Who will we be when we grow up?

Originally posted on The Space of Jeans

Deciding what to choose to study or which career path to follow after school might be as simple as a ‘feeling’ or as daunting as a muddled, murky puddle.

My 18-year-old, Year 12 daughter is somewhere in between. She knows that she is interested in and passionate about  Education, but she does not have that directing ‘feeling’ that she definitely should do the teaching.

So, as the ‘responsible adult’, I suggest that she speaks to people who have worked in the different professions that she is considering. ‘Of course!’ she agrees, “I want to talk to a teacher!” Not wanting to point out the obvious, I think about what kind of ‘teacher’ she might want to talk to and I connect her with a young, vibrant, talented and intuitive lady who has her own class for the first time this year.

After their conversion, my daughter is exhilarated and is bubbling over with thoughts that they have shared. “What’s your big take away?” I ask and I am blown away!

• To make a decision, think about what are your values and what is important to you. There is no right or wrong answer.
• Think about what kind of person you want to be. Who do you want to be?
• The world is going to be different when you come out on the other end – so don’t chase what job you want- go based on what’s important to you- that will never change.

We have had many conversations since ‘the inspirational conversation’ and I have been led to think about what other advice I could add to these thoughts.

My list includes :

• Be true to yourself. Jobs change, colleagues, the world and your friends change too. The one constant is that you are always with yourself.
• Think big. Don’t consider your choice as a life long commitment. Jobs, work places and careers are multifaceted. Study something that will feed your brain and heart while nurturing your curiosity.
• Studying is a life long journey. This is just the beginning. Think about what you enjoy, what inspires you.
• Think about role models in your life. What qualities would you like to develop that you have seen in yourself and in others?
• Have dreams and aspirations. Reach for the stars!
• Find your spark. As Sir Ken Robinson said in one of his Ted Talks, ‘Sometimes what you are looking for is not on the surface, it’s buried deep’. Dig deep, find what you love and make sure to include this in what you do every day.

What advice would you give someone choosing a study path?

What advice do you wish you had received before you chose what to study?

Student Written Day Plans

Originally posted here.

Before the year started I asked the question: Who should be writing the day plans?

I also offered an uncommon answer: The students.

So this year I decided to give it a try and I put the day planning in the hands of my students.

As with many misconceptions about inquiry-based teaching and learning, I did not just hand my Grade 4 students a piece of paper and say “ok, plan your own day” There was a lot of thinking and planning on my part, about how to help and support students in planning for their own learning.

Planning to plan

First, I structured an inquiry into learning. We inquired into why humans learn, how humans learn, and what specifically us-humans are expected to learn this year in grade 4 at our specific school.

Then, we inquired into how we could and should plan a day at school. We focused specifically on time management and balance. We created class anchor charts with a menu of possible approaches to learning.

Systems and Routines

Next, we established systems and routines to help support students in planning their own day. We set aside the same time each day where students would work on their plans for the following day.

I provided students with paper or digital templates that pre-blocked off recess and single-subject teaching.

I projected a menu of optional workshops (sometimes teacher-led, sometimes student-led) and optional conferences, along with reminders of other considerations (such as reading buddies)

There we also areas of the class where students could find lists of peer teachers/tutors/helpers/feedback providers.

Then students sat, discussed, planned, reviewed, revised and when they were ready, conferenced with me.

When we conferenced, I offered advice and suggestions – based on my own assessment and observations of their learning – about amendments to their plan.

Documenting

Since the responsibility for planning learning was shifted more on the students, it was important to also match that shift in the documenting of learning. We experimented with a few different approaches to documenting.

We tried individual, private documenting. Where I provided students with paper or digital templates of concepts, knowledge and skills. At the end of each day students would reflect and record all their learning.

We also tried a collective, more public form of documenting. We had a class “Learning Wall” that students added to at any point throughout the day.

Planning Templates

The first iteration of our planning template was simply empty boxes that students filled in.

The second iteration was inspired by the Simon Sinek framework “Start with Why” where students outlined what they were learning, why they were learning and how they were learning.

Bridging

To help ensure students’ day plans were connected to something bigger, we experimented with a few different approaches.

At the beginning of each unit, we collectively brainstormed how to acquire the knowledge, develop the skills or practice the attitudes and attributes connected to that specific unit.

We also invested time developing personal learning plans. Where students used their diagnostic assessments or their own questions to identify a specific learning goal. Then, they listed a variety of approaches towards meeting that learning goal. They also planned for different sources of feedback, as well as personalized success criteria of how they will know they have met their goal. These learning plans were posted and each day students would reference them in order to more purposefully plan their day to day learning.

Reflections:

• the students LOVED experiencing agency in how they spent their time at school
• there was SO much collaboration and discussion between students when it came to planning
• many students planned together, some students planned alone
• students began to notice transdisciplinary learning where they would plan for one activity, but literacy and math and art (for example) would be naturally embedded
• understanding, awareness and management of time sky-rocketed
• there was a lot of trust involved – “managing” them in the traditional teacher-y sense of the word was impossible because they were all doing different things at different times in different places and in different ways
• when students self-selected to come to teacher-led workshops they were present, interested and engaged
• students made lots of “mistakes” in planning for their own learning, and in the process learned so much about themselves as learners
• time was always our enemy – there was no competition of “covering content” this way as compared to teacher-planned days
• the students development of ATL skills, learner profile attributes and PYP attitudes was apparent and impressive

This was my first attempt at helping students plan their own day. I don’t pretend to be an expert, or have any answers. I can only share my own risks and reflections. However, I will say that this was my first attempt… but not my last. I look forward to reflecting on my approach, collaborating with other like-minded educators and hopefully refining this model further next year.

How have you helped students write their own day plans?

How can we better support students in planning their own learning?

Creating a Culture of Science in the PYP

I gravitate toward all things inquiry, and today I clicked on a Ted Radio Hour podcast called “The Spirit of Inquiry.” What could be better than jogging and listening to a podcast about inquiry. Geekily…well, nothing.

I’ve been preparing a teacher workshop on Making Thinking Visible and so have been thinking about thinking, so I’ll explore the podcast using a routine called “Connect, Extend, Challenge.”

First, the podcast is about inquiry and how in such a short span of time, we’ve all been able to dig into some pretty big questions. We have access at our fingertips. In the podcast, they play excerpts from different TED Talks and then interview the speakers more in depth about their subject. One speaker that stood out was a professor from Harvard, Naomi Oreskes, who talked about science and inquiry. Her spotlight on how science is really about the inquiry process and consensus.

Connect:

In the TED Radio Hour podcast, I connected immediately to inquiry and how that forms the basis of my teaching. I’ve spent a lot of effort establishing classrooms and a culture where students are safe to ask questions. I model curiosity, use student wonderings and passions as much as possible in my teaching. I was hooked from the title of the podcast and immediately thought about times of inquiry when students dug deeper, moved their learning beyond the classroom and deepened their understanding. And it all starts from a freedom to question and search for answers.

Extend: 

When Professor Oreskes spoke, I was fascinated, and now I’m going to also go listen to her Ted Talk about “Why We Should Trust Scientists.” Her question was “Why should we trust scientists?” Back to connection, I thought about climate change, vaccines, etc…current trending topics and how there’s debate about the science behind it. There’s a distrust of scientists.

What Professor Oreskes discusses is that we think of science as the scientific method and that’s it. Scientists test their hypothesis, and they’re finished. As a result, we seem to quickly dismiss a scientific theory. However, she says that consensus and building consensus is the key to science and that it takes a long time. Once one scientist comes up with data and a theory, then someone else tries it to also prove or discredit it. What’s right with science, she says, is that scientists either prove or disprove conclusions. After a long time, if a theory is proven correct by many, then there’s consensus, and science moves on to the next question. She implies that this continual inquiry process, where a question is raised, evidence given, sorted out, reflected upon and questioned again…is science.

Doesn’t that sound a lot like the inquiry process?

Scientists are people who judge evidence with scrutiny, she says. Doesn’t that sound like critical thinking that we all want to develop in our students? Scientist judge evidence as a group also and they do it with distrust, she continues. Scientific knowledge is about the consensus of experts who have carefully scrutinized data. Isn’t that what we want for all of our students?

I am continually in awe of how we avoid “science” in the PYP curriculum. Yet, I’m also wondering if the most important thing we’re teaching children is how to question and a process they can use to find the answer–that we’re teaching science every day. Furthermore, we really are teaching what’s important in science and that is consensus…collaboration in working through problems and seeking a truth.

Challenge

Now, I’m challenged to think of how to bring these thoughts explicitly into our school culture. How do we not force a “science” unit into our six units, really thinking just of scientific knowledge: how machines work, the differences between kinetic and potential energy. Yes, knowledge is important, but isn’t thinking as a scientist, a mathematician just as important?

If science is inquiry and consensus, then why do we repeatedly hear that we aren’t teaching “science” in a PYP school? How can we change our school cultures of thinking so that everyone–from students to parents and teachers and administrators–understand that we are thinking and acting as scientists every day.

A PHE Approach to Teaching and Learning

A beautifully simple way to support learner agency in any discipline. Help students identify what they want to learn/be able to do. Help students figure out where they are now, where they want to be and how they will know if get there. Help student figure out and acquire the knowledge and skills needed along the way to achieve their goal. Help students reflect on and celebrate their learning journey. Learner-centered… learner-driven… teacher supported.

Educationed

It’s easy to label PHE as an outsider subject – “Not that important” or it’s euphemistic cousin “non-academic” are two phrases I’ve heard to describe the subject. However, this post is not about the overwhelming importance of PHE*, but rather about a fantastic model for teaching and learning one of our outstanding PHE teachers has been using in her class and why others should follow the same model, regardless of the discipline.

Start with a goal:

Students are asked to start with a goal – do they want to be able to run faster? Jump higher? Lift more? Lose weight? This is the tuning-in phase where students have the chance to ask themselves, “What would I like to accomplish, as a result of my learning”? By beginning with a student-generated goal, the learner is naturally placed at the centre of all experiences, as each phase of the learning is a…

View original post 820 more words

A survival kit for teachers

Originally posted on The Space of Jeans

Teaching a class must be one of the most challenging things to do.

The responsibilities are immense, yet the rewards, while sometimes buried deep, are endless.

Teachers are asked to:

• know every child – their learning needs; social connections (and lack thereof) , family background; likes and dislikes; hopes and dreams
• cater to needs of every child – differentiate, individualise, include, provoke thinking … allow time (just the right amount), group children with purpose . Provide rich, valuable resources without dishing out answers
• provide a stimulating, motivating environment in which children are given agency and choice, but where there is a sense of decorum to allow listening, communication and learning to grow
• use assessments and data in a meaningful way – track growth; use of variety of meaningful assessment tools; document learning
• communicate – with school heads; colleagues; parents; children
• be informed – know the world; know the curriculum; know the content and skills. Where has each child come from? Where are they going to?
• be mindful when offering praise – sometimes praising one child is interpreted by others that they are not good enough.Allow children to decide when their ideas are valuable and ask questions to get them to evaluate and reflect on what they have done and think of ways in which they might improve.

How is this possible? How can one person do all of this effectively and efficiently?

My list of survival and success tools, gathered over many years and by interacting with incredible educators looks something like this:

• Stay in the loop – know what your children are talking about and bring the world to them. Share real world events and help learners make connections.
• Laugh when you need to. Cry when you need to. Have people around you who will listen when you moan, will laugh with you and who will ask “the right questions” and tell you to ask them too. Ensure that your learners, their parents and your school heads know that you are human
• One rule for all children does not work – using global punishment or rewards for a whole class alienates children from each other and the punisher and is something that is very hard to stop. When do individuals learn to make effective choices and take responsibility for their actions if whole classes are rewarded and punished for the actions of individuals?
• Have access to resources – printed; online; people and things
• Use a calendar that has alerts – there is way too much to remember. Technology is our friend.
• Take photos to remember and document learning.
• Let the children do the “heavy lifting“. Teachers plant seeds of thoughts and help learners find their own – children need to grow and develop ideas in ways that work for them
• Put the decision making onto the children and allow them to reflect on the effects. Make reflection a regular and expected part of learning.
• Be flexible. Schools are dynamic places. Be willing to change plans and ideas as learners and school needs evolve.

What would you add to this survival kit?

Turning the Teaching Over to Students

Every quarter I lead 50 college undergraduates in an inquiry-based course called “Teaching as a Profession.” My students are not teachers. At least, not yet. They are majoring in everything from Chemistry to Computer Science. But they are curious about teaching and so they sign up for the class. That, and they later tell me it “sounds easy.”

Imagine the looks on their faces when I tell them that they will be leading the course and doing most of the talking and question-asking. They cannot saunter in with a Starbucks in one hand and drop into a chair thinking I’ll do most of the cognitive heavy lifting. They’ve complied their way through school the last thirteen plus years. They are pros. They know when to add a question or make a comment to ring that participation bell. I was the same way. But this is not that class.

I wait to register their reactions. I’ve got their attention, that’s for sure. Around 3-4 will drop out. Those that return to the next class are placed into small teams of three. These teams are then assigned a 90-minute class period to design, lead and assess based on the reading.

I’ll never forget the first team to step up to the challenge. We had just finished reading a chapter from bell hooks’ book: Teaching to Transgress. This chapter explores the role of institutionalized racism and the effects of poverty on education. I’ll admit, I panicked a little. This was a heavy topic. How would they approach it? I sent emails over the weekend offering my help.

But their response was clear: We got this.

At the beginning of class, I made a few remarks and then took a seat in the back row. I held my breath. What would happen? How should I react? “Welcome,” one of them said. “We now invite you to leave your things here and step outside with us for a few minutes.”

Fifty students now spill outside of Miller Hall and stand on a chalk line that extends behind the quad. They form a line of babies. I don’t mean this euphemistically. “This line represents birth,” the team explains. For a few precious seconds everyone is equal.

The team then hands each student a stack of 16 papers stapled together. It is at this precise moment that I snapped the photo you see below. Each paper in this stack represents a major event in their fictional life. For example, your family enrolls you in Head Start – move two paces forward. Or, your mother is arrested for drug possession – move two paces back.

Significant life events and their research-based impacts are presented to students one at a time, year after year. “Your father loses his job.” Or “A teacher identifies you for the gifted program.” Each situation either moves them forward, backward, or keeps them rooted in place.

Towards the end of this simulation, I can see students visibly shaken. Many are so far behind they’ve literally hit the building’s brick wall. Some are so far ahead they cannot see their classmates anymore. The metaphor is beautiful, painful, powerful.

After they all turn 18, we slowly file back into the classroom and the team leads a discussion. Some feel angry. Others feel tremendous guilt. But it’s clear that everyone feels something. The ensuing discussion is deep and no one is ready to leave at the end of the class.

The pressure to lead a class or solve a simulated problem is far more motivating than the sort of pressure students usually face in classrooms. And they are allowed to play around with how they react and who they are.

As the quarter progresses, not one team defaults to a lengthy PPT-aided lecture. In fact, the simulations just continue and get more creative. My role shifts to meta-cognitive coach and resource. I rarely speak in class. And it’s the most fun I’ve had teaching in a long time.

The Real Meaning of Inquiry: A parent’s story

Inquiry is always on my mind as I see its effectiveness again and again and again. Thanks Edna for your insightful, informative post recently about “10 Ways to Make Learning Meaningful.”

It’s perfect, and perfect timing as I muse about this.

My daughter came home last night full of excitement about her Math class. She’s in 9th grade and taking extended Math this year. She’s not a huge fan of Math but we encouraged her to take extended Math to challenge herself, and for the beginning of this year, she’s been stressed. We almost thought we had made the wrong decision. She had missed out on a lot of concepts last year, and my husband (a Math teacher) played catch up with her at home at the beginning of the year.

She had a “test” yesterday about logarithms and patterns. She went into it thinking she would fail and came home last night beaming. I think I got it, she said. She then proceeded to tell us about the assessment which asked the students to find patterns to attempt to figure out a little bit about how logarithms worked. “Our teacher hadn’t told us anything about them,” my daughter said. “We had to figure it out ourselves.” She smiled and said, “I figured out the pattern. I’ll show you. I think I know what logarithms are now.”

She then went to her whiteboard and drew out her perfect understanding, chatting along the way about her thinking. Through this one exercise of inquiry, my daughter had gone through the different stages in the learning challenge and come out the other side. It was eye opening, jaw-dropping, all of those cliche phrases.

Her teacher is good, and it’s the first time my daughter is showing some Eureka moments in Math. Constructing meaning in her Math class has helped her grown as a learner. Kudos to a great Math teacher. Kudos to inquiry. I need to continue to bring inquiry into the classroom. It’s such a powerful tool.

From James Nottingham’s Learning Pit

Engaging all learners …

Posted on The Space of Jeans

Observing the world, reading and viewing gives one a great opportunities to ask questions; reflect on one’s own practice and try to make meaningful, practical suggestions.

   How do we get all learners to be engaged, feel involved and show them that their voice matters?

 How do we involve all children in discussion, learning and collaboration?

 Is whole class discussion the way to start lessons, to pull everyone in?

I’ve been watching some video clips that our literacy co-ordinator shared with me. My first observation is that the children look like they are half asleep. The same two children raise their hands and are called on constantly. The teacher talks and talks …

What strategies might we use to draw all of our learners in?

• Stop asking for raised hands. Instead, ask everyone to think and place their thumb next to their chest when they feel they have a thought. Hands in the air hinder the thinking of the children who take time to think. They know that the “hand up child” will be called on , so there is no need to think.

• Access prior knowledge – use thinking routines (in parts and with purpose) eg I used to think and now I think (know)
• Use Google Slides / Docs so that every child has a place to share their ideas and link to those of others.
• Allow every child a point of entry by using big questions and deep provocations.
• Less teacher talk – allow children to ask the questions and then find out what they are interested in and what they see the need to find out about.
• Using thinking routines like Connect-Extend-Challenge, Think, Pair Share , Compass Points , See, Think, Wonder
• Share ideas in small groups rather than whole class discussions all the time. Get group to come up with a headline / big idea / question / insight to share.

• Use place mat thinking routines to come up with a definition.

• Use a chalk walk to collect thinking and extend ideas.

At the end of the lesson, check in  with children. Ask them to share a puzzle/ insight / something they learnt/ how they are feeling.  Is it possible to engage all learners, all of the time?

Teaching or learning?

Posted on The Space of Jeans

Image taken from All Things Learning

Here’s the question for today … What do we value more? Teaching or learning? 

This question could be debated from many perspectives, with a huge amount of evidence to justify view points.

So often, we consider “the lesson; the concept; the message”. Is there anything wrong with this? I don’t think so. How often do we consider these things:

• What is the learner’s prior knowledge?
• What  is the learner’s ‘care factor’ about this topic?
• How is the learner going to use this beyond the classroom?
• How does each learner learn best?
• What will motivate the learner to extend their thinking?

Do we expect children to do things that we would hate to do? 

When we plan for learning, is the focus on teaching (how and what) or learning (why)?     In Making the PYP Happen, this question is  raised : “How should the teaching and learning process be modified as a result of the assessment?”

How are we using assessment to inform our teaching and  learning?                                     Is assessment for a grade? To monitor progress? To see how a school / teacher / child is traveling?                                                                            

What else helps us inform teaching and learning? 

What do we value more? Teaching or learning? 

Assessment done with students, not to students

Posted on Risk and Reflect

I strongly believe that assessment is something that should be done with students, not something that is done to  students. So this year, being back in the classroom, I wanted to put that belief into practice. We have just finished our first Unit of Inquiry and here is how our summative assessment went.

1. An open discussion about assessment

As a class we discussed the difficulty of trying to measure a human’s learning and I shared that there are many different approaches to trying to figure out what a student has learned in school.

2. Trying out multiple approaches

We discussed a handful of approaches for measuring learning and then we tried each of them out within the context of our unit.

Students showed how their thinking changed throughout the unit by completing “I used to think… Now I think…”

Students synthesized their own big idea from the unit by completing the VTR “Headlines”

Students added new knowledge to their transdisciplinary concept  time capsule

Students applied the concepts learning in our unit to their own life

3. Self-Assessment

I’m also a strong believer that the learner themself best understands what they know and don’t know, so it was important to me that they had the first opportunity to assess their own understanding. Students took the four different assessments they had completed and using those learning artifacts, marked on the rubric where they felt they were on our learning spectrum.

4. Teacher Assessment

The students then gave me their 4 summative activities and their self-assessed rubric and I looked through the same learning artifacts and I added my perspective to the rubric.

5. Summative conference

Then, I conferenced with each student individually…

and one of three things happened. Either we had the same perspective and that became their final mark for the unit.

Or if we had different perspective, we chatted to figure out if they new more than they were able to show on the activities, or if they thought they new more but after our chat discovered they actually had more to learn. And in some cases I needed more information because I felt I was unable to assess their understanding based on the activities they completed, so we we chatted about the concepts in the unit and the central idea to find out if they knew more than they showed.

For students who had a competent understanding, we talked about how to extend themselves next unit. For students who were still developing their understanding, we reflected on what blocked their learning this unit and set goals for next unit. For some students that meant changing some learning behaviours (where they sit, who they learn with), for other students it meant applying more effort, and for other students it meant organizing time in addition to class time, for extra learning support from me.

6. Share with parents

After the conferences were complete, I sent home to rubrics so the students could share them with their parents. I also included information about our summative process on our class blog. Parents were also invited to set-up a three-way meeting with me and their child if they wanted to discuss anything about this particular summative.

All in all, it was a great process! I think my students felt empowered to have a voice in their learning and in the measurement of their learning. I think students felt their perspectives were respected and valued. I think that going through this process after the first unit of inquiry will have positive impacts on the learning that happens in our second unit of inquiry.

And on a personal level, it felt much more humane and much more like a partnership in supporting their learning journey!