Reflections on Module 3

 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 were covered/utilized.


I am now in my second year and there are some changes that I am working on, including

-A focus on the skills of inquiry. Many times last year things were held back by students not knowing how to do their own research, too much information or materials were spoon-fed to them. I'm particularly focusing on research and research skills. Before I tell my students anything I am asking myself "is this something they could discover themselves?". At the moment, this is mostly involving directing students to discover knowledge that I have predetermined in advance, but as students build in confidence I will push the focus to be more often in a student-determined direction.

-Promoting choice and agency is a a process that I am working on gradually. Currently I am laying down the groundwork by reinforcing my expectations surrounding how I want my students to use their agency (their choices/ideas/suggestions should be challenging and relevant), as well as having a system of rewards whereby if they follow my guidelines they will be further rewarded with more choice and opportunities to choose their own directions.

-Last year, we were not given much instruction on how to plan (staffing issues meaning no PYP coordinator) we generally used our own inconsistent planning methods or templates. Collaboration happened but was ad-hoc. This year I have instructed all PYP teachers to use the official planner and we are having regular collaborative planning meetings with the whole (small) PYP department.

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