Confessions of a PYP Teacher

Send us Fan Mail Some people can't imagine assessing agency and action, since they are driven by internal motivation.  Yet, how can students move forward with to their next milestone without goals and success criteria?  This episode, we will explore the agency and action success criterias that we can use to set learning goals.  Then, we will apply them to a real learning situation with conten...

Send us Fan Mail Taking authentic action is difficult and requires a lot of of dialogue with our students.  To help you with this process, this episode is scaling it back between the relationship of level 1 and 2 actions.  We will explore how to broaden our actions based now our quesiton. When we ask students, "What action can we do?"  This limits their thinking to doing and saying actio...

Send us Fan Mail Here's my attempt to make action easier, which means its about (MEDIUM) on the easy to hard scale.  I try to break it down, but I tend to get excited and my ideas run away with me.  In this podcast, we are trying to put all three levels of action together, so they work seamlessly to build up the level of action rigor. We will use the Golden Circle as our scaffolding tool to a...

Send us Fan Mail Action has gone through a major upcycle since the days of saving the whales and owning a piece of the rainforest.  Now, it requires us to take a part of the process and put it in our hearts.   A reminder, that the highest level of action includes:  Participation Advocacy Social Justice Social Entreprenuership Lifestyle Choices We will examine how these steps can work together to c...

Send us Fan Mail The road between agency and action requires collaboration between the teacher, student, and school community.  The student takes the wheel of navigating the learning, while the teacher guides from the side.  The school community cheers from the sidelines to lend support and remove possible obstacles. Action has gone through its own journey in the PYP. This episode, we will examine...

Send us Fan Mail Now that we've explored agency in-depth, it can be difficult to know where to start.  This episode, we will look at five simple steps on how to begin building agentic thinking.  We will discuss the importance of structure, relationships, collaboration, resources, and environment.  As you try to begin implementing agency into your daily practice, take it one step at a time. Fo...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we will explore how to bring the three parts of agency (voice, choice, and ownership) together to create a deeper research project.  We will go step-by-step in how to allow for voice in choosing a topic, enabling a choice when selecting a UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) as a lens, and supporting ownership of the process and product.  We will walk through th...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we will break down the complexity of taking ownership in our minds and our hearts.  We will unpack the various stages on the Ownership Continuum, which support student engagement and buy-in to the learning process.  You will walk away with five possible strategies on how to make ownership apart of your virtual, hybrid, physically distanced learning situation. For...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we will examine the dynamic relationship between VOICE and CHOICE in student learning and how it creates independent thinkers.  Additionally, we will explore the stages of the Choice Continuum and how to make choice practical in any classroom. For a written blog post and other resources, visit:    https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com/ Thanks for listening!  Please joi...

Send us Fan Mail Voice is the the means in which students express their ideas, passions, and wonderings.  In this episode, we will explore the different ways that students engage with learning, the power of student voice, and making goals using a voice continuum.  For a written blog post and other resources, visit:    https://thinkchat2020.weebly.com/ Thanks for listening!  Please join the epic le...

Send us Fan Mail Agency and Action are so intertwined that it's difficult to determine where one begins and ends.  This podcast will examine this unique relationship and look at the three elements of agency.  We will self-assess the level of agency in our classrooms and discover easy ways to make it applicable with our students.  For a written blog post and other resources, visit:    https://...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, we will discuss multiple considerations when implementing inquiry-based learning in your classroom.  We have created Inquiry Snack videos to support your understanding of the Inquiry Thinking Strategies shared in Confession #2.  We know that teacher right now is hard, but let's be better each day by implementing inquiry.  For a written blog post and other res...

Send us Fan Mail As we are looking to assess student understanding, are we considering the entire journey and not just content objectives?  Things to consider when looking back:  Do students understand the WHY of the unit and how is this demonstrated?  Did they engage in a variety of inquiry thinking? Have we addressed the questions in our A-Z planner? Do students know how to ask a variety of ques...

Send us Fan Mail As we gain more understanding of the inquiry and how to ask quesitons, we can then examine the various stages of inquiry.  These are important for self-reflection and making goals for the school year.  The stages include:  Teacher-driven inquiry Modeled inquiry  Shared inquiry Student-driven inquiry  We will explore the structure and benefit of each stage of inquiry and how to del...

Send us Fan Mail The types of questions we ask will determine how deep the thinking goes in your classroom.  Oftentimes, teachers as low-level comprehension questions to assess student understanding of a text.  This is not enough if we want students to pose and answer questions critically.  Weiderhold (1991) Question Matrix poses different question stems that yield different types of reponses.  Th...

Send us Fan Mail Now that we have engaged with inquiry thinking through engaging, challenging, relevant, and signficant, it helps us to think about planning on a deeper level.  We will create our unit plan thinking through these questions:   How will students create goals based on success criteria?  How is the classroom arranged to invite inquiry?  Who is making these decisions? What materials are...

Send us Fan Mail In our last episode, we spoke about how to find our focus as teachers, especially when we encounter uncertain times.  One of the things that centers me is the Golden CIrcle by Simon Sinek. As we look towards making our WHY happen in our teaching, what are some practical things we can implement now to see a difference?  One of the best tools I created while still in the classroom r...

Send us Fan Mail Welcome to our first confession of a PYP teacher.  in this podcast, we will explore the power of the Golden Circle by Simon Sinek.  Here is the link to his Ted Talk    https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action?language=en The Golden Circle helped me to redefine my purpose as an educator with three simple questions:   WHY - what do you believe?  What is...