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[caption id="attachment_10297" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Meet Karen Myrick, certified mindfulness practitioner and IB PYP teacher.[/caption]

I am thrilled to have Karen Myrick, IB PYP teacher and certified mindfulness coach, as my guest writer for this article. I met Karen through Instagram @themindfulteacher.co, as she shared her strategies for introducing a mindfulness practice into her classroom.

Karen has since developed many resources for bringing this important self-management sub-skill into our daily classroom routines. As important, she has also developed mindfulness supports specifically for us as teachers.

Ask yourself, how much do you actually model a mindfulness practice as much as you model being a lifelong learner and inquirer?

As you read through Karen's story, I have no doubt you may be able to relate to some parts of her story. If youre looking for a mindfulness practice to help you on a personal level, as well as some simple and easy to implement prac...

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 race.

Asse...

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 sc...

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 concepts ...

 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 inspire...

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 an object, text, ...

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 th...

Our aim is, through inquiry, to have the children come up with responsible, thoughtful and meaningful action that will make an impact. This impact does not have to be earth-shattering for the world. It does have to connect with their learning, giving a sense of purpose to their learning  through experience and enabling their voice to shine through. This is extremely empowering. Think about the impact that taking action has on yourself; from checking off your daily to-do list, to accomplishing a marathon event. ( or a marathon! Haha! )  The impact begins with how you feel about yourself and, depending on the action, can have a domino effect in that it affects others in your immediate community, wider community or even globally. Regardless of the extent of the ripple effect of your action, it becomes empowering. So, how do we transfer this to the children?

Making it Happen The best way to encourage student action is to begin by giving  children the knowledge of what action looks lik...

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 wit
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The Inquiry-Based Math Project in the IB PYP

Integrated maths inquiry, concept based maths, project based learning….it doesn’t matter what you call it, well designed projects support learning through a guided inquiry that has enough scope to ensure that maths concepts are approached authentically and with a student-led perspective. These projects naturally lend themselves to support all types and levels of learners. They are transdisciplinary in nature, allowing concepts and skills to be transferred and applied towards an end product that has largely been created with the children's voice as an obvious part of the process. They're open-ended enough to allow your students room to expand and direct the project yet structured enough to support those learners who aren’t quite ready to take that leap into independent inquiry.  As you watch the following video, where I share my strategies together with Parvana Guliyeva (an IB PYP grade 4 teacher, currently in Portugal) consider our transd...