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7 Classroom Activities to Boost Critical and Creative Thinking Skills for the IB PYP

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7 Classroom Activities to Boost Critical Thinking in the IB PYP Classroom

Developing critical thinking skills is crucial in an IB PYP setting, as it helps students become thoughtful inquirers. Here are seven practical classroom activities that align with the Approaches to Learning skills and encourage critical and creative thinking.

1. Inquiry Jar Exploration - Thinking & Research Skills

Present students with an Inquiry Jar or bag filled with objects related to the concepts within your unit of inquiry. Working in pairs, students predict each item’s purpose and justify their thinking. This activity sparks curiosity, supports questioning techniques, and builds evidence-based reasoning. I have blogged about the inquiry jar previously.

This inquiry jar strategy is a great way to tune into the additional concepts within your theme using tangible materials.

2. A Questionable Conversation - Communication & Thinking Skills

Invite students to...

My Favourite Read Alouds for IB PYP Units

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I’ve been reflecting lately on the books I’ve used as read alouds throughout our various units of inquiry, that have both reinforced the inquiry as well as integrated many reading skills and strategies. I’ve compiled a list that may help you also, when planning your units of inquiry and aligning them with the elements of the PYP as well as your reading standards. Over the years, I have taught mainly from 3rd grade ( Primary 3/4) up to 6th grade ( Primary 7) and so you’ll find these books to fit the upper elementary age range more.

There is another blog post relating specifically to books that I love when reinforcing the traits of the Learner Profile. You can link to that post here. But this list is more for read alouds that will tie to many of the essential elements of the PYP, as well as slot in nicely to particular Transdisciplinary Themes.

I have created this list for your convenience. You can click on the picture and the title of...

Engaging Learners with Authentic Inquiry

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Engagement. You know the scene; the entire class is actively involved in their learning. There’s a quiet buzz going on all around. Children are chatting to each other, conversations are focused discussing ideas, plans, strategies. There is movement around the room, with tools and equipment being independently gathered, heads are together, collaboration is seen all around. You know that you’ve nailed it when the busyness of learning is their business!

But…..and there’s definitely a but, how do we keep this going across the curriculum? Is it too idealistic? Time consuming? Can we cover all standards this way? Can we really trust the kids to run with this? How do we, as the teacher, fit it in?

This post isn’t about what engagement looks like in your classroom but rather about how to initiate and maintain the engagement within authentic inquiry focused learning. Engagement is so much more than just keeping the children busy with...

Developing Thinking Skills with the IB PYP

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Hello again fellow inquiry teachers! This article is going to be expanding on my previous post where I was sharing my favourite books for developing thinkers and inquirers.

Looking for ideas for books? Read the article here.

Over the course of the next few weeks, I’m going to be breaking down the IB Approaches to Learning Thinking Skills and sharing strategies for bringing a greater awareness and understanding of the sub-skills to the children. If you are a subscriber to my blog, you already know that I send you free samples of my new resources and examples of tools I’ve used. Look out for those in your inbox over the next few weeks. If you’d like to become a subscriber and...