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Love them or hate them, report cards are a much-needed communication for all involved. The IB PYP report card gives you a road map of the standards your student is working on together with those abstract elements that are essential parts of the whole child. If you're new to the PYP report card, it can look a little overwhelming, bordering on an essay in some schools! (I am not kidding!)  However the format, the report card provides an opportunity to look closely at each child’s journey of their learning and, most importantly, from a whole child perspective. If you're looking for some guidance and a free set of report card comments, read on.

The Whole Child Approach

Every child meets or exceeds expectations on a different day at a different time, or quite possibly a different year. The expectation we have to emphasise with learning standards is that it's a journey, not a race.

The expectation we have to emphasise with learning standards is that it’s a journey, not...

A key part of tuning into the IB PYP unit of inquiry is unpacking those additional concepts that our investigations will be based upon. I've spoken a lot about ways that we can provoke the children's curiosity and invite their questions into the inquiry. This article goes a little deeper into this tuning in phase as we use images to develop thinking skills, namely all of those skills that make up analysing information, in order to learn more about those related concepts.

If you've been following along with my social media accounts for a while now, then you will know how much I love using pictures to provoke the inquiry. There are so many thinking skills at work when you are presenting images to children and it's so easy to integrate those thinking skills into all subject areas, not to mention how they overlap into research and communication skills too.  This article gives you a few easy to implement tips that can be integrated into your units of inquiry through the related...

 The IB PYP Approaches to Learning Skills are naturally used across the disciplines and one of the keys to our transdisciplinary approach. (thus they used to be called the Transdisciplinary Skills) As co-planners of the inquiry, we want to be intentional when identifying our focus skills that will align best with the primary purpose of our unit of inquiry. (organisation, expression, investigation etc.)  You want to ensure that you plan your learning experiences to give the children a targeted experience with your focus skills. The sub-skills within the IB PYP Approaches to Learning Skills are in themselves actions. We, as facilitators, provide opportunity for naturally inspiring action that can fall within all categories of our IB PYP action.

• Participation

• Social Justice

• Advocacy

• Social Entrepreneurship

• Lifestyle Choices

I have some ideas taken from real-world examples from the various schools I have taught within across the world. I hope you are inspired by a...

The good-old SEE-THINK-WONDER thinking routine. You could probably walk into any IB PYP classroom in the world and you will see it being used. How often do we use this oldie but goodie as a thinking routine? Without a doubt, it is a powerful starter to provoke our students' curiosity and then invite children to think more. But how much do we really utilise the power of this thinking routine as a means for developing the journey towards self-directed inquiry?  When we dive deeper into SEE-THINK-WONDER we uncover the IBPYP sub-skills that fall within the Approaches to Learning Skills.  In particular, we reach into the thinking & research skills.  I have a few exclusive PYP teaching tools to support the popular thinking routine of SEE-THINK-WONDER for both our youngest learners and our upper grades and have them all developing those oh-so-important comprehension skills.

A Thinking Routine for ALL Ages:

Thinking routines help our students to think critically about...

This article is bringing you some creative ideas for developing the IB PYP communications skills with your students. These are all practical and simple ideas that I've used in my class over the years with much success, much laughter and a lot of meaningful learning too. As I was listening to Claire, from The Art Engager podcast, this quote stuck with me, as I thought about how to better support my learners and reminded me of a really simple activity for mindful listening.

"Becoming more aware of your listening skills is the first step to improving them. "

The Art Engager Podcast

LISTENING MINDFULLY

Listening is often overlooked as a communication skill and so I like to begin here to remind the children that this is really a big part of collaborative discussions. We need to be able to listen to respond to others rather than listening to react.

And so, a simple but effective activity for all ages that can be done indoors or outdoors is to just simply stop and listen. If you throw...

The very nature of the student led, inquiry based classroom is to amplify the children's voice and bring their thinking to light. As part of 21st century skills, we know that collaboration is a key player in this development of learning.  There is no doubt that the process of learning through collaboration is the evolution of expanding understanding. It breaks away from that traditional " I" and "me" method of learning and brings forth the community mindset. We want to build up this sense of collective agency through our culture of community learning.

Why Collaborative Learning?

This form of learning enables a multitude of sub-skills and ALL of the IB PYP Approaches to Learning Skills. It brings meaningful experiences to learning and allows our students to work towards a higher level of thinking as they build upon each others' thoughts and ideas.

• Social skills: Becoming active participants of a social setting presents opportunities for the children to become more effective...

What is mindfulness exactly? And why would we need mindfulness in the classroom? According to Wikipedia, mindfulness is:

• a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.
• the quality of being aware or conscious of something

Research. The ability to help ourselves to find an answer to a question or the solution to a problem.

This potential to find answers for ourselves is a skill that  includes the ability to decide specifically what we want to know, to find information about a topic, evaluate that information,  analyse and interpret the information  and then put it all together in a way that brings us answers and solutions for ourselves. This is a skill that we want our students to develop.

Developing research skills includes explicit teaching of the skill, leading to implicit practice. This resource does exactly that with task cards targeting the research sub-skills.[/caption] The research sub- skills that our IB PYP students need, right from the earliest years include:

• Observing
• Formulating questions
• Media literacy
• Sourcing data
• Evaluating sources
• Analysing & interpreting data
• Synthesising
• Reflecting
• Presenting

We want to ensure that the children's research inquiries are...

To get straight to the point: mindfulness belongs in the classroom. As an IB PYP teacher, I approach teaching through a philosophy that centres on the child and the development of the whole child. This philosophy resonates with my own beliefs for educating our children to become avid questioners with the skills and strategies and confidence to try to find out for themselves. I nurture a sense of wonder and a strong belief in self. With this sense of self, I have to understand how to develop this awareness of self within the children and how I can guide them towards understanding who they are as unique individuals and also as learners. Mindfulness has been added to the updated IB PYP Approaches to Learning Skills. Specifically, you can now find it under the skill of Self-Management.  In order to best serve the children, I first needed to understand exactly what this "mindfulness" thing was.

I'm lucky to be a part of our close-knit community of international inquiry teachers on...

If we are inquiry teachers, facilitating a student-led inquiry process, then it makes absolute sense that we have to be able to teach the children the art of questioning. Questions are, after all, the beginning of each and every inquiry.  Questioning plays an important role in building a true student-led inquiry, beginning with the initial provocation. So, where do we start? Well, allow me to share my experience with you and, hopefully, bring you some practical strategies to take back to your own class of inquirers.  If you missed the first part of this discussion about developing the Approaches to Learning Thinking Skills, click  here to catch up with how I begin to develop those sub-skills.  In this article, I have provided a free video that also offers practical suggestions. But, let’s start by doing.

Using simple thinking routines with the children, as the one below,  I would work up to each of those skills: observing,...