Learning Never Stops

This post is the third of our blog post series on how to design lessons for conceptual understanding. Part 1 here Part 2 here Strategy 3 : Generalizations You may have come across Lynn Erickson's diagram on the structure of knowledge. In my IB workshop's I always like to present the avocado model alongside this diagram when I am talking about facts. The intention of inquiry-based teaching and conceptually-driven understanding (or Concept-based inquiry- whatever terminology suits your fancy)  is to enable students to make generalizations. In other words, can they transfer their learning to a new context because they have understood what they learnt.  In order to make generalizations, we need to first plan lessons that help students acquire facts/topics that are interesting  and worth knowing. Bringing in local and global issues that are relevant to the topic help students as they begin to compare the topics and see emerging patterns. Remember, facts and concepts have a synergist

  Strategy 2 - Representation     Source: ibo.org In this post, I will flesh out yet another research based strategy - Representation.   Check out my first post of this series here:   Part 1 Think of a concept, an idea. How many different ways can you represent it? First of all, before you can expect your students to show their understanding in different ways, don't forget to model it. For example, as you teach students the concept of subtraction, show them a variety of ways to get to the answer. Math Let us take 600 - 148 for instance. One way to solve this would be: Another representation would be to draw using place value blocks. And then of course, there is the basic algorithm which is great for students who have a good conceptual understanding of the concept of  "subtraction." It is a quick and efficient method to get to the answer.     600 -  148     ______ I understand the importance many teachers place on this last method, yet I have found, as I confer with my stu

In this series, we will discuss how we can design lessons for conceptual understanding. Having recently completed an upskilling course with IB, I felt we may all benefit from looking at some of these strategies and how they might look like in our PYP classrooms. Strategy 1: Classification    Source: Ibo.org In this post, I will be focusing on the research-backed strategy, "classification".  Chadwick (2009) highlights that classification helps develop conceptual understanding by allowing students to organize information, recognize patterns, and understand relationships among concepts.  Here are some examples across several disciplines on how I have used tools to classify. Math Class 1) In my math class (Grade 3) instead of having students simply rote learn the names of the shapes and their properties, have them sort the shapes  based on the number of sides, angles and symmetry. Even better, use the Concept Attainment Strategy (I keep returning to this strategy because it is so

  Have you ever considered what math anxiety may look like in your classroom? As I prepare to begin my lesson, handing out notebooks or math prompts, I look around and observe my students. As the lesson progresses, I continue to look around and monitor their behaviour. Are there some students who take time to settle down or start to talk about  things completely unrelated to math? Does one student ask to go the washroom? Or maybe complain about a stomachache or a headache? Is there a student who may start crying or become angry and indulge in negative self talk? "I am dumb." or "I can never get this right!" and so on and so forth. The more subtle symptoms : Is a student being being extra chatty, taking time to settle down, obsessing about the answer, refusing to answer questions, seldom asking for help, hurtling through work or showing a reluctance to work with others.  A broad categories these symptoms would look like this: cognitive difficulties emotional distress

"How do I create a classroom culture that supports all the things I value as a classroom teacher? This inquiry led me to revisit my mission statement that I created years ago. I remember my professor telling me that once written, it should not be laminated and put on the wall only to be forgotten; instead, he encouraged me to look at it as a living and breathing document that needs to be tweaked every now and then in order to keep it authentic, significant, and relevant. My old mission statement was as follows: I will strive to be an educator who recognizes the differing needs of the 21st century learner, who creates meaningful, differentiated and engaging experiences to hone their critical thinking and communication skills. I will nourish their sense of curiosity, value their trust, and cherish their laughter as I aim to equip them with a solid sense of self. I will encourage them to use technological tools and a variety of learning strategies which will help them cope with our i

  "...teachers model the skill and provide scaffolds when introducing a skill for the first time." ( https://resources.ibo.org/pyp/works/pyp_11162-51465?root=1.6.2.4.5.3) The skills and sub-skills make learning more engaging and meaningful because it allows students to learn how to learn. When you listen to Guy Claxton or Daniel Pink talk about 21st century skills and what the job force of the future will ask from our present day students, you sit up and read those skill sets more closely! I read over the portion on Approaches to Learning in MyIB's digital Resource Page and found that one innocuous line quoted above with reference to teaching.  But I think we need to start from someplace else.  Do you, the classroom teachers practice these skill sets with ease? Let's take communication skills for instance. Communication skills Exchanging-information skills (listening, interpreting, speaking) Literacy skills (reading, writing and using language to gather and communicat

"The ability to work with, understand, and use data has become an essential life skill and requirement for an ever-expanding range of jobs and careers.  Data is everywhere around us.  Ninety percent of the world’s data has been created in the last two years." (Marr, 2018)   Many of my unplanned lessons (happy deviations) have been far more powerful than my planned ones. This post is not touting the idea of ignoring planning. It is just a recognition and celebration of unplanned inquiry and its potential and power. I would like to share a completely unplanned lesson with you. This happened almost a year ago and unfortunately, I do not have pictures and graphs to garnish my words. Here goes... The vice principal of our school walked into class one day looking very grave. She was clearly upset about something. It turned out that someone in the boys washroom was not following the rules. He was peeing on the floor. As a school, we were all supposed to keep a log of students visiti

"We need answers to get answers," a student reflected, as he shared his 3-2-1 after out lesson on measurement. I was thrilled. He often blurts out replies that are not connected with anything in particular. If was a very powerful lesson I picked up from G. Fletchy's website. The students were engaged and everyone participated with enthusiasm. I wanted the students to understand the following: We can : use different tools to measure things.  connect certain measurements with our body parts to make good estimates or get an idea of "howmuchness" of measurement units. (10 cm spans the the outer edge of my right eye to the outer edge of my left eye.) chunk objects - visually break up an objects into parts. Lesson starter: A 3-Act lesson with this picture: Question: What is the difference in height of the children? What do you notice? What questions do you have? Then I showed the next picture for 5 seconds.                  

One day, a student and his dad arrived in class with a little package. It turned out to be an empty nest they had found in their garden. My students eagerly gathered around it to see it up close. "What if the mummy bird is still looking for it?" one worried boy asked. They all looked at me but I shrugged and kept inspecting the nest. I was thinking about the lesson ahead and decided to shelf it. Long division could wait. The Grade 3s were learning about natural structures and this was a perfect chance to let inquiry flow.  I Step Back,   They Move Forward. We then used SEE THINK WONDER, an often used, yet simple and powerful tool to organize our thoughts. By now, my Grade 3s are readily able to identify HOT and LOT questions  (higher/lower order thinking). Their sheets filled up with their wondering. I noticed there were quite a few Why... What if... I wonder why... Here is our attempt at bu