consuming the way we’re communicating, then maybe we should start communicating the way they’re consuming. This year I am trying out a system where I send home a weekly written blog post for families and also an YouTube video. That way parents who are comfortable with English and have time to read can gather information from the blog post and families who are unable/uncomfortable reading English or prefer watching videos can gather the same information from YouTube.  

Collecting Information about Students

Many of us like to get to know our students through the parents’ perspective either before the year starts or during the first weeks of school. Some of us send home a graphic organizer for parents to fill out, others request a letter from the parents, others use a Google Form with questions. Just like our students, I’m sure parents have preferred ways to share information with us. This year I shared my goal with the parents of my students – that I want to learn about their children through their eyes – but instead of mandating how, I offered three choices. I invited parents to come in and have a face-to-face meeting if they want to tell me about their child in person, or call me if they preferred to tell me over the phone, or to share electronically by filling out a survey on a Google Form.

Communication Logs

I have a colleague who used to have daily communication logs for all her students at her old school, but when she transferred to our school last year she let go of that practice since it wasn’t the norm at our school. Throughout the year she found that some parents were upset that there was not a daily communication log, so this year she was playing with the idea of reintroducing them into her teaching practice. Then we started to chat about the idea and realized maybe it doesn’t have to be all or none, maybe it could be optional based on the preference of the family. Now she is planning on offering this to all her families and seeing who is interested and who is not. For some families daily communication is essential. For other families daily communication is a nuisance. Why can’t we satisfy both groups? And those in between! Not only is she going to ask if her families are interested in a daily communication log, but she is also going to ask. how they would like to communicate. A notebook that goes back and forth… Google Sheet that is shared…. a phone call? Whatever works for that specific family.

Homework 

I used to assign mandatory homework and then get frustrated when students did not complete it and the families did not support it. This year I was planning on having a zero homework policy. Then I realized that it doesn’t have to be an either or… it can be a both and. If I as the teacher mandate homework for all my students, I am neglecting the perspectives of the families who value their time after school for other activities and wish not to have homework. If I as the teacher outlaw homework I am neglecting the perspectives of the families who value extended practice of the academic skills we explore in class. So this year I plan to conduct a collaborative inquiry into homework with my students, where we can gather and analyze diverse perspectives about homework (student, parent, teacher, administrator, research etc.) and then share our discoveries with the families. From there each family will be able to decide if they want homework for their son or daughter, why they want homework and how they want to approach homework.

So far, this approach has been very rewarding. I have received positive feedback from my families about the choices and options they have had. I hope I can continue to reflect and discover other options for family differentiation to help me work towards my goal of a more inclusive education experience for all involved.

How do you differentiate to meet the needs of your students’ families?

What other ways can you think of honouring families’ unique and diverse perspectives and preferences?