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Long range plans template (transdisciplinary learning).docx

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PYP Principles into practice - Approaches to Learning

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PYP Principles into practice - Approaches to Learning

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Designing and reviewing a transdisciplinary programme of inquiry

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Designing and reviewing a transdisciplinary programme of inquiry

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Designing and reviewing a transdisciplinary programme of inquiry

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The remote component must be completed by August 7th in order to receive a certificate for the workshop.

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Curriculum from within (What's worth needing, doing, experiencing and wondering?)

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Reflections on the Field of Curriculum—A Conversation with With Guest William Shubert, PhD - nexus

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This episode features curriculum scholar Dr. William Schubert, Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at UIC, Dr. Schubert served as Chair of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Director of Graduate Studies, Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Curriculum Studies, and Coordinator of the M.Ed. in […]

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Choose a UoI and brainstorm an assessment strategy/tool that would allow you to provide feedback and assess students' conceptual understanding

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Describe a learning experience to support a chosen unit of inquiry. Be sure to show and explain how it a) develops conceptual understanding and also b) how it embraces and reflect an inquiry-driven approach to teaching.

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Creating a concept-driven, transdisciplinary UoI

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Creating a concept-driven, transdisciplinary UoI

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Images From Four More Years of ‘What’s Going On in This Picture?’ (Published 2020)

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A slide show including some of our most popular images published from 2016 to 2020 in “What’s Going On in This Picture?”

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Images From Four More Years of ‘What’s Going On in This Picture?’ (Published 2020)

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A slide show including some of our most popular images published from 2016 to 2020 in “What’s Going On in This Picture?”

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support@ibo.org

Name: 2 day blended workshop

Title: PYP Cat. 2 - Learning and teaching for conceptual understanding

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1. Review the Powerpoint in session 12.

2. What are two stars (areas of strength) that you feel your school does well with respect to conceptual understanding? What is a wish (an area for growth)?

3. Choose one area to focus in on with regard to supporting your school in further developing conceptual understanding. Use questions in the image that are relevant to you to help develop your presentation.

4. Create a 5–10 minute presentation (e.g. using Google Slides, MindMeister) based on your learning through this workshop with strengths and possible areas for development for your school with regard to conceptual understanding. Considering your role and school needs, choose if this will be:

• a year-level presentation

• a whole-staff meeting presentation

• a presentation to the pedagogical leadership team.

Ensure the presentation includes:

• areas of strength

• areas that require further development

• possible strategies for making changes (include examples of changes based on your

analysis).

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1. Review the planner templates in session 10, specifically page 6.

2. Engage carefully with the diagram that shows the PYP collaborative planning process and make note of all the places that provide opportunities to develop conceptual understanding.

3. What do you notice? Is there anything you would add to or change in the planner based on what you notice

regarding developing conceptual understanding? How do these templates and examples connect to your planners?

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kelsey.lewis.ca@gmail.com

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Grade 3 Who we are unit of inquiry sample

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Grade 3 Who we are unit of inquiry sample

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Padlet - Formulating questions through the lens of the key concepts

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Padlet - Formulating questions through the lens of the key concepts

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Word Economic Forum - Top 10 skills of 2025

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Word Economic Forum - Top 10 skills of 2025

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Education

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These are the top 10 job skills of tomorrow - and how long it takes to learn them

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Critical thinking and problem-solving top the list of skills employers believe will grow in prominence in the next five years, according to the Future of Jobs report.

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Padlet - Children's literature and concepts

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Padlet - Children's literature and concepts

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Kelsey's enhanced example to reflect an assessment approach that focuses on feedback to feedforward

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Kelsey's enhanced example to reflect an assessment approach that focuses on feedback to feedforward

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Template for Asynchronous work (Creating a transdisciplinary unit of inquiry)

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Template for Asynchronous work (Creating a transdisciplinary unit of inquiry)

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Principles into Practice - Learning and Teaching

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Principles into Practice - Learning and Teaching

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Principles into Practice - Learning and Teaching

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Long-range plans for asynchronous session

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Long-range plans for asynchronous session

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Programme standards and practices (2020) - Cross-programme resources

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Programme standards and practices (2020) - Cross-programme resources

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Collaborative planning process for learning and teaching

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Collaborative planning process for learning and teaching

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 The learning community - A community of learners

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The Learning Community - International Mindedness

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PYP Early years series: Documenting Learning (ep. 3)

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PYP Early years series: Documenting Learning (ep. 3)

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PYP Early years series: Documenting learning (ep. 3) | SharingPYP Blog

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In the final episode of a series focused on the PYP support material ‘The early years in the PYP’, IB voices spoke to Anne van Dam and Kathryn O’Connell, two early years educators who have worked in local and global contexts, to explore some of the opportunities and tensions for educators around the…

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The Living Walls Project: Promoting student-centred learning, inquiry, action and reflection

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The Living Walls Project: Promoting student-centred learning, inquiry, action and reflection

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The Living Walls Project: Promoting student-centred learning, inquiry, action and reflection | SharingPYP Blog

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Documenting inquiry is hard. The process takes skill and commitment. This article describes how a group of educators were introduced to the emerging curriculum framework to enhance their understanding of guiding and documenting the inquiry process. Through an initiative called the Living Walls proje…

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From surface to deep learning: The importance of knowledge

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From surface to deep learning: The importance of knowledge

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This article illustrates how the use of the SOLO Taxonomy allowed our students to progress from shallow to deep thinking.
Of the five essential elements in the PYP, is there one that often gets overlooked when planning units of inquiry?

The planner prompts us to think explicitly about attitudes, skills, action and concepts. But what about knowledge? It can sometimes be challenging for teachers to identify a body of knowledge for a particular unit; it can feel uncomfortable identifying specific knowledge to be learned because it can direct the inquiry in a way that takes control away from students. I would argue, however, that identifying some essential knowledge needed to understand a central idea gives more power to the students and encourages them to become self-directed, assessment capable learners.

In Making the PYP happen (2009), the section on whether it is possible to "identify a particular body of knowledge for PYP schools" is addressed by explaining that, although there are some "core commonalities" that represent shared human experiences (which led to the selection of the six transdisciplinary themes in the PYP framework), schools should develop their scope and sequences to reflect their unique circumstances. But do our scope and sequence documents always document the knowledge associated with units of inquiry?

Lynn Erickson's Structure of Knowledge (2002) is often used in the PYP workshops to illustrate how concepts and knowledge interact to help students form a principal generalization (similar to the central ideas we all have in our programmes of inquiry). The foundations of being able to form these principal generalizations (or understand a PYP central idea) are based on identifying the essential facts that will interact with the chosen macro and micro concepts (or, as we call them in the PYP, key and related concepts).

John Hattie and Gregory Donoghue (2013) define learning as:

The process of [students] developing sufficient surface knowledge to then [enable them to] move to deeper understanding such that one can appropriately transfer this learning to new tasks and situations.

Hattie states that there is a right time for interventions and the use of deliberate learning strategies. Based on his 800+ meta-analyses of now over 50,000 research articles, Hattie has argued that allowing students to inquire without structure too early does not work, having an effect size of only 0.31, less than an acceptable year's growth (the 0.4 'hinge point' which defines a typical year's growth).

This is where the SOLO Taxonomy can come in handy. Although it was developed by Biggs and Collis back in 1982 it seems to have had a resurgence of interest recently. Hattie (2012) describes it as "the most powerful model for understanding these three levels of understanding [surface, deep and conceptual]". In her new book entitled The Power of Inquiry (2015), Kath Murdoch writes that the SOLO Taxonomy "explicates the work of John Dewey, who wrote extensively about our understanding arising from our capacity to see connections". And Pam Hook (2012), who has released a variety of publications to help schools implement the model across a whole range of subject areas, states that it offers solutions to "ensure cognitive stretch for all students, build interest for all students, build confidence for all students and share power amongst all students."

In the SOLO model, there are four levels of thinking. At Seisen International School we have simplified the names of these levels for use with our students: unistructural (which we have renamed 'one idea'), multistructural (which we have renamed 'many ideas'), relational (which we have renamed 'connecting ideas') and extended abstract (which we have renamed 'going further'). The first two levels are surface level learning and require students to find information and collect ideas. The last two require deeper thinking where students have to process the information they gathered in the first two levels. If students are not at a stage where they have an idea about the concept, topic or subject, they are said to be at the pre-structural stage (which we renamed 'getting started').

At Seisen we have had some success adopting the SOLO Taxonomy. Students refer to the levels when reflecting on their progress and setting goals. It has become our language of learning, having aligned it with our own inquiry cycle (Getting Started - Investigating - Connecting Ideas - Going Further). Using a list of appropriate verbs at each level, learning engagements are designed across the continuum so that students can identify where they are and select their next steps. The students become evaluators of their own learning and teaching teams have a tool to use to answer the question posed in box 3 - What are the possible ways of assessing student learning in the context of the lines of inquiry? What evidence will we look for?

By the time the students approach their exhibition year, consistent use of the tool is enabling students to plot their own learning progressions using the SOLO verbs at each stage of their independent inquiry. Isn't this our goal as teachers to structure inquiries in a way that encourages students to become independent, self-directed, assessment capable learners?

Here you can find links to some grade-level examples of the SOLO Taxonomies being used for units of inquiry on our blog.

Are you currently using SOLO in your PYP school? Are you interested in learning more about SOLO? Please contact us at pyp.curriculum@ibo.org.

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Michael Hughes an experiences PYP Coordinator, currently into his fourth year at Seisen International School, Tokyo. Before this he worked in international schools in Singapore and Jordan and has ten years experience in the PYP. He is a work- shop leader in the Asia Pacific region.

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From surface to deep learning: The importance of knowledge

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This article illustrates how the use of the SOLO Taxonomy allowed our students to progress from shallow to deep thinking. Of the five essential elements in the PYP, is there one that often gets overlooked when planning units of inquiry? The planner prompts us to think explicitly about attitudes, skills, action and concepts.

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PSP realized strategies for conceptual understanding

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PSP realized strategies for conceptual understanding

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Programme standards and practices realized

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Programme standards and practices realized

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Programme standards and practices realized

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Programme standards and practices realized

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PSP realized strategies for conceptual understanding

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PSP realized strategies for conceptual understanding

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· What strikes us as noteworthy about this scene?
· Our current education model was defined by the Committee of Ten over a century ago.  What skills and character traits did they want young adults to have for 20th Century assembly line jobs?
·  What skills and character traits are essential for students for career and citizenship in the 21st century?
·  Do we critique our assignments on the basis of which essential skills they’re developing?
·  How can we assess student progress on essential skills?  
·  What micro-innovations could we try to accelerate student development of essential skills?

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An initiative of the Lien Foundation, How We Do School is a series of short films that explores how schools in British Columbia and Finland address diverse learning needs of its students and what we can learn from them. By showing what is possible, we hope this can in turn inspire Singapore and inform ways that we can go about making inclusion more of a reality. inclusionmatters.sg

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WHAT IS ‘HOW WE DO SCHOOL’ An initiative of the Lien Foundation, How We Do School is a series of short films that explores how schools in British Columbia an…

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Learning and Teaching - A transdisciplinary programme of inquiry

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Learning and Teaching - A transdisciplinary programme of inquiry

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Confidence Chart Spider Curriculum questions

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Learning and Teaching - Transdisciplinary learning

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Learning and Teaching - Transdisciplinary learning

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Learning and Teaching - Transdisciplinary Learning

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Learning and Teaching - A transdisciplinary programme of inquiry

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Learning and Teaching - A transdisciplinary programme of inquiry

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Padlet - Identifying Key and Related Concepts

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Padlet - Identifying Key and Related Concepts