PYP staff essential agreements

In our school, each PYP classroom will write essential agreements in the first days of school. In most PYP schools, students starts the year off by creating an essential agreement instead of teachers imposing rules. This means everyone has responsibility to work collaboratively to create a better learning environment. 

Today, our teachers created the essential agreement of this school year. 

We looked at the PYP Attitudes first. Then separated into several groups, and each group chose one attitude to discuss how we dispose ourselves at work. Some groups eventually chose same attitudes and that might indicate our tendency. It was a great chance of our self-assessment. 

Balanced key concepts

Today we looked at the balance in key concepts in our Programme of Inquiry (PoI). 

PYP is taught through Attitude, Concepts, Skills, Knowledge, and Action. The concepts students learn are 8: change, form, function, perspective, responsibility, reflection, causation and connection. Concepts should be implemented carefully in the curriculum - for example, students need to learn through all 8 concepts in a year. Also, there should be variety of concepts in each transdischiplinary theme to encourage students to have different aspects in the same theme. 
So we looked at all key concepts in our PoI. First, we listed up and looked at grade level to see if we have all 8 concepts in each grade. Actually this activity I did 2 years ago, however I wanted to make sure again. Second, we looked at the balance in each theme (Unit of Inquiry). Then we counted all to see which concept we have more/less. 
After that activity, we found slight imbalance in some themes. We discussed what to change and edit, and finalised the whole plan of the key concept. 

This activity including discussion helped us to see and consider the balance in whole PoI, not only the grade/subject each of us teaches. 

Eventually, our activity has been caught and seen by IBPYP and they shared this on their Twitter. 😊

What is Inquiry-Based Learning?

PYP is inquiry-based. Inquiry-based learning allows children discover things, make connections and take ownership of their own leaning. Teachers become facilitators and help the children learn to think. Everyone needs to think, make good choices, find creditable information, and present findings. Learning is constructed in a way that is differentiated or that is specific to the needs of each child within the classroom.

First day of school (for teachers)

Welcome to the 2017-2018 school year!

I like the atmosphere of the first day of school for teachers.
Normally we go to school a bit earlier to say hi to colleagues. "Hey, good to see you!" "How's your summer?" - all tanned, relaxed teachers are hugging each other. New teachers are introducing themselves, smiles everywhere, and positive feelings are there. We look at the empty classrooms, and open boxes from last year and big bag from home filled with stuff. All teachers are excited and motivated for the new school year.

Today we talked about how we keep ourselves motivated to model as learners. 
Growth Mindset is the one of the keys. 

Alongside the Growth Mindset, the requirement from IB is collaboration. This is essential in teaching IB curriculum, and yet many IB schools feel it is difficult to achieve the level of requirement as collaboration needs more planning, meetings, and contributions - simply the matter of time. However, actually collaboration is not time consuming as you get familiar with doing so, and it helps your teaching a lot. Here is the link. 

As a community we need to collaborate more with teachers of course, but also students and parents. Also we talked about how we collaborate with educators outside of school as well as in-school. Our school has been teaching PYP for 10 years and it's high time to be mentors for schools around us. I really hope our school is going to be a hub of teacher learning. 

PYP Revolution?

Just finished a two-day workshop leading for 65 teachers in Japan.
The teachers were from PYP candidate schools which are local and running National Curriculum. Especially in Japan, it is quite challenging to integrate PYP with National Curriculum because of many facts - language barrier, cultural differences, and the biggest issue is the mindset of teachers and parents.

Japanese teachers are well trained and skilful in teaching. Unfortunately that's why teachers are struggling to understand the PYP, which requires inquiry-based learning. I do understand them very well as a former Japanese primary school teacher. What if the students can't inquire? What if their inquiry goes different from the plan? What if, what if....?

But they have stepped forward to explore international education to improve the quality of education in Japan. So glad to see many Japanese school teachers as well as educational leaders interested in PYP. Totally different from some years ago. International education is provoking national curriculums all over the world.