Student engagement is a challenge that each of us has encountered at some point within every year. It’s a lot to expect children to devote their full attention to school for eight hours straight. It is natural that they will lose focus at times, but there are strategies we can use to help them to increase this Self-Mangement skill of maintaining their focus. It’s also important to remember that engagement also involves interest, curiosity, and motivation. Are you familiar with Phillip Schlechty's five levels of engagement? His...
Its that time of year again……reflection, fresh starts, new beginnings and goal setting.
A New Year or even a new school year, is an exciting time to gather as a class community and to think about all the dreams and goals that everyone wants to make come true. When we begin with this type of thing, it’s a great idea to just make a list of ALL those aspirations. Dream boards are fun ways to do this. I make one every single year! Dream BIG! Think beyond school! Just get them thinking forward.
Now, in order to make this list meaningful rather than a forgotten exercise within a few days, we need to encourage the children to turn those dreams into goals.
Dream boards or vision boards are simple and fun ways to just go ALL out and dream! Goals begin with dreams.
As adults, we know the importance of...
Using simple thinking routines with the children, as the one below, I would work up to each of those skills: observing,...
A Fountain of Knowledge
“So what is an inquiry bank?”, I hear you say. Well, fundamentally, it is a place to store your questions that arise. Intrinsically, it is a fountain of knowledge, spewing forth the answers to our desires; at least our desired inquiries.
The Inquiry Bank, given the prestige of capitalisation, is a simple resource that I use successfully within my PYP classroom. It is in a central area, positioned at kid friendly height , so that the kids can have free and easy access to it. I usually use a whiteboard easel or just a white poster paper.
I was asked recent to show a few of our teachers how I incorporate the key concepts into everyday learning. I felt that there may be a few more of you out there who’d also be interested. So, here we go.
The IB PYP now has 7 key concepts that are designed as the lens or the “big picture”of which we look at our lines of inquiry within each of our six units of inquiry. ( 4 units for EYP)
It is no great news that children are created in a myriad of different ways and the way they synthesise things is as varied. We have the listeners, the visual learners, the kinesthetic and the cognitive to throw out a few of the technical terms. Our challenge is not only to cater to all of those varying forms of learning but also to be aware of who our different learners are within our classroom.
By making thinking visible, it helps us, as their educators, to see exactly what is going on ( or not going on in some cases) as each child is learning and to facilitate their learning further. Also, for a child to be able to show their thinking and explain how they came up with a solution, is a big confidence booster! :
The responses were eye-opening really. Thankfully, many of the kids referred to the IB Attitudes, since we are constantly using this language and philosophy in school. It surrounds them.
Just last week my daughter asked me what my New Year’s resolution would be. Before answering, I cynically thought about how I’ll swear to exercise more, eat less and lose the same 10 lbs I’ve been losing and gaining for the past ten years. I chickened out in my response, ” I haven’t really thought about it yet.” But really, isn’t it good to reflect upon where we are and set goals for where we would like to be? I mean we do it in the classroom very frequently.
Awards certificates for the PYP found here. |
Every six weeks we reflect upon our learning within the IB Primary Years Programme. We focus on the Learner Profile trait of being reflective and look back at the central idea and how our understanding has change. We think upon the key concepts covered and contemplate our...
I’m often asked how I integrate maths into our IB PYP units of inquiry. I won’t deny that depending on the unit, it can sometimes be easier said than done. However, I’ve found over the years, that it’s best to keep it relaxed and, if necessary, simply focus on concepts in maths rather than content. Often, especially within the public IB schools in the USA, we are expected to meet certain maths standards by a certain time. This often results in a clash of math units and units of inquiry and a creative juggle ensues. But hey, who doesn’t love a challenge? The rest of the IB world? You’ve got it luckier, I assure you! Anyway, a great resource for math in the beginning of the year is https://www.youcubed.org/. It encourages a maths mindset and is centred around collaborative thinking. It does require signing up for a free account but, once you’re in, you can view...
There are so many wonderful books for helping to teach children about the character traits of the IB Learner Profile. Over the years however, I keep returning to a few that I feel reinforce those profile traits really well. I’ve used these books with 3rd grade up to 6th grade equally successfully, even though they may seem to be a wee bit young for those age groups. They work well as quick read alouds and can be utilised to reinforce many reading skills and strategies too.- inferring, questioning, synthesising, figurative language and more. This page is a list of my favourite books for pulling together the Learner Profile traits. I like to use some of them within our units of inquiry or simply as a stand alone when the opportunity presents itself in my class to look more thoroughly at a particular profile trait.
I have grouped them according to each Learner Profile trait. Each picture is linked to Amazon so that you can click on...
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