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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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The post outlines three teaching changes that enhance language arts engagement: using case studies to contextualize concepts, implementing guiding questions to clarify learning objectives, and prov…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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The initial weeks of school are crucial for establishing an inclusive classroom culture. Focusing on students’ identities, shared agreements, and inquiry promotes belonging and engagement. By…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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The PYP emphasizes transdisciplinary learning by integrating subjects to explore real-life concepts. It presents challenges with six units each year but encourages flexible timing. Practical approa…

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Supporting Multilingual Learners in the PYP: A Fresh Look at the IB Additional Language(s) Learner Pathway

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Supporting Multilingual Learners in the PYP: A Fresh Look at the IB Additional Language(s) Learner Pathway

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R.U.N. and Discover Beautiful Connections within the IB PYP Updates (Subject Continuum: Social Studies and TDTs Descriptors)

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R.U.N. and Discover Beautiful Connections within the IB PYP Updates (Subject Continuum: Social Studies and TDTs Descriptors)

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Ready to R.U.N.? – Unpacking the IB PYP subject continuums updates with curiosity, collaboration, and joy

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Ready to R.U.N.? – Unpacking the IB PYP subject continuums updates with curiosity, collaboration, and joy

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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Belong, Become, Act: Embedding Well-Being, Agency and Action Across The PYP

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Creating a supportive school culture is essential for student well-being and learning. Effective teaching approaches emphasize collaboration, inquiry-based learning, conceptual understanding, and c…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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Conceptual Learning: The PYP Science Subject Overview 2025

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In science teaching, it can be easy to get caught up in covering facts and topics or practicing isolated skills. But what if we shifted the focus to something deeper? Conceptual Learning helps stud…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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Conceptual Learning: The PYP Science Subject Overview 2025

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In science teaching, it can be easy to get caught up in covering facts and topics or practicing isolated skills. But what if we shifted the focus to something deeper? Conceptual Learning helps stud…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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Belonging: Embedding Social, Emotional Learning in the School Culture

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The recent workshop with Andy Vasily emphasized the importance of social and emotional learning (SEL) in shaping school culture. Key reflections included the need for belonging and trust, which are…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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AI is here to stay! I remember when teachers worried that Google would encourage students to cheat and become lazy. Now, we can’t imagine helping students research without it. It’s as e…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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The article discusses the mixed perceptions of inquiry-based learning, despite its effective strategies supported by research. It highlights that poorly executed inquiry can lead to superficial lea…

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Agency and Action in the PYP Subject Overviews 2025

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Agency and Action in the PYP Subject Overviews 2025

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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Belong, Become, Act: Embedding Well-Being, Agency and Action Across The PYP

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Creating a supportive school culture is essential for student well-being and learning. Effective teaching approaches emphasize collaboration, inquiry-based learning, conceptual understanding, and c…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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The post emphasizes a transformative view of language in the Primary Years Programme, highlighting its integral role in identity, agency, and connection. It encourages educators to rethink language…

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Conceptual Learning: The PYP Science Subject Overview 2025

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Conceptual Learning: The PYP Science Subject Overview 2025

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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One of the most persistent misconceptions in concept-based teaching is that understanding will naturally emerge by the end of the unit. But learning transfer doesn’t happen on its own—it’s built. W…

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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Albert Einstein once said, "Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think." This notion resonates deeply in the IB PYP framework, where the focus shifts from simply delivering knowledge to fostering students' active participation in their learning. Assessment-capable learners, a concept emphasized by John Hattie and the IB, is at the core of empowering student agency and supporting students in developing their self-regulation skills.

Assessment-Capable Learners

According to Hattie, these learners are characterized by their ability to:

know their current level of understanding,

understand where they're going and have the confidence to take on the challenge,

select tools to guide their learning,

seek feedback and recognize that errors are opportunities to learn,

monitor progress and adjust their learning, and

recognize their learning and teach others.

(Frey, Hattie, & Fisher, 2018)

The IB extends this understanding by emphasizing that assessment-capable learners are able to reflect on their learning to make adjustments, identify their learning goals and take actions to move their learning forward. They demonstrate autonomy, resilience, and a growth mindset-characteristics of student agency and self-regulation​.

(IBO, 2019)

Why We Want Students to Become Self-Regulated Assessment-Capable Learners

For assessment to truly support learning, students must develop the ability to assess their own progress. They need to identify what success looks like, recognize when they've achieved it, and know when and where to seek help if they're struggling.

This goes beyond simply improving students' assessment skills; it's about fostering reflection and self-regulation. Students who can self-regulate know when and how to take action, rather than constantly relying on support from others. As John Hattie puts it, the goal is for students to "become their own teachers," confidently navigating their learning with independence and purpose.

Strategies to Develop Self-Regulated Assessment-Capable Learners

As educators, our role is guiding students toward becoming independent, reflective, and self-regulated learners. Here are key strategies teachers can use to support this process:

Work with students to co-create success criteria. Look at exemplars together and help them identify what makes them successful. This clarity gives students a roadmap to follow. More information about success criteria can be found here.

Provide actionable feedback during the learning process rather than waiting until the end. This allows students to act on the feedback, refine their work, and set meaningful learning goals for the future. Strategies to move from feedback to feed forward can be found here.

Self-Adjustment
Ensure self-assessment goes beyond evaluation. Support students in identifying their next steps so they can make progress without always waiting for someone to guide them.

Peer Feedback
Create opportunities for students to give and receive feedback from their peers. This helps them see different perspectives and deepens their own understanding. Here are some visible thinking routine to guide students as they offer feedback to each other.

When we help students develop self-regulation, we're equipping them with the skills they need to take ownership of their learning and their progress. It's not about doing the work for them but guiding them to reflect, adjust, and move forward with confidence.

To explore more strategies and resources for supporting assessment-capable learners, check out this Padlet.

https://padlet.com/sohaoak86/assessment-becoming-assessment-capable-bxjqo0lpib5w2f4f

Interested in taking your teaching practices to the next level? If you'd like to explore these ideas further or get personalized support, feel free to reach out and book a coaching call with me! Contact me on LinkedIn or use this link ( https://theorganizedchaosinthepypclassroom.wordpress.com/contact/)

References

Frey, N., Hattie, J., & Fisher, D. (2018). Developing assessment-capable visible learners, grades K-12: Maximizing skill, will, and thrill. Corwin Literacy.

International Baccalaureate Organization (IB, 2018). PYP: From Principles into Practice.

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Empowering Student Agency Through Assessment

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Albert Einstein's view on education emphasizes critical thinking over mere fact-learning, aligning with the IB PYP's focus on active student participation. Assessment-capable learners, as defined by John Hattie, demonstrate self-regulation, autonomy, and resilience. Educators play a crucial role in promoting strategies that foster these skills, empowering students to become independent, reflective learners.

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Conceptual Learning: Synergistic Thinking 

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Conceptual Learning: Synergistic Thinking 

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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In the 21st century, workplace demands require students to adapt by transferring knowledge and skills to new contexts. Conceptual learning fosters deeper understanding by encouraging connections ac…

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Unit of Inquiry Planning Process and Resources (open)

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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SOLO stands for the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes. SOLO taxonomy provides a framework that helps both educators and students understand their levels of thinking and learning, beginning with simple knowledge and skills acquisition and advancing to the ability to transfer understanding to different contexts.

In this post, we will explore ways educators can use SOLO taxonomy to align teaching, learning and assessment to empower students to become assessment-capable.

Levels of SOLO taxonomy

Why SOLO taxonomy?

Phases of learning (Frey, Hattie and Fisher)

Connecting SOLO levels with the phases of learning

Theory to Practice: how can educators use SOLO taxonomy to plan, teach and assess (teacher assessment, student self-assessment and feedback)

Use this link to download the templates (Rubric and Self-Assessment):

SOLO Taxonomy Levels

SOLO Taxonomy provides a simple way of describing how learning outcomes grow in complexity from surface to deep to conceptual understanding to learning transfer (Biggs and Collis 1982). It describes five levels of understanding for students who are encountering new learning ...

Why SOLO Taxonomy?

Align Teaching, Learning, and Assessment:
The gradual progression from knowledge to understanding to transfer within the SOLO levels allows teachers to align their lesson plans with learning outcomes and assessment effectively, positively impacting student learning.

Depth of Learning:
SOLO taxonomy emphasizes helping students deepen their understanding step-by-step, from acquiring knowledge to making connections and ultimately applying their knowledge in new contexts.

Scaffolding Instruction:
By assessing the depth of student understanding, educators can tailor their instruction to meet diverse learning needs more effectively.

Understanding the SOLO levels and their representations helps students realistically assess their learning and set appropriate goals.

Align Teaching, Learning and Assessment

Phases of Learning

The SOLO taxonomy is a powerful framework because it allows you to align your lesson plans with both assessments and the learning outcomes/standards. It's important for educators to remember that we design learning experiences that help students develop their knowledge, skills, and understanding. When working with a prescribed curriculum, we need to check how flexible it is and possibly rethink the learning outcomes to make sure our students can smoothly advance through the different SOLO levels and learning phases.

Frey, Fisher, and Hattie describe three phases of learning: surface, deep, and transfer. Let's explore each phase and see how they align with the SOLO levels to create effective learning outcomes.
What?

Is NOT superficial learning.

Exposing students to important and relevant skills, knowledge, concepts and strategies.

Why?
Builds a foundation that allows students to think deeper in the next learning phase.
What?

Involves understanding the meaning and significance of information.

Can only be accomplished when students acquire pre-requisite knowledge, skills and strategies.

It takes more instructional time.

Why?

Apply and extend their surface learning to support deeper conceptual understanding.

Develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

What?

Apply knowledge, skills and understanding in a new context, could be a familiar context (near transfer) or less familiar, across subjects (far transfer)

See the connections between their learning and real life context.

Reflect on their learning.

Examples of Progression From Surface to Transfer Learning

Language Arts: Story Elements

Surface: Students learn about story elements like setting, characters, and plot through straightforward definitions.

Deep: Students analyze a given story to identify and discuss its various elements and how they interplay.

Transfer: Students are given a setting and a character to create their own story plot incorporating those elements.
Science: Water Cycle
Surface: Students learn about the states of water and how changes to the states occur through experiments and readings.

Deep: Students examine the states of water as they investigate the water cycle.

Transfer: Students assess the impact of climate change on the availability of water.

Connecting SOLO Levels with Learning Phases

When developing learning outcomes, start by supporting students as they identify their prior knowled ge. It's essential to help students understand what they know before they begin new learning.

Unistructural and Multistructural Levels:
At these levels, focus on building surface knowledge. Help students acquire knowledge, skills, and an understanding of main concepts, preparing them for deep conceptual understanding. Design learning experiences that develop their knowledge using these verbs:

Unistructural: List, Identify, Find, Label, Match.
Multistructural: Describe, Classify, Illustrate, Define.

Relational Level:

At this level, students use thinking skills to organize their learning and make connections between concepts, creating deep conceptual understandings. Similar to the deep learning phase, students need to use the knowledge and skills acquired to build deeper connections. The development of critical thinking skills at this phase is critical for students in order for them to be able to make those deeper connections. Design learning experiences that encourage students to:

Relational: Analyze, Compare, Contrast, Make connections.

Extended Abstract Level:

Here, students test their understanding in familiar and unfamiliar contexts, similar to the transfer learning phase. Design learning experiences that encourage students to:

Extended Abstract: Hypothesize, Predict, Reflect, Create, Invent, Solve.

Theory to Practice: How Can Educators Use SOLO Taxonomy to Plan, Teach, and Assess Learning?
Create Learning Outcomes Aligned with SOLO Levels
Design learning outcomes that correspond with the different SOLO levels to guide students clearly from surface to transfer learning.
Develop a Rubric to Set Expectations
Construct a rubric that clearly outlines your expectations for students at each SOLO level for each learning outcome. This will clarify what success looks like at every stage.
Assess Students' Prior Knowledge
Evaluate your students' existing knowledge and understanding to determine their starting level within the SOLO framework. Use this assessment to adjust your lesson plans and instructional strategies, ensuring they are appropriately challenging.
Align Your Lessons with SOLO Levels
Ensure that your lesson plans are aligned with SOLO levels, facilitating a smooth transition for students from one level to the next. This alignment helps maintain a coherent and progressive learning experience.
Use HOT SOLO Maps
In their book "SOLO Taxonomy: Guide for Schools," Pam Hook and Julie Mills share a few maps to use for

Bringing in ideas - Uni and Multi-structural levels

Connecting ideas - Relational learning level

Looking at connecting ideas in new ways - Extended Abstract level

Introduce SOLO Levels to Students
It is important for the students to understand the different SOLO levels and to use them for self-assessment. Using the SOLO level symbols and age-appropriate language can be very helpful. For example:

It's important for us, educators, to recognize that students' understanding of the SOLO levels should continually develop. This understanding evolves not only as they mature but also as they encounter different subjects. Pam Hook's book, A Children's Guide to SOLO Taxonomy, illustrates the SOLO levels through a story about a child learning to bake scones, offering an easy introduction to these concepts. However, I've found it equally important to demonstrate how the SOLO levels apply across various subjects. Exposing students to the application of SOLO levels in different subject areas helps them see the relevance and adapt these strategies to different contexts.
Co-construct Success Criteria with Students
Engage students in developing success criteria by examining exemplars. This collaborative process helps students understand quality work and sets clear expectations.
Encourage Self-Assessment with a Simplified SOLO Rubric
Provide students with an age-appropriate version of the SOLO rubric to encourage regular self-assessment. This practice empowers them to take ownership of their learning and understand their development through the SOLO levels.
Ensure Ongoing Assessment and Targeted Feedback:
Continuously assess students to monitor their understanding and progress through the SOLO levels. Provide feedback that is specific, actionable, and directly linked to the success criteria and the rubrics you've shared. This approach helps students clearly identify their next steps and understand how their work aligns with the expected learning outcomes. Feedback should be timely and expressed in a way that resonates with students, making it easier for them to understand and apply it effectively.

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Assessment Capable SOLO Taxonomy to Align Teaching, Learning and Assessment

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Discover how to use SOLO Taxonomy for effective teaching, learning, and assessment, and enhance student outcomes.

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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The IB PYP has always emphasized the importance of concepts to help students develop deep, transferable understandings. Recent updates to the PYP curriculum continue this focus, offering new strategies for educators. This blog post explores these updates, providing practical guidance for implementation in the classroom.

The IB PYP highlights the importance of connecting prior knowledge with new learning, helping students organize and develop knowledge into networks. This approach reminds me of Piaget's theory of cognitive development, specifically his concept of schemas. Schemas, or mental models, are ways to organize and understand the information we gain about the world. Piaget argues that intelligence is not fixed and can be expanded when individuals are challenged. He suggests that when new learning occurs, we connect the new knowledge to what we already know, adding, modifying or adjusting our schemas. Similarly, the PYP encourages organizing connections between prior and new knowledge into networks, further developing these networks as students learn factual, procedural, and metacognitive knowledge.

Principles into practice, IBO 2024
Why do we want our students to develop conceptual understandings?

Purposeful inquiry, supported by a concept-driven curriculum, fosters this depth of understanding (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).

Developing conceptual understandings allows students to develop a deeper understanding of the world. When students understand and organize knowledge into concepts, they can develop conceptual understadning by making connections between the concepts. Developing conceptual understanding is the first step in supporting students in transfering their knowledge to different and unfamiliar contexts. For example, understanding the concept of civilization enables students to research any civilization by recognizing common elements like government, writing systems, and geographical influences.

Conceptual Understanding: A civilization is a society organized around a government, a communication system, and a means of food production, and it is affected by the geography of the place where it lives.

Concepts: civilization, government, communication, production, geography.

If the focus is only on knowledge, students will focus on learning about a specific civilization, such as the Mayan civilization, rather than on concepts and conceptual understandings related to civilization. This approach limits their ability to transfer thier understanding to learn about another civilization. Understanding concepts enables students to apply their knowledge broadly and adapt it to different situations, fostering a deeper and more flexible understanding of the world.

So, if the focus is on supporting students in developing conceptual understanding. How can educators support the process?

Supporting Students in Developing Conceptual Understandings

Understanding Concepts

To develop conceptual understandings, students must first understand individual concepts. The IB emphasizes the importance of not only specified concepts (previously key concepts) but also subject-specific, additional concepts (previously related concepts). Students need to acquire the knowledge related to these concepts and develop the ATL skills to research, communicate and think critically about them. We want our students to be able to ... "learn to recognize patterns and see the connections between discrete examples to strengthen conceptual understandings" (Principles into practice, IBO 2024). The IB defines concepts as ...

Principles into practice, IBO 2024 Concepts as Content Organizers
The IB encourages using concepts as content organizers, identifying the content students need to engage with to understand a concept. For instance, to understand ecosystems, students might explore concepts like biotic and abiotic factors, food webs, and interdependence. Developing factual, conceptual and debatable questions to explore the knowledge, skills and concepts supports students in developing conceptual understandings. For example:

What are the factors in an ecosystem?

What are food chains?

How do biotic and abiotic factors rely on each other?

Exploring these questions in context, such as through real life scenarios and case studies of specific ecosystems, helps students make real-life connections, find patterns, and develop conceptual understandings.

Example: In the new publication, the IB provides a great example of using concepts as content organizers.

Principles into practice, IBO 2024 Teaching Strategies
To scaffold students as they explore concepts and develop conceptual understandings, we should offer ample opportunities for them to ...

Identify their prior knowledge and possible misconceptions.

Categorize acquired information with concepts.

Make connections between concepts to develop conceptual understandings.

Identify patterns.

Test and transfer their conceptual understandings.

The IB Principles into Practice suggests various methods to help students develop conceptual understandings, including provocations. The following posters elaborate on a few of them.

Parvana Guliyeva created great posters to elaborate on the following strategies suggested by the IB:

Classification: Grouping objects or ideas based on shared properties.

Representation: Using models or symbols to explain concepts.

Generalization: Drawing broad principles from specific instances.

Concepts in Use: Applying concepts in practical situations.

Internalization: Integrating concepts into personal knowledge.

Near-Far Transfer: Applying learned concepts to both similar and different contexts.

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Enhancing Conceptual Understanding in Education

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Discover strategies to foster deep, conceptual understandings in students. Practical guidance for educators included.

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empowering agency john spencer - Google Search

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student agency distance learning student engagement modern war institute empowering students youtube empowered learners continuum when students own teachers

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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Albert Einstein once said, 'Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.'

Have you ever wondered what it would look like if students were architects of their own learning? Let's explore the transformative power of student agency.

A few years ago, the concept of student agency emerged as the foundation for fostering engaging and inclusive learning environments. This blog post delves into student agency, exploring how it connects with self-efficacy to develop autonomous learners and offering classroom examples.

Understanding Student Agency

Student Agency requires a fundamental shift in how we perceive learning. It's about enabling students to actively participate in their learning and development, adapting to change, and embracing challenges.

Agency, as defined by renowned scholars ...

Agency enable[s] people to play a part in their self-development, adaptation, and self-renewal with changing times.

Bandura (2001)

Learning with agency is an entirely different cognitive and physical activity, leading to powerful learners who choose to take on challenges with their whole being.

Williams (2017)

Self-Efficacy

The foundation of agency lies in the concept of self-efficacy. Bandura defines self-efficacy as one's belief in their ability to accomplish tasks. He argues that one's beliefs about their self-efficacy vary across subjects and tasks and are influenced by ...

Mastery experiences; how well they do with certain tasks.

Watching their peers as they accomplish tasks.

The feedback they receive from others on their work.

Resilience and feeling prepared.

Studies show that students with a high level of self-efficacy are more likely to ...

put forth greater effort,

persist longer,

show resilience in the face of difficulties,

make decisions about their learning,

set personal goals,

and take responsibility for their learning.

Students with high self-efficacy view challenging problems as tasks to be mastered, not avoided. They exhibit a higher degree of ownership over their learning process, a vital component of agency.

Voice, Choice, and Ownership

Voice, choice, and ownership are three aspects that educators must understand in order to empower student agency. If we consider our ultimate goal for the students to develop a positive view of their ability to accomplish tasks and succeed "self-efficacy," we must encourage students to take ownership of their learning.

Ownership: Students own their learning when they perceive their education as something they can influence. It leads to a deeper commitment to their learning process. As educators, our role is to encourage them to examine their work, evaluate themselves, recognize when they don't know something, use tools and strategies to learn independently, and seek others' help when they are stuck. Our role is to teach them to self-assess and self-adjust, equip them with tools and strategies that they can refer to, and support them as they become independent learners.

Voice: Students feel respected and valued when their thoughts and opinions are heard and considered. We should encourage students to have a voice, share their opinions and thinking, and feel safe about it. When students are given a voice, they feel valued and respected, which reinforces their sense of ownership.

Choice: Choice involves providing students with options in the learning process. This could mean choosing topics of interest, learning methods, or ways to demonstrate their understanding. Choice empowers students by allowing them to take control of their learning, aligning with their interests and strengths, and promoting a more personalized learning experience.

Myths and Misconceptions About Student Agency

Agency Means Complete Freedom: Agency is not about letting students do whatever they want; it's about allowing students to make choices and share their voice. Teachers guide students in making decisions that enhance their learning.

Only Older Students Can Exhibit Agency: Agency isn't just for older students. Young children can also make choices about their learning and take active roles. It's about adapting opportunities for agency to fit the age and development level of the students.

Student Agency Diminishes the Teacher's Role: Agency doesn't make teachers less important; it changes how they interact with students. Teachers shift from being the sole source of knowledge to facilitators who guide students in their learning journey. This approach enhances the teacher-student relationship, making it more collaborative.

All Students Naturally Know How to Exercise Agency: Exercising agency isn't an innate skill for all students. It's something that needs to be taught and scaffolded. Teachers play an important role in helping students learn how to make choices and take control of their learning.

Student Agency Is a Uniform Practice: There's no one-size-fits-all approach to student agency. It looks different in every classroom and for every student. Teachers need to tailor their approach to fit the needs and abilities of their students, ensuring that agency is meaningful and effective for each individual.

Classroom Examples
Language Arts:
In a language class, the teacher decided to work with the students on expanding sentences as it is one of the standards. The teacher started by reading different sentences with the students - some were well-written, while others were not. Together, they looked at these sentences and talked about what made the good ones stand out. They came up with a list of features that make a sentence strong.

Next, the teacher worked with the students to co-construct success criteria in form of "I can" statements. These statements were like goals for the students to aim for in their writing.

Over the following weeks, the teacher guided the students as they inquired about different strategies and practiced writing sentences in a variety of ways. They were given choices, such as describing pictures, coming up with their own sentences, using manipulatives and editing sentences. There was a center where the teacher was always situated and students were able to seek support when they got stuck. From time to time, the teacher would walk around the room and offer feedback to the students.
I can statements & strategies:

I can add details to my sentence.

Strategy: Use the following formula to expand your sentence (Who, does what, where and when). Use adjectives to describe nouns.

I can begin with a capital letter.

Strategy: Review the capital letter visual aid.

I can end the sentence with punctuation.

Strategy: I can review my writing and ask a peer to review it for me.

I can review and edit my spelling.

Strategy: Use your spelling dictionary to check your spelling. Circle the words you are unsure of and ask peers or your teachers for feedback

Every Thursday, the students would examine at their own work and use the "I can" statements to reflect on their progress. They picked two things they did well (their "two stars") and one thing they wanted to improve (their "wish"). On Fridays, they focused on their goal during the literacy session.
Unit of Inquiry
At the beginning of a unit on ecosystems, the teacher planned two activities to assess the students' prior knowledge and help them identify what they knew and didn't know.

The first activity was a debate. The students examined statements about ecosystems and had to decide if they agreed or disagreed. They talked about this in their groups, and constructed arguments to convince the others' of their opinion.

The second activity was a simulation game. Each student acted as a part of an ecosystem, like a plant, animal, or rock. They grouped themselves into ecosystems that made sense together. The students were asked to provide a rational for their grouping and think about which element they would have liked to take from another group to enhance theirs.

During both activities, the students realized they knew some things about ecosystems, but they also had many questions. The teacher provided them with a sheet that helped them list down their questions and document their arguments and rationale. This helped everyone see what they knew and what they were curious about.

For the rest of the unit, the teacher picked questions that matched the curriculum standards and added them to the daily plan. This showed the students that their questions were important. Questions that didn't fit into the unit were saved for the end. The teacher provided time for students to research these questions towards the end of the unit.
Classroom Environment:
At the start of the year, the third-grade teachers talked about giving students more agency in setting up their classrooms. One teacher was really keen on this idea. So, she left her classroom walls empty and put all the furniture to the side. She spent the first two days making a plan with her students on how to set up the room.

Another teacher was a bit unsure about this approach. To start, she arranged the furniture herself but left the walls blank. On the first day, she had a guided conversation with the students about the different activities they'd be doing. Then, she allowed them to create different plans. The next day, the teacher sat with the student to choose the best ideas from each plan. As they went through the unit, she worked with the students to decide where to put their work and visuals on the walls.

This way, both teachers worked towards empowering student agency, each at their own comfort level. The students got a chance to contribute to their learning environment, making the classroom feel more like their own space.
If you would like to learn more about student agency, check this Padlet.
Fostering student agency transforms the students' experience, creating a vibrant learning environment where students are not just learners, but active participants in their education. By promoting student voice, encouraging feedback, offering diverse choices, and enhancing self-assessment skills, educators empower students to take ownership of their learning journey.

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"Discover strategies to enhance student agency in PYP and IB classrooms, focusing on student voice, feedback, and choice in learning. #EducationInnovation"

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Educators like other members of the community can get caught up in the spark and excitement of seemingly new trends and buzzwords. For those who have been through the swings and roundabouts, you will have seen the pendulum swing from whole language to phonics and back again. From the egg carton classroom to open plan concepts to closed and back to flexible spaces.

So when we hear the term agency and everyone wanting more of it, what is it we really mean and how might we know it's really happening in our classrooms?

What is agency anyway?

Can you answer this question without using the terms voice, choice and ownership?

There are a few well known thinkers and players in this space on agency. Today I'm only drawing on two, Albert Bandura and Louis Malaguzzi.

Bandura says, "To be an agent is to intentionally make things happen by what we do. We use our senses, our creative and critical thinking as well as our interaction with the world to make this happen. We use these tools to give life meaning, direction, and satisfaction." (Bandura, 1997; Harre & Gillet, 1994).

Bandura took the stance that agency doesn't look and feel the same in all situations. He described three types of agency;

For agency to live there are some conditions that will help it thrive:

What is the image of the child?

When we think about the learners in our care, what is the image we have of them?

Malaguzzi helps us see that children have the right to imagine. We need to give them full access to their right to take their place as global citizens and see them as intelligent, strong and capable. Full of divergent thinking from a young age, it is our responsibility to nurture their ambitions, desires and interests. To me this doesn't mean anything goes. We have a responsibility to be a role model. In IB terms, that means living the attributes of the IB Learner Profile, not just putting up posters.

When we think of helicopter parents for instance, what is their image of the child. Acting from love but there is an element of seeing the child as 'my precious', fragile, incomplete, weak or made of glass. What happens if we have this image of the child?

What is the role of the teacher?

What is it that you do all day long? What keeps you awake at night thinking about or doing? The things you do during your summer? The people you interact with and their demands of you?

Malaguzzi tells us "We need to define the role of the adult, not as a transmitter but as a creator of relationships - relationships not only between people but also between things, between thoughts, with the environment."

We teachers must see ourselves as researchers, able to think, and to produce real curriculum, a curriculum that comes from all of the children. What we so often do is impose adult time on children's time and this negates the rights of children.

When Reggio educators say children have 100 languages, they mean more than the 100 languages of children, and also the 100 languages of adults, of teachers. We all have 100 languages or more!

Letting go doesn't mean anything goes. It doesn't mean everything is 100% learner passion-driven at every moment of every day. We can't or shouldn't always work to our strengths. We have to practice and develop in other ways on our weaknesses too. There is a difference between needs and wants.

So as the teacher, be the teacher. You are the keeper of curriculum, of standards that are mandated and of the structures and 'have tos' of the PYP.

What are your non negotiables? What is it that you can not let go of?

Whatever your answer is, that is ok. You are allowed to be the teacher. It is what you get paid to do after all.

I am a believer that teachers should, however, live with the spirit of making yourself redundant. You should not be the hardest working person in the room. You've been to school, you don't own this learning right now for your learners. This learning belongs to them.

How might you provoke and spark wonder?

What is the connection between action and agency?

Are they synonyms? Do you need one before you can have the other?

Remember Bandura told us, "To be an agent is to intentionally make things happen by what we do. To know we can act without seeking permission. To want to act when no one is watching or directing. To seek help when we know something must be done by someone with the capability. To find your tribe to do something together- many hands make light work. Proxy, Personal and Collective agency is interwoven with the spirit of action".

From the first time I heard about this, my mind was instantly drawn to Hart's ladder and Shier's pathway to participation. Hart's ladder in particular has long been a tool to help educators see the influence they have on learners and how action is not just the product of learning, it is learning. Evidence of the three models of agency are reflected the higher up the ladder you progress.

Where now?

So what does all of this mean in the inquiry classroom? Where does this leave you in your progress with allowing time and space for agency in your classroom practice? Like many educators, I love to contribute to the Toddle Community and create the types of learning experiences that matter to our shared humanity and beyond the boundaries of topics and standards. It is my aim, each time I create, to leave space for the teachers who may select to use the experience with their learners. For instance, I leave the learning intentions blank. I don't feel it is my place to suggest what the intent is for a task for you and your learners. How might you co-author these intentions before you 'set a task'? The collection for SDG Storyboard Design Challenges are all missing learning intentions. There are a range of intentions you might consider with learners related to the skills in the Design Thinking process.

Many of my tasks have options for learners to negotiate and grapple with. Using their creative and critical thinking demands their full attention and desire to engage. Explicitly asking a learner to come back to the teacher after making a decision isn't an expression of control, rather an illustration of the co-construction of learning. The Great Gallery Escape Room Part 1 and Part 2 offer inspiration for learners to make informed choices about what or how they may explore through these experiences.

Our learners are the leaders of today. We must not wait to see them as ready and capable. In much the same way, teachers should likewise feel the same spirit of empowerment. As leaders in schools, districts, states and nations, the world is crying out for change. Beyond the buzzword of agency, there is hope.

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Discover strategies and tools to make student agency much more than a buzzword in your inquiry classroom

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Agency can seem like a daunting concept. We want to empower our students to have the efficacy they will need to react to life's challenges - to have the language and skills to take control of their own learning and growth, but how can we foster this in the classroom? Habits, the small decisions you make every day, can have a profound impact on the culture in your classroom. What lessons are you teaching by how you spend your time and interact with students each day?

We can work towards a culture of agency by embracing meaningful habits. You can think of these habits as little ways, every day, to remind students that they matter, their voice is heard, and they have a choice in their learning.

I don't believe in big new year resolutions but these habits have anchored me through 2020 and I hope they do the same for you!

A common problem faced by teachers is decision fatigue. We make a million small choices a day, and frankly, it can be exhausting. A simple way to make life easier and build agency is to share choices.

So what kind of choices can we share with students?

how groups are formed

where to work

managing time and tasks

One habit I have formed is what I call, 'The Blind Vote'. Throughout the day, when there are decisions to be made, I present students with 2 options. Then, they close their eyes and vote. Closing their eyes helps students to make their own choices without being influenced by the desires of their friends. We do this multiple times a day, for decisions big and small.

Systems thinking is an essential part of agency. As important as innovation is, we have so much to learn by studying the ways experts work through problems. I highlight this in the classroom by sharing why I am making the decisions I do. If you have a reason, share it!

For example, this year I have been influenced to spend more time on sentence level work after reading an incredible book, The Writing Revolution. At the start of the year, I showed the book to my students and explained the great things I learned and wanted to try with them. Sharing my thinking and intentions led to buy-in from students and excitement to try out something new.

3. Seek Regular Student Feedback

One essential skill I like to build is the ability to provide critical but helpful and specific feedback. I want the classroom to be a place where students learn about and express their opinions, needs and preferences to enact change.

One helpful tool I use is the 1 to 5 scale. After completing a task, I ask students to rate their experience from 1 to 5:

1= I didn't enjoy doing it, and I don't think it helped me grow and learn.

3= I didn't enjoy it very much, but I can see that it is helpful for my learning

5= This was fun and it helped me learn

As a teacher, I want to plan things that are both enjoyable and promote growth. This check-in reminds students that we are on the same page. They realize that some activities might be more or less fun than others, but that their joy and learning are both prioritized in our classroom.

4. Prioritize Social-Emotional Health

Self-care is an essential skill that should be explicitly modelled and taught. Students need to understand the effect their emotions and wellbeing can have on their ability to empathize and make connections.

In my classroom, we begin each day with a simple question. "Is there anything important we should know before we begin our learning today?" We listen to each other, celebrate the highs, and empathize (with our hands over our hearts) with the tough stuff. We talk about how a night without sleep or excitement about a sleepover might impact our learning each day. I also invite students to let me know if they are feeling restless or need a break. We talk about strategies we can use to schedule our days- when our brain is most ready for challenging and creative things, and when we might need a break.

5. Build Time for Representation

For early years teachers, this isn't new, but we often lose track of giving time for representation in the upper years. As a Grade 5 teacher, I have recently begun scheduling a weekly representation hour. We take time to reflect on our knowledge, skills, and understandings from the week and students are encouraged to take time to represent what they have learned using their creativity and any medium of their choice (dance, story writing, clay, paint). It's an amazing opportunity to see what learning they value and visualize any misconceptions they may have.

By being mindful of the small opportunities to reinforce self-efficacy throughout the day, we model the skills and language students need to take charge of their lives and learning!

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Cindy has a Masters of Education in Teacher Leadership and has worked as an PYP educator and coordinator internationally for the past ten years. She currently works as the Director of learning and engagement at Toddle and specializes in developing resources to support teachers and leaders in honing their practice and understandings, to make the PYP simple, actionable, and above all else, joyous.

Disclaimer - This resource has been produced independently of and not endorsed by the IB. Toddle's resources seek to encourage sharing of perspectives and innovative ideas for classroom teaching & learning. They are not intended to be replacements for official IB guides and publications. Views and opinions expressed by the authors of these resources are personal and should not be construed as official guidance by the IB. Please seek assistance from your school's IB coordinator and/or refer to official IB documents before implementing ideas and strategies shared within these resources in your classroom.

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Simplifying Agency: 5 Habits for Valuing Student Voice

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Unpack Cindy's 5 habits to foster student agency and create your own affirmations with her reflection tool.

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The issue with engagement is that many of us were taught that a classroom should look like the "strategic compliance" level cited in the graphic. This is the "well-managed" classroom that many teachers strive to replicate on a daily basis, and the type of classroom that is often praised in classroom observations by administrators around the world.

When you first walk into a classroom that may be loud, with kids all over the room, using different learning tools, some in partners, some in groups, and some alone, your first thought may not be engaged.
If you're not sure what engagement looks like, begin asking these questions:

What type of attitude does the student have towards the learning activity? What is the evidence?

What level of attention does the student have towards the learning activity? What is the evidence?

What level of commitment does the student have towards the learning activity? What is the evidence?

When you ask these three questions, as a teacher or administrator, the answers will lead you to an understanding of student engagement, compliance, or withdrawal.

HOW CHOICE IMPACTS STUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND INSTRUCTION

The reality of most schools is that certain content must be taught. Our goal is to figure out how to teach the same content through a student-choice of instructional experiences.

The key to this approach is getting all students engaged. That means all students must have high attention and high commitment.

One of the best and most manageable ways to do this is through choice boards, playlists, and learning menus.

As a teacher, I used the station-rotation model a lot, and I really believe it has the power to keep students engaged, moving, and working through different types of content.

However, when I asked my students about stations I sometimes received feedback that they didn't like them. Why?

Well, many students said that they only liked a few of the choices and some of the other choices were boring to them. Interestingly, the options they liked and the activities they thought were boring varied widely depending on the student and class.

I had my "Aha!" moment about choice-boards during a fall football practice. As a coach, you want to make sure the players are not only engaged but also focusing on skills that pertain to their position and role on the team. During the station part of our practice, the quarterback and receivers went to one station, the lineman to another station, and the running backs to a different station.

I thought, Why can't I do this in class?
The difference would be allowing students to choose which activities/stations they wanted to participate in, and giving them an opportunity to go deep with the content based on their preferred instructional activity.
When I brought this idea back into the classroom, my students were excited. They now had the power to choose, and from that choice came a level of ownership previously missing in station activities.

DEVELOPING YOUR FIRST CHOICE BOARD

Here's an example of what a "choice board" activity might look like:

First, you take the content/unit that is built into the curriculum. In this case, let's use "photosynthesis" as our example.

Next, as a teacher, you have to decide what instructional resources and methods you are going to use to deliver this content.

Instructional Resources and Methods Options:

Direct instruction (full class)

Direct instruction (small group)

Direct instruction (conference)

Read material (textbook)

Read material (articles)

Listen to material (podcast or audio)

View material (video)

Listen/View/Read material (interactive presentation with audio)

Photosynthesis online simulation

Traditionally, we'll choose one or two of these methods and create a lesson plan or activity based on what we believe is the best way to teach this topic/content.

Sometimes, we'll take four or five of these methods and create a station activity.

Here, you can pick five or six activities and let your students choose two or three that truly pique their interest.

It is important to note that there must be an assessment of some type that you are working towards. In this case, we'll use a photosynthesis lab as our final project-based assessment.

In order for students to successfully complete the lab and analyze the results, they'll have to understand:

What photosynthesis is and why it is important.

What the process looks like.

Key terms and vocabulary for the content.

How this connects to other units in science that you've covered.

The "Choice Board" activity provides this information in a variety of formats and experiences. As students choose their activities, you'll get a better grasp of what types of activities work for them, and which ones they find engaging.

Throughout the activities, students should be recording what they are learning, and what they understand through a guided set of notes.

The end result is that all students should be prepared to successfully complete the photosynthesis lab activity.

Previously, in a traditional classroom setting, students may have not been engaged through a presentation or did not connect to the instructional delivery method. Here, they have the choice to go with what works best for them as a learner.

A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE FOR YOUR CLASSROOM: CHOICE BOARDS

Identify a unit/concept or skill and what you want students to know/do/make in order to demonstrate their understanding/proficiency.

Create or choose an assessment/performance task that allows students to demonstrate mastery.

List various instructional methods, resources, and strategies to prepare students for the assessment/performance task.

Choose four-six instructional methods to turn into choice-board activities. Each activity should be a similar length in time and cover common material. Here is where you can add different types of technology or hands-on experiences to the learning process.

Create a workflow for the students to follow. Have notes and formative checks as part of the choice-board design process. Allow for reflection during each activity when planning how long students will complete the activity.

Introduce the different choices to students and describe what the goals of the activity are (as well as the assessment this is leading up to).

Let students pick activities based on their interests/needs.

As the teacher, a few of the activities/options might need more guidance than others. Make sure you aren't just "managing" this activity, but instead truly acting as a guide and expert learner when the opportunity is available.

Once the choice-board activities are complete, put students into small groups to "jigsaw" their reflection. Bring students from different activities together to reflect on their learning experience and share (this can be written, audio, or video reflections - think Flipgrid).

Listen to reflections and check the formative pieces for each activity to see if students are prepared for the assessment. If not, feel free to go through one more activity together as a class or talk about any topics/concepts they did not understand during the activity.

Give the assessment/performance task.

BONUS OPTION: Make your assessment into a choice board with multiple performance tasks that allow students to demonstrate an understanding of the content and skills.

As you can see, the process takes more time on the front end from the teacher, but you'll know that students are prepared for a performance task by going through this activity.

When I began using this strategy in the classroom, these activities also turned into online experiences that could be done at any time. My ultimate goal as a teacher was to see my students succeeding and demonstrating their understanding of concepts and skills at a high level. The simple act of "giving students choice" changed how my students viewed our assessments, and how they prepared for assessments.

EXAMPLES OF CHOICE BOARDS AND LEARNING MENUS

THE TIC-TAC-TOE CHOICE BOARD

Here's what Catlin Tucker has to say about the Tic-Tac-Toe Choice Board option in her article, " Designing Your Own Digital Choice Board " (she has fantastic resources on this approach):
The classic 9 square model is ideal for a tic-tac-toe approach to a choice board that requires students to complete any three activities in a row across the board. Teachers can organize a choice board so that each column focuses on a particular skill or standard. Elementary teachers, who are teaching all subjects, may combine reading, math and vocabulary activities on a single board. On the other hand, a secondary teacher might design a board focused on one aspect of their curriculum, like reading or writing. As teachers consider what types of activities to design, it's important to keep differentiation in mind. Teachers can choose to differentiate by allowing students to decide:
what they will produce.

how they will engage with the information (learning modality).

which level of complexity they are ready for.

which activity appeals to their interests.

Some teachers choose to color code the squares and encourage stronger students to tackle more challenging activities. While others prefer to assign points to each box based on how challenging that activity is in relation to the other options.
Here are a few different examples for subjects and grade levels of the tic-tac-toe choice board:
Catlin Tucker Example Tic-Tac-Toe Choice Board

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The Ultimate Guide to Choice Boards and Learning Menus - A.J. Juliani

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Take a moment and think about your favorite learning experience ever. What did you enjoy about it? Why did you get so much out of this experience compared to the thousands of other learning experiences you've had over the years?

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I distinctly recall the phrase 'walls that teach' coming into my orbit as a young teacher and the way it made me stop to question just how I was using the visual environment in my classroom. Like many teachers 'back in the day,' my walls were more about decoration than learning - birthday charts, alphabets, posters, work samples ... and it wasn't just my walls, my classroom was awash with what I now think of as 'dingle dangles' and there were WAY too many dingle dangles! This mostly consisted of student work (even worksheets!) pegged on string across the room, far too high for the children to read but low enough for many adults to have to fight their way through as they entered the classroom. Again - more decoration than anything else. Early on in my career, I never really stopped to think about why I was posting the things I chose to 'display. 'Maybe it's because I spend so much time in classrooms or perhaps it's the plethora of images shared on social media ... whatever the reason, I certainly think about it a lot more now!

I have previously shared several posts on learning environments. In 2014, I wrote about the first impressions that learning environments make. In 2015, I wrote about the amazing environment at Mother Teresa Primary School and in 2019, I wrote about curating staff and planning rooms - how visual spaces in schools are as important to adults as they are to children.

In this post, I want to focus on the simple aspect of the way we use our walls. Having readily available ways to share visual images through social media has no doubt contributed to a renewed attention to this aspect of our work. What is heartening to see is a move away from 'Pinterest' inspired walls (the more contemporary version of my walls in the 80s) to more authentic, co constructed and purposeful walls with a focus on learning rather than decoration and display. This shift has been happening for many years of course but social media allows it to be more present in our thinking and to be discussed more widely. Despite the fact that digital and virtual learning spaces are now part of the landscape, most early and elementary classrooms have areas are designed to house 'hard copy' documents of some sort. What is on the walls is easily and immediately accessible. It is tangible, shared and very public which provides a very different experience than a screen.

When entering a classroom, I am acutely aware of the messages the 'walls' (and the use of space, furniture arrangements, choice of materials) convey about what is valued. We know children learn a great deal simply from what we do and this includes what we choose (and don't choose) to document and share and HOW we go about the documentation and sharing. These decisions teach surreptitiously. If 25 identical art works are proudly displayed we promote conformity. If the walls only ever display 'final products' we promote product over process. If it is only the educator's words or annotations on the walls we promote our voice, authority and ownership. If the walls are filled with commercial posters and decorations, we promote decoration over functionality. As we face a new school semester or year, we have an opportunity to look at this aspect of our learning spaces anew. Some questions for reflection might include:

What (and who) might these walls teach?

What story are we telling about learning?

What do our walls say about what we value?

What is dominant in the space? What takes up the most space? How important is this and how do children benefit from this?

How might we use documentation to support children's understanding of their learning processes?

How might we invite children to compose and design the documentation?

How do children use what is on the walls? What does it mean to them?

Can our children talk about the significance or purpose of what's on the walls? What sense of ownership do they have?

How do WE use these walls? Do they grow with the inquiry?

Given inquiry is deeply rooted in process and an emergent design - how can we allow this documentation to build over time?

How can we use our public documentation to prompt review and reflection?

How can we use our walls to hold traces of learning that allow us to revisit and go deeper?

How much is too much? Are we overloading the space?

How might we house previous stories of learning?

What might we worthy of year-long 'display'?

Perhaps the most important question to ask ourselves is: What's the purpose? Ultimately, what is on the walls should be in the service of children's learning. In an inquiry classroom, we can think of the purpose of wall documentation in three broad categories that support children: information, explanation and celebration.

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Information, Explanation and Celebration: wall documentation in an inquiry classroom - KATH MURDOCH

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I distinctly recall the phrase 'walls that teach' coming into my orbit as a young teacher and the way it made me stop to question just how I was using the visual environment in my classroom.

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Principle 1

Multilingualism as an asset
Encouraging learners to use and develop their full linguistic repertoire is highly beneficial.
Learners' multilingualism - their ability to listen, speak, read and view, and/or write in one or more languages and/or scripts beyond English - is a valuable resource. Maintaining and further developing learners' home languages and other languages they know results in greater cognitive flexibility and stronger academic performance. Teachers and support staff should, where possible, deploy pedagogies which include the use of different languages. Learners using EAL should be encouraged to codeswitch and translate between any languages they know to support their subject content learning and the acquisition of academic English.

Principle 2
Having high expectations of learners using EAL while offering them the language support that they need is beneficial to their learning.
Principle 3

Integrated focus on content and language
Focusing on language while teaching subject content is crucial to the progress and attainment of learners using EAL .
Principle 4

Effective and holistic pupil assessment
EAL assessment builds a broad picture of the learner , which enables teachers to plan appropriate and targeted support.
Effective assessment provides teachers with the information needed to adapt teaching for EAL learners. Initial diagnostic assessment should gather linguistic and educational information, such as information about learners' language and literacy practices, prior education, and current cognitive skills. Initial assessment of learners' proficiency in English should include assessment of listening, speaking, reading and viewing, and writing.

Conducting a first language assessment provides useful information. Formal standardised tests designed to assess the reading age, verbal reasoning, spelling, and reading comprehension of first-language English learners are not always suitable for assessing learners using EAL.

When assessment is used to evaluate conceptual understanding, it helps to reduce the linguistic demands of the instructions. Continuous formative assessment should include both assessment of English language development using an EAL-relevant assessment framework, and teacher assessment of learning in different subjects.

Principle 5
Including learners using EAL and their family in all aspects of school life improves their wellbeing and motivation for learning and is beneficial for the school.
In order to have opportunities for success in school, learners using EAL need to feel safe and secure from day one and need not be excluded from any aspect of school life. Schools should foster an inclusive culture in which learners using EAL are encouraged to participate in extracurricular activities and to join mixed-language friendship groups.

Social inclusion is successful where schools create respectful relationships with learners' families and the wider communities, striving to understand families' backgrounds, cultures, and prior experiences. S ome parents of children who use EAL , especially those who are new to English and to the English school system themselves , face additional challenges to parental participation. Therefore, schools should have accessible communications and expectations for all staff, schoolwide, to build reciprocal relationships which actively promote family involvement and mutual understanding.

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Five Principles for Effective Teaching of EAL Learners

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The five EAL Principles are intended to guide schools as they develop and embed effective provision for EAL learners.

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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We've been diving deep into inquiry-based learning, looking at the role of teachers in promoting inquiry skills in students in each phase. First, we talked about using provocations to kick things off - figuring out what our students know, and getting them hooked on the unit. Then, we moved on to exploring strategies to scaffold students to conduct independent investigations. But there's more to inquiry-based learning than just finding out. The real magic happens when students piece together all that they've learned, making sense of it in a way that sticks. That's what I like to call "Connecting the Dots." It's about taking those findings from their investigations to understand big ideas and concepts, understanding not just the 'what,' but the 'why' and 'how' of things.

What Do We Mean By Connecting The Dots?

In "Connecting the Dots" phase, students transition from gathering information to actively making sense of their findings. This is where teachers play an important role in guiding students to identify patterns, make connections, and build a deep understanding of the unit's main concepts. It's not just about learning information; it's about learning to think about the information critically and creatively.

During this phase, students engage in higher-order thinking skills. They analyze the data collected, compare different pieces of information, and synthesize these to form conceptual understandings. This process enables students to transfer their learning to different contexts, helping them to see the relevance of their classroom knowledge in the real world.

Strategies For Effective Implementation

To support students in making sense of their learning and developing transferable understandings, consider these strategies:
Revisit their initial thoughts and questions
Allows students to reflect on their initial understanding and recognize their learning process. Start by having students look back at their initial thoughts or questions. Discuss as a class how their thinking has evolved. This can be done through a reflective journal entry or a class discussion.
Concept Maps
Helps visualize relationships between different concepts. Use concept maps to organize and connect ideas. Encourage students to draw links between different pieces of information, showing how they connect. This can be a collaborative activity where groups share their maps and discuss similarities and differences.
Visible Thinking Routines
Use visible thinking routines that encourage students to organize their learning and visualize their understanding. For 'Headlines,' ask students to summarize a key learning of the day as a catchy headline. 'I Used to Think, Now I Know' is great for reflecting on how their understanding has changed over time. 'Color, Symbol, Image' lets students choose a color, symbol, or image to represent their understanding of a concept.
Writing
Develops communication skills and helps consolidate learning. Have students write about what they've learned in different formats - stories, reports, poems, persuasive letter, etc. Tailor the writing genre to match the unit's theme.
Data charts
Organize and interpret data effectively. Teach students how to create and read data charts. Use charts to compare information, track changes over time, or sort data.
Venn Diagrams
Visually demonstrates similarities and differences between concepts. Use Venn diagrams in group activities or individually to compare two or more concepts.
Conceptual Understandings
Encourages students to articulate their own understanding of the concepts. Guide students to formulate their own conceptual understandings. This can be done through group discussions, where students debate and refine their ideas, or through individual reflections, where they write or present their understandings. Provide sentence starters or prompt students to use unit concepts to generate their own understanding, promoting independent and critical thinking.

Classroom Examples

Exploring Weather Patterns
In an early years classroom, the teacher used provocations like weather charts, nature walks, and storybooks about seasons to ignite curiosity about weather patterns. Students investigated different types of weather by observing and recording daily weather changes.

After gathering their observations, the students created a large collaborative concept map, illustrating the different weather types they had observed. Using a 'Color, Symbol, Image' routine, each child chose colors, symbols, and images to represent different weather conditions. The teacher facilitated a discussion where students shared their symbols and what they represented, helping them to see the general patterns in weather changes.

Understanding Ecosystems
An elementary class started with a provocation involving a local ecosystem field trip, initiating an inquiry into ecosystems. Students investigated different ecosystems, their flora and fauna, and their environmental conditions.

Students revisited their initial questions about ecosystems and used Venn diagrams to compare and contrast two ecosystems they had studied, then they wrote a statement of understanding using the following prompt "After comparing these ecosystems, I understand that...". They then wrote short reports, synthesizing their findings. The teacher encouraged students to use data charts to represent the types of plants and animals found in each ecosystem, facilitating a deeper understanding of the biodiversity in different environments.

Ancient Civilizations
Middle school students were intrigued by a series of historical artifacts and timelines, which led to an investigation of ancient civilizations. They explored different aspects like culture, politics, and technology.

The students used the 'I Used to Think, Now I Know' routine to reflect on their initial understanding versus their current understanding of ancient civilizations. They engaged in a Socratic seminar to discuss the similarities and differences between the civilizations they studied. Finally, they created their own conceptual understandings by writing and presenting how these ancient civilizations have influenced modern society, integrating history, politics, and culture.

Resources:

The following Padlet includes some helpful resources that can help you facilitate inquiry-based learning.
https://padlet.com/sohaoak86/Inquirylearning
Guiding students through this phase of inquiry-based learning empowers them to not only accumulate knowledge but to deeply understand and apply it. By engaging in these strategies, students develop critical thinking skills and gain a comprehensive understanding of complex concepts.

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Inquiry-Based Learning / Connecting The Dots

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Explore the critical 'Connecting the Dots' phase in inquiry-based learning with our comprehensive guide. Discover effective strategies for helping students synthesize information, find connections, and develop deep, transferable understandings. Learn how to facilitate critical thinking, real-world problem-solving, and independent learning through practical classroom examples and engaging activities.

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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The investigation or 'finding out' phase of the inquiry is an important one. This is where students actively engage in exploring and discovering. In this post, we'll look at how structured and guided inquiry methods play a vital role in this phase, enhancing the learning experience for students.

Structured inquiry involves the teacher leading the class through a common topic with well thought-out questions and resources. Guided inquiry, in contrast, offers students more autonomy. They choose their topics and apply their knowledge, skills, and understanding with the teacher providing the necessary guidance and support.

Structured Inquiry: Exploring Together with a Common Focus

In a structured inquiry model, the entire class explores a single case study or topic. The teacher carefully plans this process through a series of guiding questions, thoughtfully selected resources, and a focus on teaching research skills. This will help them navigate the guided inquiry independently.

Teacher Questions: Here, the teacher's role is important. By posing specific, targeted questions, educators guide students through the investigation process. These questions are designed not only to find information but also to encourage deeper thinking and skills development.

Research Skills: Plan mini-lessons that support students in honing their research skills. This includes formulating good questions, finding relevant information, and summarizing learning.

Organizing Information: Teach students strategies to organize their learning to make connections and develop understandings. Students can use organizers to make sense of their acquired information, summarize it in writing, or create a visual.

Presenting Findings: Introduce students to different ways of presenting their findings. This diversity caters to different learning styles and encourages innovation.

Guided Inquiry: Student-Led Investigation

Once students are familiar with the structured inquiry process, they are ready for guided inquiry. Students are exploring content determined by the teacher; however, they choose the exploration topic. Teachers continue to support the students as they navigate the guided inquiry.

Choosing Their Focus: Students select their own topics or case studies, driven by their interests and curiosities.

Formulating Questions: Using the skills developed earlier, students create their own set of questions to guide their inquiry.

Organizing and Presenting Findings: Students learn to independently gather, analyze, and synthesize information. They then choose their preferred medium to share their learning, allowing creativity and personal expression.

Using Questions In The Inquiry Classroom

In our ongoing exploration of inquiry-based learning, an essential component is understanding the power of questions - both from teachers and students. Questions are the essence of inquiry. They ignite curiosity, drive research, and shape understanding. In this context, the teacher's role goes beyond delivering knowledge; it becomes about crafting questions that provoke thought and inspire exploration. Simultaneously, we aim to empower students to not just answer questions but to ask them. This shift from responding to asking questions marks a critical step in developing independent, critical thinkers.

How can teachers effectively use questions to guide the inquiry process?

How students can be encouraged and taught to formulate their own questions?

Effective Questioning

Inquiry-based learning thrives when teachers ask the right questions at the right time. So, what are some strategies educators can use to ask the right questions?

Classroom Discussions: Using questions can encourage students to share their opinions and listen to others' perspectives as they engage in class discussions. It helps create a collaborative learning environment where students learn to respect and learn from each other's perspectives.

Thought-Provoking Questions: Initiate your lessons with open-ended questions encouraging students to think about their knowledge. Consider turning your learning objectives into questions that engage the students in learning about a topic or a concept.

Strategic Questioning: Plan your questions strategically to scaffold learning. Think about your objective of the inquiry. Do you want the students to collect information and facts "factual questions"? Do you want them to make connections to come up with an understanding "Conceptual questions"? Or do you plan to challenge their thinking and encourage them to explore different perspectives "debatable questions"?

Wait Time: Ensure you provide enough "wait time" for the students to think about and process the question you just asked. This is especially important when working with language learners.

Socratic Questioning: Socratic questioning is an approach the teacher uses to model critical thinking and encourage dialogue with the students. To learn more about it, check this resource.

Encourage Students To Ask Questions

A key goal of inquiry-based learning is to shift students from passive learners to active participants in their learning journey. This involves encouraging them to ask their own questions.

Here are some strategies and tips to facilitate this process:

Fostering a Curious Classroom Environment: Create an atmosphere where curiosity is valued, and questions are welcomed. Encourage students to share their thoughts and wonderings about various topics.

Question Formulation Technique (QFT): Introduce students to the Question Formulation Technique, where they learn to produce, improve, and prioritize their questions. This approach helps students practice and refine the art of question creation. More details can be found at https://rightquestion.org/what-is-the-qft/.

Brainstorming Sessions: Hold brainstorming sessions where students can freely ask questions about a topic. Help them reflect on which questions lead to deeper inquiry and understanding. Using provocations can make brainstorming sessions exciting.

Research Skills Workshops: Conduct workshops or mini-lessons focused on developing research skills. Teach students how to ask open and closed questions and the importance of each type of question. A great way to do so is by using question stems.

Questions stems for closed questions: Who? Where? When? What?
Questions stems for open questions: What would happen if? I wonder why? How?

The essence of inquiry-based learning lies in the art of questioning, where both teachers and students play critical roles. By mastering the skill of asking the right questions and fostering an environment where students are encouraged to inquire and explore, we support students in developing deeper understandings and becoming lifelong learners.

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The investigation or 'finding out' phase of the inquiry is an important one. This is where students actively engage in exploring and discovering. In this post, we'll look at how structured and guided inquiry methods play a vital role in this phase, enhancing the learning experience for students.

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Developed by the Right Question Institute, the Question Formulation Technique, or QFT, is a structured method for generating and improving questions. It distills sophisticated forms of divergent, convergent, and metacognitive thinking into a deceptively simple, accessible, and reproducible technique.

The QFT builds the skill of asking questions, an essential - yet often overlooked - lifelong learning skill that allows people to think critically, feel greater power and self-efficacy, and become more confident and ready to participate in civic life.

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What is the QFT? - Right Question Institute

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The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) is a simple but rigorous step-by-step process designed to help […]

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Inquiry and Play-Based Learning In The Early Years

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Inquiry and Play-Based Learning In The Early Years

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Provocations "Maximizing Inquiry-Based Learning with Effective Provocations - Practical Strategies for Educators"

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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After my previous post about inquiry-based learning, I've decided to delve deeper into facilitating the inquiry process in a series of posts, beginning with the role pf provocation in creating a culture of curiosity.

As an educator deeply invested in the learning process, I've always found the beginning of a new unit of inquiry (UOI) exciting. In my experience, one of the most dynamic ways to springboard this journey is through the use of provocations. Provocations are more than just a teaching tool; they are engaging and intriguing learning engagements that pique students' curiosity about new concepts and topics.

Why Provocations?

Connections to Real Life: Provocations authentically allow students to think about what they already know about the topic, providing a tangible link between the classroom and real world contexts.

Questioning: Provocations naturally lead students to become curious inquirers, asking questions and seeking to learn more about a topic.

Reflective Thinking: These engagements foster a culture of sharing and discussion, where students articulate their thoughts and consider different perspectives, enhancing their ability to think critically and reflectively.

Identifying Prior Knowledge and Misconceptions: For educators, provocations offer insights into students' prior knowledge and possible misconceptions, guiding the direction and focus of the curriculum.

What Can Be Used as a Provocation?

Real-World Objects: Bringing physical objects related to the topic can spark curiosity and questions.

Multimedia Resources: Videos and images can be powerful tools to introduce new topics or challenge existing ideas.

Provocative Statements or Quotes: Presenting a controversial or intriguing statement can stimulate debate and critical thinking.

Current Events: Connecting the topic to a current event or recent news can make learning more relevant and engaging.

How to Plan a Provocation

Planning a provocation requires thoughtful consideration of the learning objectives, concepts, and the interests and needs of the students. Here's a step-by-step approach to help you plan a provocation.
Main Concepts and Learning Objectives:

Begin by identifying the concepts that are driving the inquiry.

Clarify your learning objectives: What do you want your students to know, understand, or be able to do by the end of this inquiry?

Ensure that the provocation aligns with these objectives and concepts, setting a strong foundation for the inquiry.
Plan Opportunities For Critical Thinking:

Formulate open-ended questions that will guide the learning engagement. These questions should be designed to provoke thought, curiosity, and further inquiry.

Consider questions that connect with students' experiences and interests while challenging them to think deeper about the topic.

Consider pairing the provocation with a visible thinking routine that encourages students to think deeper or ask questions (e.g., see think wonder, think puzzle explore, 3 2 1 bridge).
Select a Variety of Resources:

Choose resources that are diverse and engaging. This could include multimedia materials, real-world objects, or interactive activities.

Ensure these resources are accessible and appropriate for your students' age and learning levels.
Plan for Multiple Forms of Expression and Interaction:
Design your lesson to provide students with various ways to express their knowledge and engage with the provocation. This could include group discussions, individual reflections, or presentations.

By following these steps, you can plan provocations that are not only engaging and relevant but also effectively pave the way for deeper inquiry and learning.

Weaving Assessment With Provocations:

During the provocation phase, pay close attention to students' reactions, comments, and levels of engagement.

Listen carefully to their discussions and note their initial thoughts, questions, and any misconceptions.

Collect this data through notes, recordings, or student work samples. This information will be invaluable for assessing their understanding and planning subsequent lessons.

Classroom examples:
Early Years (Concept: Living Things)
Guiding Question: What do you notice about these different plants and seeds?

Provocation: Bring in soil, seeds, and small plants. Let the children explore these materials, encouraging them to touch, smell, and observe. This sensory experience can provoke questions about plants, their needs, growth processes, and the environment, aligning with a unit about living things and their relationships with each other and the planet.

As the students explore the materials, listen to their thinking, ask them questions and create an opportunity that allows them to converse about their observations.
Second Grade (Concept: Measurement)
Visible Thinking Routine: "Think, Puzzle, Explore"

Provocation: Set up various stations with items of different lengths (e.g., a collection of sticks, ribbons, and blocks). Ask students to use the materials to measure various items in the classroom and the playground then compare notes. This hands-on activity encourages students to think about length, compare sizes, and introduces concepts of measurement in a tangible way.

\Hand out a template of the thinking routine and encourage students to share their observations and questions as they explore the materials.
Third Grade (Concept: Technology)
Visible Thinking Routine: "3-2-1 Bridge"

3 Thoughts: Share three thoughts about the technology you're observing.

2 Questions: What two questions do you have about these technologies?

1 Analogy/Simile: Make an analogy or simile about the evolution of technology.

Provocation: Present a collection of artifacts from different eras (e.g., a vinyl record, a cassette tape, a CD, and a USB stick). Allow students to explore these items and discuss what they are, their uses, and what they might tell us about changes in technology over time. This can spark an inquiry into historical changes and how they affect our lives.

To wrap up, using provocations in the classroom is about more than just grabbing students' attention. It's a strategic way to kick off their thinking and get them to connect with the material on a deeper level. As teachers, it's our job to pick the right provocations and use what we learn from them to steer our lessons.

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Provocations "Maximizing Inquiry-Based Learning with Effective Provocations - Practical Strategies for Educators"

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Explore essential strategies for integrating provocations in inquiry-based learning. This comprehensive guide provides educators with insights on effectively using provocations to engage students, stimulate critical thinking, and align with curriculum objectives. Discover classroom examples and tips for planning, assessment, and more, to enhance student learning experiences.

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The Organized Chaos In The PYP Classroom

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In today's digital age, knowledge is at our fingertips. With a quick Google search or even by asking AI, students can instantly find answers to almost any question. But if answers are so readily available, what does that mean for learning? This challenges us to reconsider traditional, teacher-centered approaches. When answers are a click away, the real skill lies in asking the right questions. That's where inquiry-based learning comes in. This pedagogical approach shifts the focus from simply finding answers to exploring questions, encouraging a deeper understanding of the subject matter.

What Is Inquiry?

Harvard's Project Zero describes inquiry-based learning as "the process of addressing a driving question or challenge that requires the learner to think critically, analyze information, and solve complex problems."

Reference: Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education

According to Edutopia, inquiry-based learning is "an approach to learning that emphasizes the student's role in the learning process. Rather than the teacher telling students what they need to know, students are encouraged to explore the material, ask questions, and share ideas."

Reference: Edutopia, "What is Inquiry-Based Learning?"

In her work, Kath Murdoch describes inquiry as a "multifaceted process that involves a variety of skills, attitudes, and dispositions."

Reference: Murdoch, K. (2015). "The Power of Inquiry."

Trevor MacKenzie views inquiry-based learning as "a student-owned, student-driven, and student-centered approach to learning."

Reference: MacKenzie, T. (2016). "Dive into Inquiry."

As you see from the definitions above, the focus of inquiry learning is on student learning and engagement, not the curriculum.

Inquiry Is:

Student-Centered: It revolves around the interests, questions, and curiosities of the students.

Exploration Process: Students learn by exploring, questioning, and investigating.

Skills Development: It focuses on developing skills like critical thinking, problem-solving, and research.

Active Learning: Students are active participants in their own learning journey.

Collaborative: It often involves students collaborating to explore questions and solve problems.

Reflective: Students are encouraged to think about their learning process and outcomes.

Inquiry Is Not:

Just Hands-On Activities: While hands-on activities might be used to discover or share learning, inquiry requires critical thinking and reflection, not just doing.

Merely Researching: Research may be a component, but inquiry involves synthesizing and applying information, not just collecting it.

Always Open-Ended: Inquiries can be structured with clear guidance or completely open, depending on the learning objectives.

Unstructured Play: It is purposeful and directed by educational goals, even when it looks like play.

Without Guidance: Teachers play a crucial role in facilitating and supporting inquiry-based learning.

Why Inquiry?

Inquiry is not just another educational buzzword. It is an approach that transforms education to meet the demands of the 21st century. Inquiry-based learning stands out as an approach that equips students with the skills they need for our ever-changing world.

Active Learning: Inquiry learning engages students as active learners; they're not just passively absorbing information. This makes learning engaging and more enjoyable for the students.

Questioning: In the era of Google and AI, asking the right questions has never been more critical. Inquiry-based learning teaches students how to formulate questions that guide them to deeper understandings.

Inclusive: Students acquire knowledge, skills, and understanding in ways that resonate with them. Whether it's through hands-on experiments, group discussions, or independent research, the varied approaches make the learning experience more inclusive and effective.

Peer Collaboration: Inquiry often involves group work, where students collaborate to explore questions and solve problems. This teamwork doesn't just make the task more engaging; it also allows students to learn from one another, offering multiple perspectives and approaches to the question at hand.

Critical Thinking Skills: As students engage with questions, either posed by their teachers or themselves, they develop their problem-solving and critical thinking skills.

Types of Inquiry

Inquiry-based learning can take several forms, each offering a different level of autonomy to students and requiring various degrees of teacher guidance.

Let's look at free, guided, and structured inquiry:
Free Inquiry:
In free inquiry, students are given the autonomy to choose what they learn about, how they learn it, and sometimes how they will demonstrate their learning.

Teacher Role: Provides resources and guidance as needed while encouraging independence.

Student Role: Takes full ownership of their learning, deciding what and how to explore.

Examples:

Students might be given time each week to explore topics of personal interest, such as insects or space. The teacher's role is to facilitate access to resources and provide scaffolds to help students pose questions they can investigate using classroom materials or schoolyard exploration.

Students could undertake a long-term project, like starting a classroom garden. They would decide what to plant, how to care for the garden, and their goals. The teacher supports by helping them to find information and think critically about their choices.
Guided Inquiry:
Guided inquiry strikes a balance between teacher guidance and student independence. The teacher provides the initial question and an outline of the process, but students have the autonomy to navigate their learning within those parameters.

Teacher Role: Provides the questions but allows students to determine the resources and presentation. The teacher offers support and guidance as the students navigate the process.

Student Role: Learns to manage and direct their learning process within the provided framework, developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills by deciding how to approach the problem.

Examples:

The teacher might start a unit on community helpers by asking, "Who helps us in our community, and how?" Students could choose a community helper to investigate, decide how to gather information (interviews, online research, etc.), and present their findings in a format of their choice (poster, presentation, written report).

In an inquiry about renewable energy, the teacher asks, "How can we use renewable energy in our school?" Students could work in groups to explore different forms of renewable energy, select the most feasible option for their school, and develop a proposal outlining the benefits and challenges of implementing their plan.
Structured Inquiry:
Structured inquiry is where the teacher maintains control over the learning process, providing clear directions through a structured approach. Students are given the question and the method to explore, offering a supportive framework for building foundational inquiry skills.

Teacher Role: Directs the learning experience with specific questions and a clear process to follow.

Student Role: Follows the teacher's plan, engaging with the material in a structured way, which provides a foundation for more independent inquiry later.

Examples:

Students might be learning about the life cycle of butterflies. The teacher would provide a clear sequence of lessons, including observing caterpillars in the classroom, with specific questions to answer at each stage.

In a science class about electricity, the teacher might demonstrate a circuit and then guide students through creating their own, asking them to predict and test what happens when elements are changed.

Resources:

The following Padlet includes some helpful resources that can help you facilitate inquiry-based learning.

Inquiry-based learning is a student-centered approach that nurtures curiosity, encourages critical thinking, and prepares students for the complexities of the 21st century. By varying the level of inquiry from free to structured, educators can tailor their teaching to the developmental stage and readiness of their students, ensuring that each child is both challenged and supported in their learning.

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Inquiry-based learning essentials for engaging and equipping 21st-century learners. Learn about the different types of inquiry.

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Resources and Downloads to Facilitate Inquiry-Based Learning

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Resources and Downloads to Facilitate Inquiry-Based Learning

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Find information, strategies, protocols, and tools to promote curiosity and engage students in asking questions, thinking critically, and solving problems.

Create Learning Environments That Foster Inquiry

Plan Curriculum That Supports Inquiry

Use Strategies to Increase Inquiry in the Classroom

Query Books: Ask students to chronicle their ideas, ponderings, and questions. (Edutopia, 2014)

Hackathons: Check out a hackathon playbook to plan activities that provide experiences with overcoming failure. (Edutopia, 2015)

20 Percent Time: Try out Genius Hour (a.k.a. 20 Percent Time). (Edutopia, 2013)

Adventures with Dr. Smallz: Inspire students' need to know with a microscopic doctor lost in a patient's body. (Edutopia, 2014)

Questions Before Answers: Use great questions that motivate learning. (Edutopia, 2014)

School in the Cloud: Ask students to investigate a Big Question within a Self-Organized Learning Environment. (School in the Cloud)

Conduct Activities That Promote Inquiry

Downloads and Examples From Schools That Work

Edutopia's flagship series highlights practices and case studies from K-12 schools and districts that are improving the way students learn. Below, find downloads used by practitioners at featured schools, and dive into real-world examples of inquiry-based learning.

Curriculum Map for Grades K-5: Download this chart to understand how Wildwood aligns its lines of inquiry to specific curricular themes, central ideas, and key concepts throughout the year.

Personal Project Questions: Download a worksheet that includes prompts to help students focus and think through the topics of their research.

Sample Research Worksheet: Download a sample "My Personal Project" worksheet to learn how teachers at Wildwood help students organize plans for projects; students record questions, research notes, unfamiliar vocabulary, and how they will demonstrate what they've learned. For another resource of this type, see Wildwood's Personal Project Planner.

Personal Project Skills Survey: Download a project skills survey to discover how Wildwood students reflect on the skills they've tapped and personal work habits they've practiced while working on their projects.

At Wildwood IB World Magnet School, teachers use student questions to drive lessons, and channel student curiosity into student-centered projects. These are a few of Wildwood's inquiry-based teacher tools.

See how Ralston Elementary School teachers guide the inquiry process over a series of lessons and teach students how to ask deeper questions to prepare them to lead their own inquiry into specific problems.

Learn how educators at Crellin Elementary School use students' "I Wonder" questions to drive lesson planning, differentiate instruction, and foster student curiosity.

Science students at Casey Middle School begin with a central question and seek answers through research, experimentation, and data analysis. Review a sample question and lesson plan to understand how this works in practice.

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Resources and Downloads to Facilitate Inquiry-Based Learning

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Find information, strategies, protocols, and tools to promote curiosity and engage students in asking questions, thinking critically, and solving problems.

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Inquiry classrooms are magical places; creative, student-driven, and dynamic. But when it's only the lesson you see unfolding, you're missing half the show. For years, I've focused my coaching work on the pedagogy of inquiry, trying to demystify what inquiry looks like in real classrooms.

While it's not as fun perhaps to write (or read) about what happens at the planning table, we cannot pretend that the magic of inquiry-classrooms just happens, well, magically. Planning for inquiry reminds me of the proverb: A river needs banks to flow. I see my lesson planning as creating the proverbial 'banks.' These banks provide the space and order necessary to encourage the freefall of ideas, divergent questions, and cognitive dissonance to take place.

In fact, I've found that lesson planning is the most creative part of my job. I've learned to embrace rather than dread it using this simple 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan.
Step 1: Connect with and question the content as a person, not as a teacher
Take off your teacher hat for a moment. How can you strengthen emotional bonds with and between your students within the context of this lesson? How can you share your own curiosity, doubts, and personality with students using the lesson as a vehicle? If the content isn't important, fascinating, and/or relevant to you, it's unlikely your students will find an emotional connection to it either.

What questions still perplex and fascinate you?

What relevant stories can you tell relating to the content?

Are there metaphors that might be helpful to students?

Do you remember the first time you learned this yourself?

Are there websites that explore these questions and ideas in greater detail?

Here's how I might approach the first step for an upcoming lesson. Let's say I'm teaching Shakespeare's Macbeth and we're on Act IV, Scene I[1]. You may remember this scene by its opening line: "Round about the cauldron go..." or it's repeated chorus: "Double, double, toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble." It's an entire scene where witches create a complicated spell; full of challenging vocabulary and foreshadowing.

My emotional connection to the content:

This scene is bursting with gross, descriptive words-a recipe for disaster! It reminds me of potions class from the Harry Potter series. My husband is a former chef and he always talks about the importance of getting the right ingredients. The process involved here reminds me of him in the kitchen; so incredibly detailed and painstakingly precise.
My lingering questions and wonders relating to the content:

There are phrases in here that have been repeated for hundreds of years like "Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and cauldron bubble."

Tons of rumors about the production issues haunted by prophesies. Why?

How can a cauldron simultaneously boil and bake?

How many times does the cat mew? Is the witch adding the number or repeating the previous witch? How do we know for sure?

Why such a long scene describing this concoction?

What's the difference between a spell and a charm?

Resources that will provide reliable and diverse perspectives on the content:

Folger Shakespeare Library: https://www.folger.edu/macbeth

Raphael Holinshed published his Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande in 1577. The second edition, published in 1587, was Shakespeare's primary reference work for most of his histories and many of his other plays, including Macbeth.

This 'emotional brain dump' was fun and took me no more than five minutes to accomplish. To get the students to connect with one another, I'll ask them to share their favorite dishes and analyze the ingredients that go into them (thinking about the role of ingredients in making a dish or a charm so special and memorable).
Step 2: Get clear on the goals and assessments
This is usually where we start when lesson planning: our objectives. Think about what you want students to get out of your lesson, and how you might measure these goals (even imperfectly). What mix of formative assessments will you use? Are there authentic assessments (products, performances or presentations) that you can use to motivate them individually or in teams? What do you want students to know (content), be able to do (skills), and/or believe (dispositions) by the end of this lesson or unit?

Again, using the Shakespeare example, I might choose the following mix of content and skill-related objectives for my lesson. I try not to list more than five main objectives so that I can stay focused (less is more). I also really try to make sure I balance the knowledge, skills (especially communication, critical thinking, creativity, and collaboration) and dispositions (patience, empathy, growth mindset) when listing out my objectives.

What will students know, do, and believe?(Knowledge, Skills, Dispositions)

How will we know we've achieved this?(Assessments)

Understand the scene's meaning (knowledge) CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4

Ingredient Analysis and Questions group presentation; listening in on conversations

Take risks with ideas; communicate clearly

(skills)

Observations and student reflection survey

Back up conjectures with evidence (either from text, experience, or websites) CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.1

(skills)

Ingredient Analysis (source citations)

Gain confidence and interest in tackling challenging texts like this one (dispositions)

Student reflection survey

Step 3: Design the lesson and plot questions
Once I have a sense of the why and how, I am ready to create the 'flow.' This is where traditional lesson planning comes in. What's your hook or anticipatory set? How much time do you think you'll need to provide instruction before releasing students? Will assignments be rigorous enough, but not completely out of reach? Will students be grouped together, when and how? How will students be held accountable for their work?

As you go through the lesson sequencing, you'll want to simultaneously think about the driving questions for this lesson (in the event that students don't raise these questions on their own during the lesson), as well as 'pivot questions' that you can use to transition students to new activities or discussions. These questions are the ones you want students to really take time to think about. I often transfer these onto notecards and post them on the wall during a lesson and take them down as we address them. Students now alert me if there are questions still up on the wall.
Step 4: Check for questions, voice, and choice
After mapping out the lesson flow and the driving questions, I go back through it to check for two important things: opportunities for student questions and student choice.

Now, look back through each of your activities to make sure you've created time and opportunities for students to ask questions and make choices. Student voice (question-asking) and student choice are the bedrock of inquiry classrooms, so make sure you're providing space and structure for these things. In my own lesson planning, I'd place an "X" next to activities that explicitly provide this. There is no rule around how much or how many opportunities you provide, although I'd strive for a 50/50 balance between teacher-directed/teacher talk-time and student-directed/student talk-time.

Again, using the Macbeth example, here is what my lesson plan might look like at this point:

Personal Story (10 mins.)

What are the most important ingredients in your favorite dish?

What do recipes have to do with this scene (connection)?

Reading & Review (5 mins.)

What does this scene leave you feeling?

What questions does it raise for you?

Group Task: Ingredient Analysis (15 mins.)

How easy, difficult, impossible, and/or immoral would it be to obtain each ingredient here today?

Small Group Choice (10 mins.)

1) What's the most critical ingredient? Why?

2) How would you reverse the charm?

3) What ingredients may be missing?

Whole Group Sharing (5 mins.)

Which words were confusing and how did you find their definitions?

Which choice question did you choose and what did you come up with?

Closing (5 mins.)

What kind of 'prep work' for the charm needs to happen?

What questions linger? (share my own)

A Note about Unit Planning
While this plan is designed for a lesson, you can easily adapt it for an entire unit. Rather than plotting out the activities in minutes during Step 3, simply extend them into days.
Great Questions
Questions are the energy source inside inquiry classrooms. Even though I've written out driving questions, there should be questions peppered throughout the lesson; coming from me and hopefully the students. I like to share a short list of Great Questions with my students. These questions are great regardless of the content or grade level. They are divergent and encourage clear and critical thinking (and are also perfect for laminating onto desks). These questions are especially helpful when students are leading their own small groups and having discussions together.
Step 5: Rapidly reflect
This step is often ignored, but is a critical part of the inquiry cycle because it requires us as teachers to flex our reflective inquiry muscles! This step shouldn't require a lot of time, and can always be completed with the students after a lesson or a unit-after all, they're some of your best evaluators, having engaged in the lesson from start to finish. Set a timer for five minutes and answer two simple questions:

What went especially well?

What would I do differently next time?

Here is what I wrote after trying out the Macbeth lesson:

What went well?

* Great engagement and discussions while sorting ingredients

* 20 minutes was perfect amount of time for group projects

What would I change?

* Allow them to access websites to find definitions (reinforce source-citing)

* Groups no larger than 4 people, otherwise students can disengage

* Shorten favorite recipe-sharing time

Going through this process helps me reflect on perennial questions like: Did students pursue the anticipated line of inquiry? Did they latch onto a misconception and refuse to let it go? Was everyone is engaged; how do I know? Did students ask their own questions? Was it enough or too much student choice?
Conclusion
Successful inquiry classrooms may at times appear aimless and perhaps chaotic, but nothing could be further from the truth. Great inquiry lessons are actually some of the most carefully and thoughtfully planned learning events on the planet. Remember that a river needs banks to flow when thinking about guiding student inquiry. Be clear on why the river is flowing, where it's going, and how it will get there. The Five-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan will allow you to keep your knees bent and not fall over.

To download a template of 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan, go to: https://www.inquirypartners.com/new-page-3 and click "Downloadable PDFs."

[1] This lesson idea comes from Andrew Finley at West Seattle High School

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author: Nicole Law and Sonja Hollins-Alexander

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author: John Almarode and Kateri Thunder

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The 5-Step Inquiry Lesson Plan - Corwin Connect

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Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on Linkedin Inquiry classrooms are magical places; creative, student-driven, and dynamic. But when it's only the lesson you see unfolding, you're missing half the show. For years, I've focused my coaching work on the pedagogy of inquiry, trying to demystify [...]

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Four Inquiry Skills To Nurture And Assess

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Four Inquiry Skills To Nurture And Assess

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How To Get Into Inquiry-Based Learning: Part 4 – 4 Student Inquiry Skills to Nurture and Assess

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Five Skills To Become An Inquiry Teacher

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Five Skills To Become An Inquiry Teacher

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How To Get Into Inquiry-Based Learning: Part 3 – 5 Skills to Become an Inquiry Teacher

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How To Get Into Inquiry-Based Learning: Part 2 – Working Towards Open Inquiry

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How To Get Into Inquiry-Based Learning: Part 1 – First Steps to Inquiry

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Inquiry Teaching: Meet the Responsive Teaching Console

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Inquiry Teaching: Meet the Responsive Teaching Console

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Teacher Self-Assessment to Strengthen Inquiry Approach

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Teacher Self-Assessment to Strengthen Inquiry Approach

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Teacher Self-Assessment to Strengthen Inquiry Approach

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Self-assess and reflect on your current beliefs to strengthen your approach to inquiry. Create a classroom culture that best serves you and your students.

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Scaffolding Curiosity – A Presentation for Guided Inquiry

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Scaffolding Curiosity – A Presentation for Guided Inquiry

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Scaffolding Curiosity - A Presentation for Guided Inquiry

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Access Cindy Blackburn’s Scaffolding Inquiry presentation slides to plan your back-to-school teacher induction.

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Designing Learning Experiences and Inquiry

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Designing Learning Experiences and Inquiry

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" Children must be taught how to think, not what to think. "
- Margaret Mead

All who attended Toddle's Inquiry Educator Summit (TIES), will have been captured by the spirit of what it truly looks and feels like to learn and teach in an inquiry setting. Through the sessions run by Edna Sackson and Melissa Sokol, Cindy Blackburn and Maggie Hos-McGrane we can see the power of what if, the importance of a scaffold and the art in the design of inquiry learning engagements. Rather than speaking for these incredible educators, this piece aims to draw out the threads that weave between the sessions.

Questions to ponder

When we step back, what is seen is questions and the vital role of the teacher in an inquiry process. Our leaders drew out such questions as,

What if?

How might we?

Why would?

Why not?

When and why?

So what?

Now what?

Reflecting on your own practice, how do these questions play a role in your day to day? And perhaps more importantly, who asks the questions?

When developing really powerful questions, there are tools and scaffolds that might help us and our learners. You can access a bank of powerful tools, graphic organizers and visible thinking routines on Toddle Community to create meaningful learning experiences. The 5 W's and a H or the Questions Starts from Harvard Project Zero, can be used by students at various stages of the inquiry process.

The Question Matrix or Q chart ( Cooperative Learning and Higher Level Thinking: The Q Matrix by Chuck Wiederhold and Spencer Kagan. Kagan Cooperative Learning, 1998) is another tool that is effective in helping develop rich and deep questions. As Maggie suggested, developing higher-order thinking is critical for learners in the inquiry classroom. While acknowledging the progression of learning, and the place of lower order thinking and questions, we can move between factual, predictive, analytical and into application/synthesis as the inquiry process develops.

From What If... to How Might We...

While the session by Melissa and Edna was titled, 'The power of what if,' they also highlight another question, How Might We...? A question that stems from the world of design, How might we... offers as many possibilities to explore as what if... The stance of a how might we question is biased towards action- taking us from a 'So what?' to 'Now what?' The spirit of this sits comfortably in an inquiry seeking action rather than just a deepening of knowledge and understanding.
"How" suggests that we do not yet have the answer. "How" helps us explore a variety of endeavours instead of merely executing on what we "think" the solution should be. "Might" emphasises that our responses may only be possible solutions, not the only solution. "Might" also allows for exploration of multiple possible solutions, not settling for the first that comes to mind. "We" immediately brings in the element of a collaborative effort. "We" suggests that the idea for the solution lies in our collective teamwork. Interaction Design Foundation
Having the right question to begin with is what then allows learners to see the possibility for a solution.

"It's not that they can't see the solution. They can't see the problem."
- G.K. Chesterton

When there is struggle in the process, it is the role of the teacher to be sure the learner can see the problem in the question and that finding a solution matters.

Maggie and Cindy both echoed this importance of real-world, action-ready meaningful learning. Through the frame of GRASPS as well as Bloom's Taxonomy and the SAMR model, we were all encouraged to think deeply about the purpose of learning engagements.

The role of the teacher

Cindy's 5 precepts gave us many moments to pause and reflect on our own practices in the classroom. As guided inquiry, the role of the teacher is far from redundant as learner agency increases.

Maggie's careful modelling of designing learning engagements brought together the role of the teacher to be responsive to learners while also having a hold of the curriculum. Her learning experience collections such as Dealing with Difficult Times, Mindfulness at Home, Mindfulness in the Early Years, Science Stars, Social Studies at Home and Science Explorations at Home, all available in the Toddle Community, are examples of the breath and range of rich learning.

From high tech to low tech, applying the SMAR model pushes both educators and learners to reimagine learning and the world around us. There are many tools or apps to help us make choices about how learners might use technology tools to unlock various aspects of the inquiry process, particularly with an eye to higher-order thinking.

Learner lead inquiry

Putting the learner at the centre of the process gives voice, choice and ownership. Edna and Melissa shared how they live 'agency' beyond the buzzword. Through units of inquiry, from the first provocation to the deep student-driven inquiry and creation of action. Their message is for teachers to create the map but not design all the learning before a unit begins.

Far from negating Maggie's careful design and Cindy's precepts, this message strengthens the need to look for opportunity to scaffold learners to see the power of what if and guide them to develop meaningful action. But how do Edna and Melissa make it happen? Well, it takes an all hands on deck approach.

Think outside the box in terms of the what and how but uncompromised on the why of the inquiry. By grounding all aspects of the inquiry in issues that matter and by asking, listening and letting learners lead, they are really supported to make a dent in the world. You can find inspiration for inquiry-based learning experiences from learning experience collections such as the SDG Design Thinking Challenges and ATL Adventures at Home amongst others, created by experienced PYP educators on Toddle Community.

To give the first and final word to Margaret Mead,

" Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. "

The all-in-one collaboration platform for educators.

Toddle streamlines planning, assessments, reports, projects, portfolios, and family communication - all from one place!

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Disclaimer - This resource has been produced independently of and not endorsed by the IB. Toddle's resources seek to encourage sharing of perspectives and innovative ideas for classroom teaching & learning. They are not intended to be replacements for official IB guides and publications. Views and opinions expressed by the authors of these resources are personal and should not be construed as official guidance by the IB. Please seek assistance from your school's IB coordinator and/or refer to official IB documents before implementing ideas and strategies shared within these resources in your classroom.

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Designing Learning Experiences and Inquiry

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Recapturing and reflecting on our key learnings from sessions by inquiry speakers at The Inquiry Educators Summit.

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The Power of Provocations in IB PYP Single Subjects

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The Power of Provocations in IB PYP Single Subjects

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Nothing can replace the power and impact that a carefully designed provocation has on student learning. I've devoted the last several years to better understanding how provocations can be improved on and designed in ways that help students make stronger connections to the big ideas in a unit. A rich and meaningful provocation can:

Although I understand what a good provocation is, a couple of years ago, I challenged myself to better articulate what I truly believe makes for a rich and meaningful provocation. I spent a few hours really thinking my way through different considerations I have when designing provocations. In order to do this more effectively, I decided to create a 'Provocations Design Question Checklist' that zeroes in on important criteria related to designing effective provocations. Once I had created the first draft of this document, I teamed up with well-known educator and author, Trevor Mackenzie, to refine this checklist further. I'm thrilled to be able to share this document, which reflects the work of both Trevor and I.

I rarely like to take a stance on things as I like to remain open to new ideas. However, I found that taking a stance on what I believe to be the key building blocks to designing a rich and meaningful provocation helped me to clarify my own thinking. I wanted this checklist to stimulate teachers' thinking on the power of provocations and what makes a good provocation. At the same time, I hope that teachers can use this resource to create more meaningful provocations in the units that they teach in the single subjects.

Delivering Provocation With Intention and Purpose

In my Toddle Talks webinar, I focus on multiple ways in which a good provocation can impact student learning, especially at the beginning of a unit. Through careful design, a rich and meaningful provocation can help to create strong emotional hooks that grab students' attention. As well-known research John Hattie says, "We have to put students in a receptive frame of mind to help them focus on important outcomes that will guide their learning."

In my webinar, I also present a specific framework for using the initial provocation to help unpack the big ideas and concepts that the unit is focused on. This process involves students co-constructing important success criteria in a unit in order to make learning outcomes explicit and clear. Further, through the use of a driving question, the teacher applies specific strategies to unpack student thinking and make this thinking visual within the learning space. It is essential that teachers create visuals that will help to guide learning the rest of the unit. These visuals can be used for both peer and self-assessment and as a reminder to teachers about what they are observing throughout the unit in regards to student learning and progress.

The example below is from an Athletics unit that I taught when I was teaching PE at the Nanjing International School in China. I broke the main provocation down into three separate parts in the first lesson. Each part of the provocation was used to get students thinking about what important ideas/concepts are important to focus on. My goal was to help them understand the two main ideas for the unit- personal excellence and resilience. The driving question used to unpack the big ideas/concepts was: What are the ingredients for success in Athletics? I designed a provocation that was used across different lessons in the following ways:

Lesson 1:

We watched two different videos and I also had the students take part in a powerful learning experience outside on the oval running track. These three experiences combined allowed them to unpack and discover what the important ideas/concepts were in the unit.

Lesson 2:

Using student ideas, I created a visual that was then used to spark further discussions about the learning outcomes.

Lesson 3:

It was now time to make learning outcomes super explicit and clear with the help of this visual. I also created a checklist of success criteria based on important learning outcomes from the Personal, Social, Physical Education Scope and Sequence (PSPE). This checklist was created in student friendly language and was then used for peer and self-assessments as well as teacher observations and student reflections throughout the unit.

This entire process was only possible because of the rich and meaningful provocation that was identified to help students tune in to the unit. Many teachers understand the importance of a strong provocation at the start of a unit. The provocations I have seen teachers use are generally good, but oftentimes happen in isolation as a one-off activity, meaning that nothing further is done with the provocation.

The framework that I present in my Toddle Talk focuses on enabling students to make deep connections and involving them in co-constructing important success criteria. We also focus on using provocations that can and should be revisited throughout the unit because a good provocation lives on, and has continued power not only in the unit but long after the unit finishes.

Hope you find value in the Provocations Question Checklist and check out the webinar to make the most of provocations in your classrooms.

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The Power of Provocations in IB PYP Single Subjects

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Create more meaningful provocations while teaching single subject units in your IB PYP classrooms through this resource.

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Encouraging Student Questions in The PYP

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Encouraging Student Questions in The PYP

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In PYP's inquiry-based pedagogy, asking good questions is everything! Teacher and student questions are the foundation of every inquiry classroom. Yet, many teachers find it difficult to elicit meaningful student questions, and are constantly looking for ways to get students to wonder and inquire! In this presentation, experienced PYP educator Kristen Blum shares tips and ideas for establishing a culture of questioning, and unpacks 5 core strategies to help students ask deep, meaningful questions.

Conduct workshops and build a shared understanding with teachers, peers, and parents

Get strategies on how to plan for the "Student Questions" section of the PYP planner

Elicit students to ask powerful, deep questions and create a culture of inquiry

The all-in-one collaboration platform for educators.

Toddle streamlines planning, assessments, reports, projects, portfolios, and family communication - all from one place!

Book a free demo

Disclaimer - This resource has been produced independently of and not endorsed by the IB. Toddle's resources seek to encourage sharing of perspectives and innovative ideas for classroom teaching & learning. They are not intended to be replacements for official IB guides and publications. Views and opinions expressed by the authors of these resources are personal and should not be construed as official guidance by the IB. Please seek assistance from your school's IB coordinator and/or refer to official IB documents before implementing ideas and strategies shared within these resources in your classroom.

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Encouraging Student Questions in the PYP

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Establish a culture of questioning in the classroom by using five core strategies to help students ask meaningful questions.

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Strategies to Build an Inquiry Driven Community

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Strategies to Build an Inquiry Driven Community

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Strategies to Build an Inquiry Driven Community

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Explore how two schools created a culture of inquiry in their communities and strategies that helped them become truly inquiry-driven

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Inquiry-Based Learning: The Ultimate Guide