Confessions of a PYP Teacher

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we will read sections 2.1-2.5 of Kath Murdoch's book, Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning .  In this section, we will examine the factors that shape school culture and how we can determine if we are ready to move forward with a culture of personal inquiry.  Join this thought-provoking discussion to identify where you can improve in your practice.  For a wr...

Send us Fan Mail Just a reminder my friends, this new series will take an intense dive into the book, “Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning” by Kath Murdoch.  This episode will focus on sections 1.4 - 1.6 of the book, so stay tuned to be inspired by Kath! This episode will examine the common issues that educators have about inquiry-based learning, common programs that limit inquiry, and how to m...

Send us Fan Mail I am excited to co-lead with Aga Chojnacka-Al Atat and Kirti Kale a book club for Kath Murdoch’s latest title, Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning .  I am already several sections into the book and I’ve found a treasure trove of little gems that resonate deeply to my teaching philosophy.  Each week, our book club will focus on two to three sections and apply them to our practic...

Send us Fan Mail As we look at playing with the ATLs, I’m reminded of my friend Vidhya.  She is a passionate PYP educator from India.  If you are on Twitter in the education community, you have probably run across her many tweets.  Ever since last summer, she has opened my eyes to so many possibilities in seeing learning and teaching.  In a recent chat, Vidhya and I were discussing this challenge...

Send us Fan Mail Let’s continue on with this theme about learning space design and how it impacts play.  From an organizational standpoint, what makes your space so special? When you look around your special spot in your home, what are some special things and tools you use that inspire you to play?   In this episode, we will examine how the environment layout, decor, materials, and storage impact...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to another application series, where we are going to take ideas we have explored before and apply them into a new context.  I absolutely love this part, because it helps to look at old things again…the process of anew (4A’s by Misty Paterson). Since our last application series, you’ve had a chance to participate in the Transdisciplinary and Design Thinking challenges.  The...

Send us Fan Mail Learning transfer is our greatest gift.  It helps us to better understand ideas that we are toying with during our learning.  What better way to transfer all of these ideas in our design thinking challenge, but to teach them to our learners?  Agency at its finest. Now, let’s circle back to the big ideas from Pop-Up Studio: Responsive Teaching for Today’s Learners that resonate and...

Send us Fan Mail I’m so excited to record this episode on the 2nd birthday of this podcast!  What a journey.  I never thought I would ever record a podcast, let alone 86 episodes of my meandering thoughts about the PYP.  It has been truly a passion project as I share with you my love of learning and I hope it’s helped you as well. As we have gone through this Design Thinking Challenge together, it...

Send us Fan Mail The meaning of evolve is to develop gradually.  This captures the heart of our PYP journey.  We are developing gradually into educators that we want to be, so we can help to shape young humans into how they want to be.  When you take a step back and pause, it truly is a beautiful thing.  Evolution means that even with our past mistakes, we can continue to develop gradually into wh...

Send us Fan Mail As I was considering this challenge, I reflected on the CME model from Pop-Up Studio: Responsive Teaching for Today’s Learners by Misty Paterson.  This has been my latest book club read, but more importantly my aha text.  Going through the book club experience with this text opened up so many possibilities of how to use these ideas in a variety of ways.  Isn’t that the purpose of...

Send us Fan Mail A prototype is a model of something that we want to test or try out.  In the PYP, our prototype is our unit of inquiry planner.  We create a planning tool that ties all of the elements together with the singular purpose to connect to the transdisciplinary theme, central idea, and lines of inquiry.  The other elements and content provide context for exploration.  To make this come...

Send us Fan Mail In our last episode, we defined what it means to ideate and stretched our thinking with the Question Formulation Technique (QFT).  This lays the foundation of asking a variety of questions to and with our learners, so they are able to generate, revise, prioritize, and plan with their questions in mind.  As we create this culture of thinking, we are ready to think more outside of t...

Send us Fan Mail In the design thinking process, we recognize that the issue we have defined has not been previously dealt with correctly.  We may have tried to solve the problem by examining the superficial symptoms, rather than getting to the root issue.  When we ideate, we have to think out-of-the-box, so we can find alternative solutions that may seem farfetched in order to move our organizati...

Send us Fan Mail Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions.” One of the hardest things to do is to define the problem we want to solve.  This requires us to dig deep into the underlying root causes, not the symptoms, which can open us to vulnerability.  Most organizations don’t like to a...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to the design thinking challenge! I am excited to explore the design thinking challenge through different lenses that you may have not considered before.  This is how my brain works.  I make connections between unrelated texts and somehow it works.  Let’s do this! The Four Agreements Recently, I stumbled on a video on LinkedIn about Cognitive Behavioral Theory by Joe Amabi...

Send us Fan Mail Empathy 101 This episode will focus on building empathy.  If you feel like you have a solid understanding of what this looks and feels like in the school context, consider popping over to episode 79 to participate in the empathy challenge.  To empathize means different things to different people.  It’s not a one size fits all, which is a huge lesson I learned being a PYP Coordinat...

Send us Fan Mail As I think of the power of the conceptual lesson cycle, I naturally connect to the Design Thinking Process, which looks at conceptual ideas from the big picture.  If you haven’t heard about it, no worries, I didn’t until a year ago.  For those who have been engaging with design thinking for some time, we are going to explore some possibilities that will strengthen your usage of it...

Send us Fan Mail Ever since the last episode, I have struggled with a gnawing feeling that I was not quite right in my ideas.  As I have unraveled the concept of play, I must admit that my friend Mondrea Mitchell was correct.  What I consider play to be in the older years, is actually a form of playfulness.  What is the difference?  Play is truly an open-ended construction of meaning and making se...

Send us Fan Mail Play in elementary school is a debated idea.  Does it only happen in early years?  What do we define as play?  How does it look and is it authentic when learners are able to manipulate and inquire on their own? In this episode, I will share my thoughts on these questions and how we can incorporate more play through a conceptual lesson cycle.  Come play with me! For a written blog...

Send us Fan Mail Play is central to early years.  We know this.  If you are an early years teacher, this is what you do all day long.  This episode focuses on the role of play in the early years within the PYP.  There are many facets that we think about naturally with this age, but there are some teachers that are confined by their school systems to make it happen.  This episode will refer heavily...

Send us Fan Mail Since the PYP enhancements in 2018, there has been a lot of talk of play.  It has always existed in early years, because that is how a young learner creates meaning.  In any given learning situation, a young child is presented with open-ended materials for them to build sensory awareness, make predictions, and experiment with on their own.  As they build connections, they work wit...

Send us Fan Mail As I think of the relationship between the learning environment and play, it reminds of the chicken and the egg argument.  Which one came first?  Do we need a well thought out learning space design to bring about play?  Does play shape the way the learning space is designed?  Hmm…which way do you look at it?  In this episode, we are going to look at different learning space design...

Send us Fan Mail This week, I’m excited to report to you from New London, CT.  It’s a beautiful seaside town with a lot of history in its six square miles.  I’m here working with a PYP school to restructure their library according to the six transdisciplinary themes, as well as genrefying their novels, creating a lower primary section, and a place for the learner profile and key concepts to come t...

Send us Fan Mail The practices we have shared in the past two episodes apply to all learners.  Some will be overstimulated, while others will be underwhelmed.  No child fits into one specific category, which was part of my apprehension in separating the students into designation groups. At the same time, I believe there are some things we can put into place that will support a student with disabil...

Send us Fan Mail Now that we’ve designed the learning environment for the language learner, let’s talk about the gifted learner.  I don’t like this designation, because I believe that all children are gifted in their own unique way and the PYP allows it to shine.  I know everyone who is listening totally agrees with my summation.  We can picture specific learners in our class who are eager to lear...