Tips for Sharing the IB PYP with Parents

Engaging the families of our IB PYP students and getting them on board is so important for all involved and not least for bringing that cohension to our learning community. Often times, it is the parents in our learning community who are the last to understand what exactly it is that we do. I receive many questions and requests from teachers, coordinators and school leaders who are presented with this job of bringing the PYP to the parents. Do any of the questions below sound familiar?

So, what exactly is the PYP?

How is my child actually learning?

What do you mean that you're a FACILITATOR?

I'm a little concerned about this student-led inquiry thing?

Well, here's my advice for you if you've been given the soapbox to step upon and deliver the message of why we encourage inquiry based learning, support student agency and proudly fly the flag of being a PYP school.  These tips are designed with ideas to pick and choose. Obviously, what you do depends on time, space and your school community. Whatever you decide, have fun with it!

Tip 1: Have the Families Experience Inquiry

Without a shadow of a doubt, this is the number one way to enable greatest understanding; by DOING exactly what we do with their children the family actually get involved with BEING a PYP student for a few hours. This is far more effective that sitting in a meeting and having a slide show presented to them. We cant possibly bring them the full experience involved in a 4-6 week unit of inquiry but we can bring them a taste of the inquiry process and the steps we take to bring agency into our student-led practice. Go back to the basics as you consider what the parents will need to know and will likely want to know and then pick ONE or TWO only:

• What is a transdisciplinary approach to learning?
• How do concepts impact learning?
• How does content knowledge fit into an inquiry-based approach?
• Why is the Learner Profile so important?
• How do you assess learning?

Then, start planning HOW to bring this hands-on learning experience to the family community, involving them in the practice of what we do with their children on a daily and weekly basis.

Tip 2: Ask the Students

Head on into the classrooms with your clip board in hand and ask the children! Seriously.

What would you like your family to know about your school day?

What will make them think "WOW" about your learning?

How might we best share what it is that we do every day?

What could we do to show them?

By asking the children for their ideas, not only are we bringing fidelity to our values for student agency but we are actually getting some sage advice from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Take the committee meeting to the committee and see what they come up with. Then, use your professional expertise to adapt and differentiate those ideas to create a mini inquiry for adults.

Tip 3: Planning the Experience

Now that you have some ideas for the learning experience for the families, keep in mind a few more things:

• Keep it simple. We don't want to overwhelm.
• Challenge their thinking. Bring a level of rigour to the thinking involved and use the academic language that we use with their children: metacognition, schema, attributes, concepts, etc.
• Make it collaborative. We want the parents to experience the benefits and the challenges of collaboration. Mostly, we want them to understand how collaboration amplifies the learning experience.
• Emulate the inquiry process. We want the parents to SEE-DO-FEEL-ACT exaclty as their children when involved within an inquiry. We them to BE thinkers and inquirers, communicators and problem solvers.

This list could become endless. So, go back to the first thing on the list. Keep it simple. Choose an activity that will provoke thinking, invite wonder and demand going further. I have found that having the families involved in a typical provocation experience allows them to get a really good sense of how concept-based inquiry promotes depth with learning. Bring the usual support strategies to the table:  

Tip 4: Putting It Into Practice

Choose a simple activity that will be centered around the concepts within a central idea. This can be a central idea from your own Programme of Inquiry. (Keeping it simple.) Ideally, have it something that the students have already completed. You can use this as part of the reflection activity at the end. Bring a powerful conceptual provocation to the experience. Images or short video are simplest from a logistical point of view. Its a good idea to have them get up and out of their seats for all of the reasons that we do this with the children.  Feel free to grab some more ideas in this article about The Art of the Provocation. There's a great video in there too!  [caption id="attachment_4349" align="alignnone" width="960"] A powerful concept based provocation provokes thinking and invites wonder.[/caption] THINKERS: Provide a simple visible thinking routine to support their thinking. I like to begin with SEE-THINK-WONDER.  Provide 2 options: one that offers more support than the other-perhaps with guiding questions. Then have them CHOOSE the one they believe will suit their current needs. You can read more about going deeper with SEE THINK WONDER in this article. [caption id="attachment_2749" align="alignnone" width="1056"] Create activities that allow for implicit practice of the conceptual thinking skills.[/caption]

• SEE: instruct the parents to look slowly, note their observations,
• THINK: record their inferences and their schema (remember to use the academic language)
• WONDER: to note their questions.
• Have them share their observations and their thoughts. Be sure to point out the thinking skills: making connections with scheme, inferring, drawing conclusions etc.
• Next, we want the adults to try to identify the big ideas or concepts within the provocation. Be sure to note down their thoughts. You will find that there will be a mix of concepts and topics.
• Explain to them how to identify a concept vs a topic. Then they will work collaboratively to classify and categorise those ideas into CONCEPTS and TOPICS.

COMMUNICATORS:  Now, have them share their thinking with a group - THINK-PAIR-SHARE, TURN & TALK etc. Make them get up and do this independently. DO NOT GROUP THEM. We want the adults to use their SELF MANAGEMENT and SOCIAL SKILLS. Then they will work collaboratively to classify and categorise those ideas into CONCEPTS and TOPICS. INQUIRERS: Once they have shared their thinking, the focus will now go to questioning skills. 

• Provide each group with a chart that shows the difference between closed questions and open-ended, higher-level questions.
• Have them work collaboratively to discuss and then improve their questions, narrow them down to the top 3 best questions that will cover the related concepts within your central idea.
• Finally, sort their questions according to the concepts.

CO-PLANNING THE INQUIRY: This is the point where you can now involve the parents in leading the inquiry. The simplest questions lead us into the inquiry.  You can find out more about co-planning with the students in this blog. 

• What do you want to know?
• What will we need to learn in order to investigate our questions?

Demonstrate how this works in connection with our content. How we use the students' ideas to work with our scope and sequence. How ownership leads to greater motivation for learning. How a transdisciplinary approach is a more authentic approach to transferrable understanding. [caption id="attachment_10187" align="aligncenter" width="256"] Co-planning the learning[/caption] REFLECTIVE VOICE: Provide a simple reflection that allows the families to consider the skills they used and their thoughts of the learning experience. This can be a simple questionnaire or checklist with room for justification. And BRING the students work into play within the meeting too. Have them compare their work, their understanding and their thoughts with those of the children.

And BRING the students work into play within the meeting too. Have them compare their work, their understanding and their thoughts with those of the children.

The highlight is when we share their children's responses to the exact same provocation and thinking routines that we gave the adults. You can decide if you simply share the students' work or have the children come to share their work and their reflections. Either way, it is a powerful finale to an empowering initiation to the PYP. I hope you can use this article more as a suggestion and less as a prescription. Every school community has its uniqueness. So, as with everything I share on this platform, take what you like, feel free to share and leave the rest. :)  

Enjoy!

P.S. You can find many more concept based and skills based resources to support the PYP units of inquiry in my store. Take a look for yourself.