IB World Magazine

Reflection - Week 7 Term 1

This week has been a full on week!

At times I didn't know where to begin in terms of the ever-growing to do list that I had. I can now say at the conclusion of this week that I was able to prioritise what was important and slowly make my way through the many things that I needed to do.

One of the challenges that I have faced this week is writing summative statements for all of the students in my class based on their work during our first UOI. This is something that I have never done before so I struggled a bit knowing what to base them on. Thank goodness for my amazing mentor who talked me through it and gave me some great examples to work from. These are now all complete and just need to be checked over.

My class blog is coming along nicely. This weeks new challenge was creating a new header using canva.com. I will have to make time to create one for this blog! I am quickly realising that having a blog in the classroom is one of the most useful tools you can have. Everything can be put up on there in terms of lessons so you have all resources in one place that can be accessed at any point. It is also a fantastic record of the students learning and a great way for parents to keep up to date with what we are doing.

My Class Blog

My class blog is finally starting to get up and running. I am finding it a really useful tool in the classroom, however I am still learning how to utilise it fully.

Check it out...

Room 8's Blog

Reflection - Week 6 Term 1

I feel that I really pushed my students to the limit this week. We needed to complete our first summative task assessment for UOI1 - Who We Are and this seemed like quite a big task for all of the groups involved. I ended up supervising most groups during both breaks and lunch times in order for them to get their work completed by the deadline. This meant that by the end of the day on Friday I was absolutely exhausted! I was so proud of all the children in my class as they all put in so much effort and came up with some fantastic designs to represent our class.

School work has taken over my time outside of school a lot in the last few weeks and I regularly find myself working late into the evenings and on weekends. This has highlighted for me the importance of finding a good home/work balance so that I can rest and be the best possible version of myself for my students each day.

I have found that he routines I have set up in class are really beginning to come into play and I am feeling a lot more 'at home' in my teaching. I am still getting my head around making OTJs but I feel with time and experience these will fall into place.

The upcoming weeks are going to be very busy as we have hit the half way mark for Term 1. I will attempt to improve the way I approached, planned and taught the first Unit of Inquiry with the second one which begins next week.

Staff Meeting - Sharing The Planet

Staff Meeting - Sharing The Planet

Reflection - Week 5 Term 1

This week was one of the busiest weeks that I have had since starting at Berkley.

Two nights this week I had First Aid Training from 3:15pm until 8pm. This meant that there was no time outside of school for me to do extra planning etc. I feel that in terms of preparation for Week 6 I am behind where I would like to be and that I am going to have to catchup throughout the week.

The school server was down for half of the weekend also meaning that I was unable to access my emails, Google Docs (planning) or update my blogs. These days we rely so much on technology and this event has reminded me that it is so important to always have a back up plan.

On Friday I was out of class for the first full day since starting the year. I found myself worrying about what my class were doing and how they were getting on all throughout the day. I tried my best to plan so that the reliever had a good outline and idea of what I had in mind for the students to do.

My Friday was spent up in Auckland at Takapuna Normal School for the PYP New Zealand Network Auckland Induction Day. This was a great insight into how the PYP works at different schools and gave me some helpful ideas and activities to use for the Units of Inquiry. It was really good to network with some other PYP teachers who were new to the curriculum as well and hear their thoughts.

I am looking forward to a very busy Week 6!

PYP New Zealand Network Auckland Induction Day - Friday 4th March 2016

The PYP is all about inquiry. Starting point is the students' current understanding and the goal is to turn their experiences into new thinking. It is all about relevancy rather than quantity.

PYP is a framework to NZC.

Wonderwalls

Embrace questioning to help promote inquiry.
What questions do you have? No question is a stupid question.

Be Like Bill Task - Who We Are Activity. Using Learner Profile, Attitudes and Transdisciplinary Skills.

IB PYP Background

• Founded 1968 in Geneva, Switzerland
• Primary Years Programme (3-12), Middle Years Programme (11-16), Diploma Programme (16-18)
• PYP and Middle (Trans dis - subjects incorporated), Diploma (dis - one subject, next subject)

The Learner Profile is the only part that is the same across the three programmes.

Learner Profile

• 10 attributes of the profile.
• Front of most PYP documents.
• Promote attributes in child speak. Make it living with the students rather than just something that sits on the wall.

Ways to Promote the Learner Profile:

• Use deliberate acts of teaching e.g. principled - holding the door open for someone. Cards/Certificates for each attribute of the learner profile.
• Photos and what they think each attribute means (each person has to put their idea on the sheet with each attribute). In Room 8 we are... 10 photos showing each attribute placed below - part of class agreement.

Useful sites:

• pypattitudes.com
• thepedagogs.com (stickers)
• teacherspaidteachers
• inquiryschools.net
• Harvard Project Zero - Visible Thinking
• freeology - graphic organisers

Written Curriculum - page 10

• Plan with all teachers using PYP planner
• Summative task and evaluation
• Assessment - Formative and Summative

Knowledge - page 11

Shift Happens: Bringing Education into the 21st Century

Transdisciplinary Themes:

• These form your UOI.
• Use the key words in the descriptor to help you create a central idea.

Activities:

• Matching themes to their explanation
• Quiz using examples (the occ website)

Concepts - page 15

• PYP is a concept driven curriculum.
• Teacher questions come out of concepts
• Can have pictures round the room.
• The key concepts are presented as a question and are a provocation for the students.

Page 67 (Links to Subject Areas - Language, Maths, Science, Social Studies)

Activities:

• Concepts and Pictures - e.g. Twitter - What are our responsibilities? Come up with questions that are related to this. Link pictures to each concept and come up with key questions.

TD Skills - page 21

• Create goals using these skills.
• Use the skills as a point of reflection - "What TD skills did I use and how did I use them?"
• Make the activities authentic.

Activities/Tasks:

• Friar Diagram
• Rating selves in terms of skills 1-5 (Hand Signals) e.g. Organisation today?
• 'One TD Skill that you used well to was...' cards for end of day.

Attitudes - page 24

• "The rat with two eyes and five ears sails the seven seas"
• Attitude tree.
• Modelling real life examples of these attitudes in action.

Activities:

• Six word stories
• Be like Bill
• Essential Agreement
• Explore people in the news/books/films/TV and look at the attitudes that they are using
• Action plans
• Keep a diary/journal of the of the attitudes in their lives - use padlet and link to class and independent blogs. 'My PYP attitude diary'.
• Fail up - setting a task for students in class that is too difficult for them and get them to realise that they are not always going to succeed.

Taking Action - page 25

Nickelback - If Everyone Cared

• Why do we take action? To make a difference.
• Activities that will lead to some sort of action - Direct action, Indirect action, Raise awareness, Educate people.
• Action is something that happens during the unit.
• Use action to assess what students know or have taken from the central idea.
• It is about students intrinsically choosing to take action themselves.

PYP Planner - page 37-40

• Bubble Planner (two pages planning, two pages reflection)
• 6 units per year

Activities that highlight the use of inquiry:

• Petals around the Rose - five dice and looking at dot patterns. get students to figure out what the point of the activity is, to question, make connections, come up with theories, observe, be curious, take risks, evaluated decisions, reflected.
• Fish bowl - some students are participants, others are observers
• Connect, Extend, Challenge
• Tony Ryan's Thinkers Keys - Homework, Quick writes
• De Bono's 6 Thinking hats

What is inquiry? - page 28-30

The Fairy Scientist

• Inquiries can last from a few minutes up to a few weeks.

Kath Murdoch

• Thinking for themselves
• Teach students about thinking
• Provoke curiosity and wonderment
• Facilitate learning
• Making connections
• Big Picture
• Learning Intentions
• Process - 'Learning how to learn'

Example Provocation - Team Assembly - Teacher argument role play, deconstruct with students

Kahoot Quiz on MTPYPH