What is the purpose of the exhibition?

How do we make this unit different to all of the others? In grade five we give a lot of direction for units over to the students. Students are engaged in the unit development process from the first unit of the year as a means of helping to better prepare for exhibition itself. At our school we are using a model for exhibiton where the students develop their own unit of inquiry - from begining to end - the unit is their own creation. It is this unit development process which I believe sets exhibition apart from all other units.

The IBO lists essential features of the exhibition in its text, Exhibition Guidelines. These features are extensive although still leave room for interpretation: The PYP Exhibiiton must:

• Provide opportunities for the student to exhibit the IB learner profile & attitudes
• Incorporate all key concepts
• Synthesise aspects of all transdisciplinary themes
• Require students to use the transdisciplinary skills
• Explore significant and relevant knowledge
• Provide opportunities for students to engage in action
• Represent a collaborative, student-led, in-depth inquiry
• Include ongoing and rigorous assessment

It is the requirement to provide opportunities for action which I am most interested in. To be more specific the IB Guideline states: " Provide students opportunites for students to engage in action; students should demonstrate an ability to reflect on and apply their learning to choose appropriate courses of action and carry them out; this action may take the form of personal involvement with the planning and implementation of the exhibition and/or service-orientated action; action may not always be clearly or immediately visible or measurable but evidence should be recorded whenever a particular behaviour results from the learning involved"

Action can take many forms, it does not always need to be service-oriented. In many conversations with teachers there appears a misconception that action reflects only service-orientated action. Taking action with regard to learning is so much more than doing something for a cause. Isn't it enough to ask our 10-11 year old students to take action with regard to their own learning by ensuring that their exhibition is just that - theirs.

An exhibition unit of inquiry should be designed and built by the individual student. Exhibition is different to all other units because it is the student's own unit of inqury. The student takes themself through the unit design process. The student determines the transdisciplinary theme, they nominate the real life issue, they connect the issue back to their theme with relevance and significance. The student  carefully selects the key concepts which drive their inquiry and their questions. The student plans the learning activities and undertakes their in-depth inquiry. The teacher's role as facilitator allows her to support the connections between concepts and themes, which teachers themselves do not always agree on when planning a unit of work, and to support the students' development of the assessment model.

Surely this process is action enough to fulfil the requirement that the "PYP Exhibition must provide opportunities for students to engage in action". Not all PYP units lead to service-oriented action. Why is it then there seems to be an underlying expection of service-oriented action for the PYP Exhibiton?

PYPX across

As we begin to plan for exhibition, starting in February 2011, I'm looking for ways to connect my grade five students with others. I'm hoping to get in touch with other PYPX teachers interested in connecting like minded kids, with a view to helping them collaborate on their exhibition projects beyond classroom.

We are still negotiating a clear direction for the exhibition guiding statement (to be determined in the coming weeks), but will certainly have an action focus and emphasis on making a difference to improve our world. Connecting kids to work collaboratively across regions offers a unique opportunity to explore global perspectives. With the availability of web 2.0 tools I'm sure the tech is out there we just need the collaborators...

Learner Profiles auf Deutsch

Learning through the learner profiles has been a rich and rewarding way of thinking for me over the past few years. Planning the program of inquiry focusing on what type of learner we are fostering is such a different way of thinking compared to my early teacher training. It makes perfect sense though, focus on how we want our learners to develop, not what we want them to know.

In a school where the student and parent population come from diverse and many cultural and language backgrounds it follows that some of these core elements of our curriculum should be available in a range of languages other than English. Thank you to my colleagues for sharing this German translation, for younger students, of our PYP Learner Profiles.


source: http://store.ibo.org/product_info.php?products_id=1175



Ich schätze und würdige Personen und Dinge.



Ich übernehme Verantwortung.

Ich habe Vertrauen in mich und in meine Arbeit.



Ich kooperiere und arbeite mit anderen zusammen.

Ich kreiere Dinge und erkenne Probleme.

Ich bin neugierig und möchte neue Dinge wissen.

Ich habe Einfühlungsvermögen. Ich kann mit Personen und fremden Situationen mitfühlen.

Ich begeistere mich für neue Dinge.

Ich arbeite selbstständig.



Ich bin ehrlich und sage die Wahrheit.

Ich habe Respekt vor mir und anderen.

Ich habe Geduld mit mir, mit anderen Personen und anderen Ideen.



PYPX Beyond Classroom Walls

From a group of teachers wanting to have a bigger conversation, grew yesterday's IB.PYP Exhibition sharing day for teachers of four schools across Germany. The conversations were great, sharing ideas of practise past and future. Talking with others rates so highly on my personal PD agenda and yesterday was no exception.

In our PYP classrooms we talk a lot about collaboration and sharing. The exhibition is designed to be a celebration of the learner, an opportunity to take ownership and lead an inquiry from beginning to end; an opportunity to design, construct, plan, develop and present their own unit of inquiry. Last year's exhibition went well, but there remains a lot of scope for improvement. The whys and how-tos of mentoring remain high on our agenda, action, performance and evidence elements are other areas of reinterpretation. For me though, these are not where my mind wonders off to the most.

What does the ideal exhibition look like? There are so many elements of exhibition open to interpretation, each requiring discussion and revisiting each year, one thing seems obvious though, connecting kids across classrooms. In the PYP we talk about making the world a smaller place, helping students to develop an understanding of our world through the lenses of six transdiciplinary themes. Can we truly do this within the confines of a classroom?

My ideal exhibition would have students collaborating with others from across the globe. Sharing in their learning and their approach to change with students beyond the walls of their own classroom. Our discussions yesterday helped me to realise that the initial focus for students would be on action, encouraging students to consider the areas in our world where they would like to help, to affect change. As these conversations continue, opening doors for discussions with others using tools like Edmodo, blogs and Voicethreads students in Europe can begin to share their ideas with students in Asia, the Nordic, Americas and the Pan-Pacific.

Last year our early focus was on moving students from topic to concept. I saw it then and I know it now, these 'topic to concept' discussions were very hard for the kids. They really didn't understand why. A colleague helped me to realise yesterday that by changing our approach the student would take themselves from topic to concept. So my ideal Exhibition would have students connecting with others who care about similar issues. As they connect with each other and talk about the action they can take their conversations will naturally lead them to the underlying concepts.

The combined inquiry will continue individually and together as the students build their knowledge, share their understanding and through their combined actions, affect change together. The ideal exhibition group will consist of students from multiple classrooms across multiple countries. Students will present and talk about their understandings in multiple languages, especially their home languages.

How do you encourage you students to consider other perspectives and collaborate during exhibition?

Bloom's Web2.0

Taking my lead from Kelly Tenkely and other PLN friends I recently gave the students a selection of web2.0 tools to explore and consider. Their task was to uncover the purpose of the web2.0 application, how it might (or might not) fit into our classroom and to consider a way to connect it to their learning. The students worked individually at first, exploring the logo and URL address they had been given. After 15 minutes or so individuals were paired to share their apps with a partner and together discuss how these could (or not) be used to enhance their learning. Meanwhile a group of six students explored, discussed and prepared visual representations of the six levels of Bloom’s (remember, understand, apply, analyse, explain, create).

The following day we began our lesson with the ‘story’ of Benjamin Bloom. I introduced the six levels of thinking to the students in a narrative style overview. As I talked about each new level of thinking the student who had developed the ‘poster’ came to the front to add it to our overview and give a brief explanation from his or her own understanding.

From this, pairs then became groups of four. The students shared their web2.0 apps within their new group and discussed where on the Blooms taxonomy they might connect their applications. The discussions were rich and powerful as students debated not only the meaning of each level of thinking but also the purpose and potential use of the applications they were discussing.

Students then stuck their application icon onto the level of thinking they thought was a ‘best fit’. Finally we ended talking about how we can take our display to the next level and produce a more permanent visual display, quickly recognising they were using creative thinking skills as they brainstormed ideas the kids did have some very creative ideas (spiders, rainbows, hanging mobiles).

We haven’t had the time over the past few days to come back to developing the more permanent display. The temporary display is still sitting around the white board, perhaps because of this, the students really are beginning to use the language in their discussions. As we use more and more technology in the classroom and more and more I ask the students to connect their use of technology to their learning the conversations are becoming increasingly insightful. Perhaps it’s not such a bad thing that we haven’t moved the display…

Twitter and GoogleDocs

I must admit to being a little complacent with my tweeting and blogging of late. It’s not all my own doing, we encountered a little Media Imposed inquiry over the weekend as the excitement of a new iTV was very quickly replaced with the feelings of loss and confusion as our Internet was taken down. For three days we were without contact – my husband and I were left with little else to do than go for a walk!

As the new router box was delivered, three days later, needless to say we were all ecstatic and I was inspired. After reading @tombarrett ‘s post recently in edtech.ch I prepared myself for some Google data. Recognising I am not as popular on twitter as @tombarrett I decided to prepare my lesson a few hours earlier (the night before in-fact – hoping to hit time zones). On awaking I was overwhelmed with such a positive response. Oh; the powers of Twitter. I already was excited by the ways and benefits of a Twitter PLN, but now I think I’ve become evangelical. I skipped into work this morning with 98 responses to the survey and my smile a mile wide.

As I explained my process to the kids, I asked them to think about the types of questions they might like to ask people from all over the world – if they could – the realisation was extraordinary. I watched their eyes pop and their jaws drop as they truly began to realise where the data was coming from. They were inspired to create their own surveys – coming soon. They will be blogging tomorrow about their thoughts and ideas.

Thank you to all who contributed to their inspiration. Without you their lesson would have been just another collection of ‘favourites’. As I work with the children I realise that they have a preconceived notion of data as something relating to favourites, my challenge is to help them shift their understanding into the real world. Help them to realise and begin to understand how understanding and analysing of data can help to develop and build deeper understanding of concepts.

I’ll keep you posted, but in the mean time, how do you help your kids make the connections between collecting data to foster deeper understanding of a concept, rather than simply understanding what people like, don’t like or when their birthday may be?

To iPad or not to iPad ...

At the end of last year I was tired of my planning book. In this day a d age there must be a more efficient way of recording what you're doing when. With a nine day rotating schedule I seemed to be forever erasing 'days' and pushing my program froward a single day. I found myself endlessly asking the question, " Why, in this day and age, am I using a pencil and eraser for this task?"

Even before school finished for the year, I was preparing my husband for the purchase of a laptop, of course school wasn't going to foot the bill, so I was laying the groundwork at home. I'll admit it was not so easy, he works out of the education industry. In his business if a piece of hardware is required for your work, then work purchases the equipment. Is this only in education where staff are expected to purchase their own hardware?

Alas, I digress. Over the summer the iPad was released, I watched eagerly considering the alternative of the iPad over a shiny new laptop - which was a always going to be an apple. After a bit of backward and forward, weighing up the pros and cons I went with an iPad. The compromise being if it didn't work for my planning and say-to-day at school, then it would become the lounge room iPad.

Well. It's been four months now since the beginning of the new school year. In the first few weeks I made the conscious choice not to carry a pen or pencil anywhere. At first it was hard. I felt as though I was arriving everywhere unprepared, although I took my iPad I took nothing else, I felt slightly naughty. Over time this element has become normal. I take. Y iPad only, everywhere that I go.

More importantly, in the classroom my general management has taken longer to feel comfortable with, and I will admit I'm not there yet. These are my apps:

iCal this was the only cal a deer app I could find to maintain my 9 day rotating schedule. I do have to do it manually but after an extensive search of the app storer I could find not better. One came close, Planbook, but reliability was a real issue. As you can imagine I was not prepared to gamble with my planning book. Synchronising between the iPad, iPhone and computer remains invaluable - I want it to be better, but I would pay money for what I have.

Bento Box this has been great, fileMaker pro in a neat little bucket. I'm still working my way through it, but o have a database file for general observations, language and maths anecdotal notes. I have separate files for general grade level meetings. Curricular meetings and elementary school meetings. It's nit the easiest thing to look at, bout it does allow me to organise a d re-organise my notes in a range of formats.

iBooks allows me to store all of those important PDF files. My next step here is to find the app that allows me to notate them. I know there are a lot our there, but one thing I've learned is to take my time and find what works for me.

Choosing an app too soon closes your mind to quickly to others that might fit better. I'm still looking for a better way to record my anecdotal notes and maintain my calendar. Ideally I'd like to integrate the two. I mustn't be the only one.

What do you use?