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Online Teaching with the IB PYP- A Starting Point

I am going to begin with applauding each and everyone of you, my dear colleagues, wherever you may be in the world, as we endure this CORVID 19 pandemic and work together to keep educating our young learners and making their lives as normal as possible given the incredible abnormality of the entire situation. I’m hoping, by sharing a few of my own trials and successes, that I can lessen some of the concerns you my have and help you to recognise that we are all feeling the same feelings. Teachers, children and parents alike.

We were thrown into this online learning situation with only 12 hours notice. Italy announced on a Sunday evening that schools would be closed the next day, for one week. Three weeks later, we re still working through it and growing from it! Stay positive, stay strong and focus on the silver lining of this cloud.

We have since learned that our children are incredibly positive, incredibly independent and incredibly willing. Their beautifully innocent honesty and ...

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Strategies for Authentic IB PYP Inquiry with Distance Learning

And so it continues….

As some of us are now knee deep into distance learning, and some of us are still finding our feet with it all, the fact of the matter remains that for many of us, this new form of teaching and learning that has been thrust upon us, isn’t going away any time soon. I know, I know. But…..it isn’t all bad news. Let’s not forget the skills that we have learned, the inner strength we have developed and the technology hurdles we have overcome! Or perhaps that last one is just me? Anyway, I have a video replay with a few strategies up my sleeve that I’d like to share with you to help keep the inquiry authentic with the on-going remote learning.

                             
Distance learning brings out the crazed and the crazy in us all. Hang in there!

    

                                           Maintaining Authentic Inquiry

As inquiry teachers , we know how important it is to maintain fidelity with the inquiry process for our kids; to keep developing those th...

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Amazing Books for Developing IB PYP Thinking Skills

There’s a lot more to this thinking business than we think. When developing IB PYP thinkers and inquirers, I believe it’s so important that we first  teach the children to become aware of their thinking. They need to know what this whole thinking thing is about. And before we point to that reference poster on the wall that outlines those sub-skills, I want to help them identify much of what those sub-skills involve. This is where books come into play!

When you’ve been teaching as long as I have, you come across a few books that become your favourite, go-to books over and over, for very specific purposes. This article shares my favourite books for developing the IB PYP Learner Profile attributes of Thinker and Inquirer and, in turn, the Approaches to Learning thinking skills.  In addition, I was excited to host a giveaway on my social media accounts and was able to give away 7 books to 7 teachers around the world!  In this article, I’m sharing those books I’ve used to build up the

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Developing Thinking Skills with the IB PYP

 

Hello again fellow inquiry teachers! This article is going to be expanding on my previous post where I was sharing my favourite books for developing thinkers and inquirers.

Looking for ideas for books? Read the article here.

In the beginning….

At the beginning of every school year, I always begin with an emphasis on building a community of learners within a culture of inquiry. And so, first things first, I begin at the beginning.

My anchor chart that has been developed over the course of our POI.
  1. Learner Profile
  2. Thinking Skills
  3. Conceptual understanding

Those three points involve bringing an awareness to the children of what it means to be a thinker and an inquirer. Their knowledge and understanding of their own unique Learner Profile starts from week one of our school year and here is where I introduce those Approaches to Learning Skills, specifically the thinking skills. Even more specifically, the sub-skills within the IB’s description of thinking skills.

  • Metacognition
  • Question
  • ...
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