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U3-Discussion as a Way of Teaching FORUM - Authentic Inquiry 

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U3-Discussion as a Way of Teaching FORUM - Authentic Inquiry 

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Use the Baby’s Inquiry PPT, the story of Wilfred Gordon, and Lindfor-Wells’ example on BB (PYP #3, MYP #2, DP #4) to reflect on interrogative forms and inquiry. What role does questioning have in discussion and inquiry? What expressions indicate that students are thinking? Are these expressions valid in other disciplines? Answer these questions and comment on a colleague’s contribution in this session’s forum.

The role questioning has in discussion, and inquiry is to open a way of communication between the people involved to get answers but also more questions, I think that is why inquiry must be based on questions that students can answer from a different point of view so in the discussion they have more questions as well, and by trying to find the answer to this new questions, they escalate in their process of acquiring the knowledge.

Many expressions indicate that students are thinking, for example, their implication and curiosity in the process as meanwhile, they are inside the process of finding an answer they are exploring and experimenting which are ways of thinking. By giving answers, also they prove they are thinking, as the main goal of Inquiry questions is to show how students assimilate knowledge and can transfer it to new scenarios or experiences.

All the expressions are valid in different disciplines, but it comes to my mind my context where students have to answer inquiry questions in a second language, and that makes it more difficult in many ways, that is why I think in these cases, an adaptation of the question is a must in order to give the students the chance to develop their answer with the language they have, and also give them the chance to help themselves with other instruments, which can be image support or even their own native language in some circumstances.

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U1. Concept-based Curriculum FORUM  - Who We are  

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U1. Concept-based Curriculum FORUM  - Who We are  

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My teaching philosophy

I believe every person is teachable, and our primary job is to know the best way for student learns and how to keep them motivated, as other people say, student-oriented classes where we take into account their culture of learning (in mixed groups, we can get an idea of the different cultures of learning we have in class), their motivation (in my case as I am a language teacher, I find this very important, knowing why each student is studying that foreigner language and reminding it to them sometimes it helps a lot), their needs and level of language, in my case (differentiation is very important for this matter).

As I said for me, it is very important to know the interests of the students as well as what is the purpose for which they study the second language and take all this to the classroom, uniting it with the elements that seem most important to me in second language teaching: communication, comparison, culture, connections and communities (the 5´C of ACTFL which makes much sense for me in second language classes) daily in my classroom.

I believe that error is part of the learning process, and students need to understand that when they are making mistakes, they are learning, it changes a lot the way they see the process of learning once they understand this. Seeing mistakes as opportunities to grow is essential in the learning process, and our duty is to help students get there.

Now that I know more about IB philosophy, I see that in many ways, I believe the IB profile learner should be our goal not only in IB education but in any kind of education, as I think teachers should help and guide students to become thinkers, open-minded, reflective, knowledgeable, inquires... it should not only be a goal in IB but in every single type of education. And the best way to help students obtain all these characteristics is by being an example of them in and outside the classroom.

Our classes should be oriented to make students think and inquire about the world they are surrendered to and solution-oriented, so they can transfer all the knowledge to their real life in the present and future. And I believe a good way to achieve this in Second Language Acquisition is by Project-Based Approach, which I use quite frequently in my classes because it allows students to apply their knowledge into authentic situations, which is very useful in Second Language Acquisition.

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U3-Discussion as a Way of Teaching SELF-ASSESSMENT - Questionnaire on classroom questions 

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U3-Discussion as a Way of Teaching SELF-ASSESSMENT - Questionnaire on classroom questions 

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U5-Differentiated Teaching for Diversity in the Classroom ACTIVITY - Differentiation Activity 

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U5-Differentiated Teaching for Diversity in the Classroom ACTIVITY - Differentiation Activity 

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Subject - Second Language Acquisition (Spanish)
MYP Year 3
Unit title - Our personal interests

Differentiation Activity: SKILLS STATIONS

There would be four stations, and in each of them, students could move around each skill station (listening, reading, speaking, and writing); in each of them, the topic would be personal interests.

Listening: Students need to listen to some videos and answer questions about their interest in different cultures, done by Edpuzzle. After, they would be asked to compare their answers in the group and talk about what they find most interesting and why.

Reading: students would have a jigsaw reading activity with only a part f the text for each other. The questions would be global, so they would need to explain the information of their fragment to the rest of the group.

Speaking: two different interests would be given to the group, and they would need to discuss the advantages and disadvantages and try to choose one of them.

Writing: students would have to write together a decalogue of the best way to choose a new interest based on what they have already learned. Big papers can be given to them and posters can be hung on the walls of the classrooms so we can go back to that later in the year in some other lesson.
The teacher can decide who needs to go to each station depending on their skill level and even assign a role to students who may have a lower or higher level in that skill to do a specific task, such as taking notes and explaining the task to others, among other ideas.

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U2-Inquiry as a method SELF-ASSESSMENT - Llewelyn rubric

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U2-Inquiry as a method SELF-ASSESSMENT - Llewelyn rubric

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Rubric for Inquiry Based Teacher_SOLEDAD COUTO

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U4-Cooperative Learning and Collaboration  SELF-ASSESSMENT - Collaborative teamwork rubric

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U4-Cooperative Learning and Collaboration  SELF-ASSESSMENT - Collaborative teamwork rubric

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U4-Cooperative Learning and Collaboration  ACTIVITY - Cooperative Learning Strategies 

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U4-Cooperative Learning and Collaboration  ACTIVITY - Cooperative Learning Strategies 

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Subject - Second Language Acquisition (Spanish)
MYP Year 3
Unit title - Our personal interests

C/C Strategy: CIRCLE OF SAGES

The teacher asks students for weird/original/funny interests they may have, and those who want to share their knowledge become the sages.  Then we explain to the students that they will learn about possible new interests.

Students are asked to get into groups to ask questions and listen to new information about the different interests available in the classroom.

In the end, a survey can be done to see what they have learned from every sage and what interest got the most votes. This information can be kept for the future when students have to practice instructions; for example, we can get the most voted interest back and work with it again in class, so students see their interests taken into consideration, and it also helps to review some terms and expression learn at this lesson.

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U4-Cooperative Learning and Collaboration  FORUM - Cooperation vs Collaboration

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U4-Cooperative Learning and Collaboration  FORUM - Cooperation vs Collaboration

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This video has been very interesting and enriching, the truth is that I kept thinking about it after class because, as I will explain at the end of this post, I think it helped me understand why many of my collaborative activities have not worked in the educational context I was working.

I agree with this distinction between the two terms because now I can see the whole concept more generally, Cooperative learning is what we do to achieve a goal, while Collaborative learning is the process itself. Somehow this makes sense by taking it to classroom examples, the collaborative activities are broader and more open, in them, we expect students to discuss, argue and defend their own ideas while negotiating with the rest of the group what they will include in the final product. Hence, it is a type of student-centered learning. On the other hand, in cooperative activities, the teacher gives a series of premises that are usually more structured and fixed so that the students work cooperatively to achieve the final product or goal that is expected of them. In the first case, the product is not as predetermined as in the first; in the latter, the teacher makes it clear what he expects from the students, while in a collaborative activity, that final product or goal is the students who decide and negotiate it as well.

Roockwood's latest quote made me reflect because he made me understand why, in many cases, most of the collaborative activities I brought to my classrooms have not worked. My teaching context has been in Chinese universities mainly, where the students were adults; however, their learning culture is relatively fixed, teacher-centered, and not very participatory from the first years of primary school. From an early age, Chinese students are used to expecting the teacher to tell them what to do and how to do it. On numerous occasions, I have brought collaborative activities to my classrooms that have not worked because they have brought frustration, confusion, and extreme shyness to my students, and I have had to end up being the center of the lesson or class, giving them a more structure and closed activity to do. Bearing in mind that, as the author says, "once students become reasonably conversational, they are ready for collaborative, ready to discuss and assess..." in my preparation of activities, it is necessary to take into account this timeline that he speaks: about:  first the students must learn to work cooperatively with more help and guidance from the teacher to have more tools later and be able to discuss, evaluate, negotiate to do collaborative work. In other educational contexts, one may speak of "early and latter years." However, in China, where the context is fixed and teacher-centered in every educational stage, cooperative activities must first be carried out to give students the necessary abilities and tools to move on to the second stage and then ask them to work collaboratively.

The truth is that this video has shed much light on me, and I feel that it will help me a lot from now on in my professional work as a teacher.

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U5-Differentiated Teaching for Diversity in the Classroom SELF-ASSESSMENT - The self-assessment (SA) Differentiated Teaching rubric

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U5-Differentiated Teaching for Diversity in the Classroom SELF-ASSESSMENT - The self-assessment (SA) Differentiated Teaching rubric

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Self Assessment Differentiation SOLEDAD COUTO

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U5-Differentiated Teaching for Diversity in the Classroom REFLECTION -   Compass points

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U5-Differentiated Teaching for Diversity in the Classroom REFLECTION -   Compass points

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N - What more do you need to know about it?
As Carol Tomlinson explains, differentiation is not something that can be achieved overnight, it requires work, reflection, and experience in a classroom where differentiation is applied in order to progress and improve little by little. In addition, what has worked for us one time may not work for us the next because, as she rightly says, each class is full of different students. Hence, differentiation must be prepared for the present and immediate context in which we find ourselves.  I think I need to know how to detect specific needs, such as those of students with high capacities or those related to learning difficulties, to later request help or support from the department in charge of dealing with these issues. I would like to have some data to help me detect these factors in my classroom to distinguish them from fatigue or lack of motivation.  In the same way, I think that I need to know different techniques that can help to bring differentiation to my class in the development and planning of the lessons that I am going to give; that way, I am doing what Carol Tomlinson calls: responsible teaching, because I am anticipating the possible challenges or difficulties that I may face in the classroom.

S - What suggestions do you have for moving yourself, your area or school foward?
In my case, I think that to move in this matter, what I need is to read some books about differentiation given in the bibliography of the course in order to delve into techniques and data that can help me in detection.  I also believe that once I am in class with real students starting next August, I must identify those elements that set off certain alarms and relate them to what I have read. All this is asking for help and support at school from those teachers who have been there for a long time and can guide me on how to approach this issue in my classes and my teaching planning.  I agree with Carol Tomlinson that differentiation needs commitment from us as teachers, and that is what I am willing to give of myself in my future classes.

E- What do you find exciting about it?
I find it exciting because it is a subject I know little about, so I need to learn more about it; everything that involves learning seems exciting to me.  As in this Master, it has not been possible to delve much into this subject; I think it would be interesting to look for some type of course in addition to the available bibliographical readings to apply what has been learned in the classroom next year.  Moreover, I also find very exciting the fact that this topic is essential and present in the place where I am going to work from August. I come from an educational context where differences were seen as negative and many were hidden or not discussed at all. The main goal was for all students to be equal; for this, equal teaching was promoted for all, leading to frustration and even mental health problems in the classrooms.  So I am pleased that differentiation was one of the questions I was asked in the interview for this new school. It was explained to me that it is an essential topic within the school and is usually discussed in meetings with other teachers.  I believe that collaboration in differentiation is essential for both teachers and parents, and that is something I have not had until now. As I said in that interview, I have felt very alone and hardly understood in my professional career with my ideas and priorities on issues that the educational context in which I was working did not matter most of the time because the important thing was the marks and nothing else.

W - What do you find yourself worrying?
I have already explained what essentially worries me, my unfamiliarity with the subject and my lack of knowledge and tools to detect this type of phenomenon in the classroom and not confuse it with other more common elements.  Another thing that worries me is seeing how everyone says that this is a complex subject that you have to learn little by little... If people who have spent many years studying and delving into this subject agree on its difficulty, it must be because it is a complex topic requiring much effort. However, the difficulties usually motivate me to work even more, so I have confidence in myself and in my human capacity to understand that my job is to teach individuals who are part of a group and not the other way around, as Carol Tomlinson explains very well.

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Carol Tomlinson on Differentiation: Responsive Teaching

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U1 - Concept-based Curriculum REFLECTION Think, Pair, Share 

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U1 - Concept-based Curriculum REFLECTION Think, Pair, Share 

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Present your thoughts individually on the difficulty or ease of implementing a concept-based curriculum in a specified context.

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U1. Concept-based Curriculum Activity - Generalization development

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U1. Concept-based Curriculum Activity - Generalization development

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Subject - Second Language Acquisition (Spanish)
MYP Year 3
Unit title - Our personal interests

Key concept -Communication
Related concepts - Audience, Context, Conventions, Purpose
Global concepts - Personal and Cultural expressions
Statment of Inquiry - Our personal interests depend on our context, from the moment of life we are in and the selected conventions and public we choose to communicate them to.

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U2-Inquiry as a method ACTIVITY Inquiry strategies

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U2-Inquiry as a method ACTIVITY Inquiry strategies

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Subject - Second Language Acquisition (Spanish)
MYP Year 3
Unit title - Our personal interests

Inquiry questions
Factual

What type of personal interests do you have? (attention-focusing question)

On what do you base your choices of interests? (attention-focusing question)

Why do you think we have different personal interests) (why question)

Conceptual

How do we talk about hobbies and interests in Spanish? (how question)

How can we communicate our personal interests to different audiences (formal, and informal)? (how question)

How do personal interests help us in our daily life? (how question)

Debatable

What are the differences between personal interests among different cultures? (Comparison question)

How are our interests formed? (how question)

How does context influence our interests? (how question)

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U2-Inquiry as a method REFLECTION What makes you say that? (part 1)

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U2-Inquiry as a method REFLECTION What makes you say that? (part 1)

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What is happening?

A new teacher walks into her class for the first time, well prepared, with visuals to present to the students. However, the students seem to know the details of each of the photos she has prepared, so she cannot present them as she intended. She later discovers that they have all read the recommended texts for the subject.

Before entering, another teacher told her that they could smell fear, and one by one, the students introduced themselves in an unkind way, I would say. They seem to be waiting to see how the professor fails and thus reaffirm whatever they thought about her before walking in the door.

After running out of slides to show, one of the students says that if she does not have anything else to offer them, they can leave the class, and that is how they all leave the classroom, leaving the teacher in silence in front of the class.

What do you see or know that makes you say that?

I see a teacher who thinks she arrives well prepared for the class that she is going to give with two boxes full of facts about art, and when she shows them to her students, she sees that her students have done their homework and learned all of this before they even entered in the classroom. In the video, the teacher says, "well, you do, girls, prepare", surprised that they have read everything recommended.

A few months ago, I would have thought the same thing as her, how well-prepared these girls are. However, today, after these months in which we have learned about Concept-Based learning and Inquiry-Based Approach, I understand that not because students are repeating facts correctly, they are actually thinking and showing knowledge... In that class, there was a need for questions to appreciate the art they saw, what it suggested to them, how they thought they had been created, what the people who created them had felt, and how art appreciation has changed during the centuries... There was a lack of "productive questions" where the students thought, connected what was known with what was new for them, and transferred knowledge to the world around them, among other things.

The teacher has not done this master's degree, at least not at that point in the film yet, and for her, that her students repeat the facts that they have read in the text seems enough, hence she lets them go without knowing what to say.

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Mona Lisa´'s Smile  - First Lesson scene

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U3-Discussion as a Way of Teaching ACTIVITY - Discussion strategies 

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U3-Discussion as a Way of Teaching ACTIVITY - Discussion strategies 

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Subject - Second Language Acquisition (Spanish)
MYP Year 3
Unit title - Our personal interests

Discussion Strategy - ROTATING STATION

There are three stations in the classroom; students must rotate every 15 minutes or so:

-Teacher´s station: students must ask the teacher about her own personal interests and fill out a sheet with the information they get from her. (Oral expression and comprehension)
-Offline station: with photos of newspapers and magazines on the station, the group must prepare a poster about their interests. They must discuss first what they will include After the activity, every group will present their poster to the rest of the class. (oral and written expression)
-Online station: students must watch a video with comprehension questions done in Edpuzzle. (oral comprehension and written expression)

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U2-Inquiry as a method REFLECTION What makes you say that? (part 2)

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U2-Inquiry as a method REFLECTION What makes you say that? (part 2)

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What is happening?

In this class, the teacher brings visual material again, but this time she accompanies it with inquiry questions, open to reflection, explaining to the students that there are no right or wrong answers, inviting them to reflect to answer what art is and who decides what is art or not.

The students look for the material in the syllabus, and since they cannot find it, they are left confused because they have not been able to look at it beforehand and learn the facts by heart to repeat them in class.

Through the silence and the space for reflection, leaving the front of the class and sitting next to them, the teacher gives them the time to think, and little by little, they answer and simultaneously create new questions to which they give back different answers, creating a discussion about what art is and who decides if something is art or not.

The teacher explains that this will be her new syllabus to discover, reflect and find answers to those questions.

What do you see or know that makes you say that?

It seems that in the first class, they caught her by surprise, but this time the teacher comes prepared with inquiry questions so that the students reflect and begin to think and present their own ideas, not those they have read in books or in the recommended articles. It seems that the teacher does know these approaches in the end.  She also uses material that provokes discussion and reflection, which is something to consider as well.

As I have said before, by giving them time, space, and silence, the students begin to go beyond what they have learned in the textbooks, reflecting and, at the same time creating new questions that are also answered, which creates an environment for discussion and reflection in the classroom.

The questions she asks cannot be found in the textbook, full of facts, because what she is doing is inviting them to think, to transfer, to give their opinion, and to discuss, that is why this type of approach is so crucial in the classroom, it is something that the teacher has to create with the students, it is not something that can simply come out of a book.

This video has helped me see how a teacher should work in this approach so that her students are actively part of it.

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Mona Lisa's Smile - Second Lesson "It's art!"