#makingthepyphappen

Learning Engagement 1: The Learning Space

Due to the pandemic, the opportunity of having a physical learning space has been impossible for both teachers and students. I was given the chance to experience teaching in a TMTC classroom set-up for only two weeks before the pandemic started. My students and I shared a classroom with the 1st-2nd graders. I mostly liked the fact that the campus is surrounded by forests and classrooms have wide windows providing a refreshing view of this. Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, improves our mental well-being. Exposure to nature decreases the production of stress hormones (one thing that keeps students from learning effectively) and improves memory functions. As a matter of fact, taking a nature walk or sitting under a tree while discussing a lesson makes students remember or memorize more of it (take Jose Rizal as an example). It also provides more experiential learning for subjects like Science and Social Studies.

At a school where I've taught before, the building was in the middle of a farm (my students loved to come very early because the cold foggy morning was always inviting then we'd all eat breakfast together). Another school I've worked at was in a metropolitan area which meant the learning experience was limited to four corners. To make up for the limited space, the classrooms were decorated and arranged creatively. For example, different corners or spaces were labeled as different continents (with cultural exhibit for each) for a Social Studies classroom.

Here's my CHECKLIST for an ideal classroom set-up:

Is the classroom warm and inviting?

Are all areas of the classroom accessible to all children?

Are the walls bleak and lacking in color or do the decorations help to make the students feel comfortable?

Are areas well defined as to their design and purpose?

Is there still room for improvement?

DO YOU, AS A TEACHER, MAKE ALL STUDENTS FEEL WELCOME?

Attached is my ideal classroom layout:

Learning Engagement 2: Visualizing the PYP Education

Tell me, I’ll forget. Show me, I’ll remember. Involve me, I’ll understand.

- a Chinese proverb

The above proverb captures the difference between a traditional and inquiry-based approach to learning. The heart of inquiry-based learning is cultivating the practice that students take responsibility for their own learning by engaging them in stimulating learning activities that mirror real-life issues, roles, and projects, those that are relevant, challenging, and significant.

Within the IB PYP, learning content takes place in the context of exploring broad and interdisciplinary issues. Students develop creative, analytic, and synthetic thinking skills, decision-making skills about what information is relevant and salient, and a range of strategies to communicate what they have learned. The development of these skills will better prepare them for the work they may assume as adults.

In our role as educators, we facilitate student learning with the broad aims that they embrace lifelong holistic learning, cultivate international mindedness, and communicate effectively. Our aim is to develop internationally minded people who, recognizing our common humanity and shared guardianship of the planet, help to create a better and more peaceful world.

Attached is an Infogram on how I visualize the PYP as a holistic, transdisciplinary, and coherent learning experience:

Learning Engagement 1: DEVELOPING LEARNER AGENCY THROUGH SELF-EFFICACY AND MUSIC INTEGRATION

Self-efficacy plays a big role in students' motivation to learn and achieve goals, and I believe that it's the foundation of all attributes -- the key to holistic growth. Here are some ways that can help in promoting self-efficacy in the classroom:

1. Effective Communication

teaching students how to identify their goals, acknowledge their abilities, and training them to focus only on their strengths; be self-aware, and know their intentions.

giving praise when a student puts in a real effort by using affirmations like “You can do it,” “You are smart enough,” and “I trust you,” we can help the kids to believe in their potencies.

2. Honest Feedback

praise only when there's hard work or achievement

3. Healthy Environment

interactive lesson, a high-energy and non-judgmental assessment, or an engaging group activity

4. Positive Strategies

setting short-term goals and helping students to achieve them one by one

allowing them to talk about their problems and how they plan to deal with them

not comparing a student with other students and letting them follow their own pace

setting goals according to individual abilities

5. Modeling

to instill self-efficacy in children, it is thus vital that the teachers and facilitators are efficient too; "practice what you preach"

Music, other than it makes a catchy and creative lesson, helps develop the language and reasoning of students. Being a music teacher is an advantage for you in using music as an effective teaching tool.

Here are some easy ways that you can incorporate music into your classes:

History is a subject that benefits greatly from having music as a lens to teach about cultural traditions and historical events. For example, the Dust Bowl can be taught through songs by Woody Guthrie and/or Benny Goodman, with students analyzing the conditions people lived in at the time.

Mathematics can be challenging for students to understand because the concepts are abstract, which is the main reason it’s important to provide visuals and manipulatives to students when first teaching a concept. Musical notes can help teach fractions, changing instruments but playing the same song can help teach patterns, and using pitch can help with frequency and ratios.

Science can benefit from songs that teach about the skeletal system or incorporate mnemonics to help students remember the food chain. Music can be the content for teaching about sound waves and having children experience frequency in relation to pitch.

Literacy improves when a student is able to pick up on the patterns in the structure of language and is able to differentiate between pitches in words that sound similar but have different meanings. Music can be utilized as a metaphor to explain elements of a story such as character, setting, conflict, and resolution, using the melodies, instruments, tempos, and dynamics as the teaching lens.

Learning Engagement 2: INQUIRY-BASED LEARNING

Inquiry-based learning is an educational approach that focuses on investigation and problem-solving. It is different from traditional approaches because it reverses the order of learning.

In a true inquiry lesson, there is a back and forth flow of knowledge between the teacher and students. It begins when the teacher poses an idea or concept and then asks targeted questions. This leads to students sharing their ideas and asking additional questions.

For instance, a teacher might ensure that students can access strong research materials to answer their questions, as well as activities like dramatizations, presentations, and role-plays that help them unearth new materials.

When applied thoughtfully, the use of an inquiry approach is all about agency. Inquiry teachers intentionally help learners build transferable skills and dispositions as they investigate questions of significance to them. When the approach is applied to authentic problems or challenges in local and global contexts the agentive dimension of learner identity can be further amplified. Empowering young learners to own their learning requires a sophisticated repertoire of strategies and a commitment to the co-construction of knowledge, skills, routines, and learning spaces.

Learning Engagement 3: THE PYP PLANNER

A SHIFT IN APPROACHING INQUIRY

The PYP Planner ensures that teaching and learning are planned under transdisciplinary themes that focus on central ideas instead of compartmentalized knowledge and skills. It is the IBO’s answer to meeting its mission statement earlier on in a student’s education.

Understanding inquiry is key to understanding the PYP planning document. This is because the PYP requires teachers to plan collaborative units of inquiry. The IB’s focus on inquiry is based on the work of constructivist theorists. Student agency is crucial to the IB’s mission. The PYP seeks to distinguish the student as an object with education acted upon them from the student as an agent who is responsible for their own education. This idea is constructivist in theory, meaning that students need to active constructors of their own learning. The PYP planner has specific sections dedicated to preserving the identity of each student, even going so far as to incorporate it into planning.

Finally, transdisciplinarity underpins the foundation of the International Baccalaureate. The learner profile is a large part of the IB’s transdisciplinary. The IB also requires teachers across disciplines to plan together and identify possible connections within units of inquiry.

This planner, in particular, is an attractive and extensive way to address the core values of inquiry, student agency, and transdisciplinarity in the International Baccalaureate. It has many dedicated sections to invite students to play an active role in their own learning and make connections between disciplines. It incorporates aspects of constructivism, including social constructivism. It also includes several planning guide pages with prompts to help teachers navigate and complete each section.

COLLABORATIVE PLANNING

Planning strengthens the transdisciplinary nature of the curriculum and ensures the pedagogy of the PYP is pervasive across the program. The ongoing process of collaborative planning incorporates students' prior experiences and interests and differentiates to support their inquiries. It is more than just teachers working together on a document. It allows all teachers to construct a meaningful inquiry process through the integration of different subject areas.

Whole-school involvement in developing the program of inquiry is professional development for all. The participation of learners in the planning process fosters awareness of self and others and reveals vulnerabilities.

PYP ASSESSMENT

In the past (before the PYP enhancement), there were three parts of the assessment component – assessing, recording, and reporting. Now, based on the latest PYP: from Principles into Practice document, assessment in the PYP is divided into 4 dimensions – monitoring, documenting, measuring, and reporting.

It provides feedback to students on their learning and keeps parents informed about the progress of their children's learning. It is a means to measure student performance against the criteria and expectations of the IB schools. It is not just the simple act of measuring what students have learned, rather it is a 'state of mind' which permeates every aspect of teaching and learning.

MIND MAPPING

Sustainable teaching is introduced below in approaching engaging learning experiences, student involvement in planning, and differentiated instruction. It is the process of fostering self-compassion and renewal in educators who support the growth and development of students in turn. It is ​an integrated approach to education and enables all participants to thrive. It is based on social constructivist, contextual, self-regulated, and collaborative learning. We believe that this approach will help teachers and students to act and collaborate effectively towards inquiry.

LEARNING ENGAGEMENT SAMPLE

Learning Engagement 1: Transdisciplinary learning programme of inquiry

At TMTC, learning is not confined by traditional subjects but is supported and enriched by them. Each one of the transdisciplinary themes encompasses the universal understandings common to all human beings. They are open enough to embrace a variety of perspectives and content areas.

For example, during literature classes, students explore ways in which we discover and express ideas, our feelings, nature, different cultures, beliefs and values, creativity, and our appreciation of aesthetics. These stories are deeply explored by asking students conceptual questions. Through exploring different stories around the world, students develop a layered understanding of themselves and the connections they have with the rest of humanity. Through languages, they explore new vocabulary that helps them create poems while getting to know well-known authors of the 20th century.

Best practices in a transdisciplinary environment do not compartmentalize learning, but rather explore content within the context of inquiry.

Teachers in TMTC practice involvement and collaboration which is a requirement in transdisciplinary learning. We shift away from the comfort zone of working individually by sharing ideas with each other for the purpose of integrating learning experiences. This results in building meaningful and enduring understandings for students.

Learning Engagement 2: Concept driven curriculum

Our team chose to collaborate on the following related concepts and central ideas. We also decided to show the connection or continuity of transdisciplinary learning among the PYP grade levels.

Coming up with a coherent and well-aligned POI does not happen overnight. It is a process of continuous reflections and modifications, and it involves collaboration among staff members of the school community.

Here is a sample of our collaboration on the transdisciplinary theme (how we organize ourselves). We chose the unit (movie-making) for 6th to 8th graders. We also focused on how the central idea can be integrated into all the subject areas.

Learning Engagement 3: Approaches to learning

Here are my ideas on the challenges we face in the modern education which also reflect my teaching experiences for the past eight years.

Generally speaking, modern problems require modern solutions. Effective teaching nowadays requires the possession of diverse or transdisciplinary skills. However, the process is never just the teacher's responsibility. Motivation and support should mainly come from the learners and their parents.

Learning Engagement 2: Developing global citizens through the learner profile

I think the easiest way to make the students understand the aimed attributes towards holistic development is to simplify them in child-friendly language. Moreover, I believe that in order to effectively teach students the required attributes, teachers should also possess the same qualities.

Learning Engagement 3: Embedding international-mindedness

We can develop INTERNATIONAL MINDEDNESS in our students through the ff. strategies: 1. Multilingualism or learning a new language can improve your cognitive skills and mental wellbeing. One school where I worked had over 10 nationalities in its community! It is now common for many children at international schools to leave primary school speaking 2 or more languages. 2. Gap years and international travel (for older students) are seen as positives on a CV, demonstrating adaptability, flexibility, and collaborative skills. 3. Global politics, worldwide environmental issues, and dramatic population movements across continents have become part of our everyday lives. If we want our children to grow up to be innovators and leaders in positive global change, then embedding these topics in the curricula is a must. 4. Exploring new countries and cultures through reading stories from around the world. In a safe and encouraging learning environment, these stories invited discussion and celebration of our similarities and differences, they encouraged empathy for our fellow human beings and sparked a spirit of wonder and curiosity about the world around us. 5. You can also watch foreign films or world documentaries together, volunteer at local shelters, take part in environmental work, and visit local places of worship. 6. Multiculturalism through social media brings the benefits of international living wherever we are. Explore and encourage them to talk about their world and what they perceive to be reality - is this the same reality that's being perceived by children growing up in Brazil or Cambodia, Russia, or the Middle East?

Learning Engagement 4: The role of language

Let me simplify the role of language in promoting and provoking international-mindedness and transdisciplinary learning using the Connect-Extend-Challenge chart:

Let me begin with something Ms. Laura, our school head, said that I agree deeply:

"It doesn't matter if the pacing is slow as long as the students understand the lesson well."

Sometimes we need to slow down in order to move the learning in the room. Let the students “learn at their own pace”. Learning without transfer is not learning at all. It's something that most forget when pressured to meet deadlines.

Let me use the Visible Thinking routine See, Think, Wonder to reflect on my understanding of the PYP at this point.

I SEE that this experience is far different from the previous ones that I had teaching in Cambridge and K-12 schools for the past eight years. Despite the stress of online teaching due to the coronavirus pandemic, my colleagues and I are doing our best to learn everything we need to know through this intensive training that is mainly focused on fostering the students' holistic development. The IB PYP framework is definitely our new norm.

I THINK that this will be an unforgettable learning experience and a dream come true for us, lifelong learners. This experience will promote teamwork and stronger collaboration as we focus on the same goal.

I WONDER if I have the skills and patience to implement the curriculum the way it is supposed to be.