Skip to main content

Refresher course in PYP

Months ago I had come across this very familiar video sent to me by a twitter friend. I had glanced at it, marvelled at genius of the animator and sighed.
Today, at the PD session, I was pleasantly surprised to see the same video presented in a context that I could relate to: International-mindedness. How do we make our students more aware of the world around them and nudge them from being passive observers to problem solvers of the world. Our children are growing up in an age where things are in a constant state of flux. What we teach them now may not be valid later. Do we need to focus as much on the individual needs of children as in the curriculum? Where do we find the time? How do we get teachers who are uncomfortable with IT to teach their students web 2.0 tools. Later web 3.0 tools! Is it necessary? The pace of life is overwhelming and teachers have a huge task ahead of them(at least those who want to make a difference in the life of the kids). What is the role of education in context to creating a child of the future? Is education the only thing that shapes a human being? The video is amazingly fast and one may get distracted by the visual bombardment. But seeing this repeatedly makes for some great staffroom discussion nonetheless!



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Unravelling the inquiry cycle in a PYP class room

“ People can make choices to support the sustainability of the Earth’s energy resources .” Me to students : Does that make sense? Students to me : (after a while)...not really...  Their understanding of "energy" during the pre-assessment task also reflected a superficial knowledge of the term. And thus our unit of inquiry started. As I was browsing the net, I came across this picture prompt- a map, which I thought would serve as a great provocation. The annual energy consumption per person . Kids love guessing where countries are, so it was a great way to address some geography at this point.  I had also been reading Craig Dwyer's  post  which inspired me to change my inquiry cycle and use a simpler one. Wonder (while exploring)- Explore (while wondering)- Create (while reflecting)- Reflect (with subsequent wonderings). I was feeling more at ease now. The map allowed the students to make a lot of inferences based on patterns whi...

Generalization-Designing Your Lessons for Conceptual Understanding (Part 3)

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 syn...

Concepts-In-Use: Designing your lessons for Conceptual Understanding (Part 6)

  Concepts-In Use www.ibo.org In this post, one more strategy takes center stage when it comes to designing lessons that aid conceptual understanding in our students: Concept-In-Use. This strategy should be used once several concepts have been covered in class.  A great way to know whether your students are internalizing the concepts is to ask them to explain the connections between two concepts. For example:  In Math Ask them to convert a fraction to a percentage.  Or a percentage to a decimal.  Can they clearly explain the connection?  Can they use drawings to support their explanation? Can they articulate the difference between a prism and a pyramid.  How are they same?  How are they different? How can you represent data visually?  Bar graphs, pictographs, line charts are all concepts. As a designer of conceptual lessons, a teacher needs to be keenly aware of the connections between concepts.  For instance, is the Grade 3 teacher awar...