Reflections on Making the PYP Happen

 I wish to consider the following points: 1.I will support students to initiate and engage in their own inquiries 2. I will promote student reflection and action in response to their learning 1. If I am successful in developing this area, I ought to see students who actively raise questions that result in further development of concepts within my unit, and then suggesting and pursuing means by which they could discover the answers to their own questions themselves. I should be introducing a unit, provoking intrigue, and then the remainder of the unit should be spent facilitating students on their path to making their own conclusions, and undertaking action based on it. I won't deny that this is something I have been struggling with. Currently, I have a class which varies incredibly wildly in ability, age (two combined grades) and English language ability (half of the students currently have virtually none) despite being a small class, facilitating all of them to find their own suit...

 Apologies for my reflection on unit 3 being a little late, I had other things to attend to. The focus in unit 3 has been on Action, Inquiry and Collaboration. These are areas that are perhaps the post crucial features of the PYP as an educational program, and can be the most challenging to implement. I myself have had my ups and downs with it; in my first year going back and forth between something more like traditional direct teaching initially, to a guided inquiry process, and then attempts at being more student-led. Generally if a certain level of student agency was tried, an issue would occur such as students not having the skills to progress, not wanting to challenge themselves, or generally lacking the mindset to work independently enough or maintain the relevant focus on the concepts at hand. If issues like this occurred, I would often revert to more direct methods to achieve the kind of results I had envisaged initially or to ensure challenging enough concepts or material ...

So the focus this week has been on transdisciplinary learning, understanding key concepts and the ATL skills. I feel like up until now I had a decent understanding of what all of these are and how they might relate to practice, if not a very deep way that is not always easy for me to thoughtfully apply in my lessons. The activity based on TDL definitely helped me in how to explain the idea to parents, especially looking at the ideas of some of the others. I myself have long thought of them as an excellent concept that makes so much sense as a lens for teaching, especially in primary school- it is, sometimes tricky to explain to new parents. Going into detail with planning central ideas though concepts did open my eyes as to how truly "central" those concepts should be. All too often it's tempting to plan via a topic and then try to  connect up the key concepts at the end, but I'm now beginning to find that first brainstorming many topics related to the unit and then n...

  I joined this workshop a little later than most; at the end of my first year as a PYP teacher (a situation I will not comment on). Many of the concepts present in this workshop so far I am fairly familiar with, and have encountered them in one form or another throughout my first year (but perhaps unevenly, and much of it not specifically aimed at PYP). Implementing student agency is perhaps one of the most powerful, intriguing and attractive concepts of the IB overall. This was how I felt about it when I was introduced to the ideas behind the IB, and I’m sure the same has been true for many others. I have also found it very challenging to put into practice; while I have of course strived to award as much agency as possible I perhaps do not yet have the knowledge and experience to do this fully effectively yet. It is still a tricky balance between agency and productivity- allowing students freedom to choose their own learning, while still ensuring that what they do achieve is the...