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If your colleagues are struggling with how inquiry works for all students, we suggest the following steps:
1. Begin with an inquiry mindset. Get more information about their concerns. Examples: "tell me more...", "What are you worried about?" "What do you think will work best?" "What has worked for you in the past and why?"
2. Share specific teaching and student behaviors from the Learning and Teaching doc. Ask: which of these would be most appropriate? What's missing?
3. Take an experimental approach: agree to try some things and agree to meet again to discuss in  a short time frame.

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This post is an excerpt from a post entitled " Don't lock me into 8 key concepts" by Shannon O'Dwyer. The full post explains concepts in a nutshell and why concept-driven teaching is both easy and hard. This excerpt provides an insight into how teachers can make it happen. Concepts in a Nutshell
Concepts are over-arching mental constructs that students need to make sense of the content we teach. Conceptual understanding enables students to apply facts and skills to the world around them. By starting with concepts, we create a curriculum that's worthy of our students' time and effort. The concepts that drive the PYP are timeless (factual examples change, but not the core understanding), universal (so students can apply understandings across cultures, situations and disciplines) and abstract (so students engage in higher order thinking to grapple with central ideas).

By helping students achieve conceptual understanding, we ensure that they can take facts and skills, and do something with them beyond this moment, this lesson and this classroom. I have seen plenty of students who can accurately convert between metres & centimetres but are unable to choose an appropriate length of skipping rope for a 3-person playground game. These students had mastered a mathematical skill in isolation, but not yet developed a conceptual understanding of length.
Why concept-driven teaching is hard
It's just so messy. Concept-driven learning is an iterative process of constantly pulling apart ideas, putting them back together, re-applying them to different situations, finding ways to correct misconceptions and enabling each child to make meaning in their own way. It would be a lot easier to say, "Here's what you need to know, practise that, now you get a sticker." The problem is that you'd have to add, "Good luck applying that to your life". Factual knowledge is easy to teach because it is simple, procedural and locked in situ. But unless your students intend to live forever in their 4th Grade classroom, that knowledge is utterly useless to them.
"How can I make it happen?"
Questions
Use teacher and student questions as a springboard for deep, conceptual dialogue. Sort, unpack and challenge students' questions. Discuss open vs. closed questions, abstract vs. concrete questions, fat vs. thin questions (ie 1 answer or many). Keep asking probing questions (such as How do you know..?/reflection) to prevent shallow understanding.

Problematic Knowledge
Design resources and situations that are problematic. Perhaps the facts do not add up, or there are pieces of information missing. This challenges students to search for connections, inferences and transference to make sense of the inquiry. Anything that is non-linear, with multiple solutions and multiple interpretations helps our students build the flexibility of thinking to grapple with complexity, change and abstraction.

Inquire
Every day! Make sure you devote enough time for students to actuallydo the learning and construct the understanding. They need ample time for wondering, trying, tinkering, playing, researching and coming to conclusions. Don't step away. Be a participant who says, "Why did you...?", "What would happen if...?"

IntegrateWork with single-subject teachers to develop integrated thinking. Students should take their understandings from class to class, exploring concepts through different content and perspectives (eg symphony orchestras and bus timetables both build an understanding of systems). Try to keep concepts at the core of your planning meetings, to avoid creating shallow, thematic units. Avoid throwing together "linked activities". If the students are studying Ancient Greece, don't immediately say, "Let's make pots!". Perhaps the most important concept is "legacies" and students investigate the influence of the golden ratio on both Art and Mathematics. While studying natural disasters, let students make paper mache volcanoes at home. In class, explore the concept of "impact" on geography, individual lives and communities. How do artists help communities remember and heal after a natural disaster?"

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To read the full post, visit Shannon's blog here.

Shannon is a PYP educator, whose passions include curriculum design, literacy and ESOL practices, enrichment and technology integration. Shannon loves working in PYP classrooms, where each day is filled with the questions, problems and discoveries of young minds. She blogs at shannonodwyer.com and tweets @S_ODwyer.

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This post is an excerpt from a post entitled " Don't lock me into 8 key concepts" by Shannon O'Dwyer. The full post explains concepts in a nutshell and why concept-driven teaching is both easy and hard. This excerpt provides an insight into how teachers can make it happen.

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What's the big idea? Concept-driven, inquiry-based learning

Everyone talks about concept-driven, inquiry-based learning, but what does it look like in practice? What does the curriculum look like and what requirements can we imagine that might lead to the desired outcomes? How do we overcome the tyranny of content-driven classrooms and examinations? Contemporary curriculum experts agree that conceptual understanding is key for student success in school, jobs, and life.

Who?

A concept-driven, inquiry-based education, like the IB programmes, centres on learners. The IB programmes promote open communication based on understanding and respect and encourage students to become active, compassionate, lifelong learners. This type of education is holistic in nature, with the whole person in mind, concerned with cognitive development, along with concern for social, emotional and physical well-being.

How?

A concept-driven education develops effective approaches to teaching and learning; empowering young people for a lifetime of learning, independently and in collaboration with others and preparing a community of learners that engage with global challenges through inquiry, action, and reflection. An IB education, for example, aims to develop a range of competencies and dispositions that include skills for thinking, working with others, communicating, managing self, and research.

Why?

At its heart, this type of education should work within global contexts. Students increase their understanding of language and culture ( multilingualism and intercultural understanding) and encourage global and local engagement, including developmentally-appropriate aspects of challenges in the environment, development, conflict, rights, cooperation, and governance.

What?

This type of education also explores significant content and provides opportunities to develop both disciplinary and interdisciplinary understanding. It offers curriculum frameworks and courses that are broad and balanced, conceptual and connected, and, finally, rigorously assessed. Working together, these four characteristics define a concept-driven, inquiry-based education like the four age-appropriate IB programmes - Primary Years Programme (PYP), Middle Years Programme (MYP), Diploma Programme (DP) and the Career-related Programme (CP). It takes all of these dimensions working together to create a solid education.

How is it possible to put topics such as bullying, sex education and school rules within a conceptual framework? Bladins International School introduced a unique Social Emotional Learning curriculum in August 2015. The table below outlines the authentic connections that they made between social and emotional learning topics and bigger, conceptual ideas.

Concept-driven curriculum

KNOW AND DO vs. KNOW AND DO AND UNDERSTAND. We too often assume that if students knew and did, they would understand. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Conceptual understanding adds a depth-dimension to students' educational experience.

In practical terms, educational frameworks like the IB's MYP establishes a common core of big ideas that matter. These KEY CONCEPTS form the heart of a connected curriculum. They come from and are shared across academic disciplines. They unify students' academic experience and provide teachers with a common vocabulary. Concepts create a culture of thinking that invites students to see connections, contradictions, alternative perspectives, and different ways of thinking. At a time when adolescents are beginning to move into more sophisticated modes of abstract thinking, concepts offer students something consistent to think about over time and across subjects. Concepts are not single words, but complex ideas that can shape teaching and learning. Examples such as identity, logic, perspective, relationship and systems can run through a typical student's school week. Imagine how teachers of different disciplines might be able to use these big ideas as stepping stones, ladders or bridges to the facts, concepts and debates that they want students to uncover and explore. In addition to these big overarching ideas, concept-driven education, like the MYP, structures the curriculum with discipline-specific RELATED concepts that provide depth and focus. They narrow the scope of inquiry, while leaving enough room to integrate a wide range of content that is appropriate or required in local or national contexts. Related concepts invite teachers and students to go beyond studying facts to thinking about what those facts mean and why they are relevant. This is an important feature of concept-driven education. Teaching and learning need to reflect both how knowledge is structured in the real world and how we learn. These days, facts are easily and inexpensively 'knowable'. However, they often remain distinct and without any connection to each other, except through the strategy of grouping them into topics. This is where most educational systems stop. A concept-based education goes on to ask, what do these facts mean? How are they related? To which ideas do they give us entry? We know that students learn by taking what they know and then building on it. We know that the holy grail of education-the ability to transfer understanding from one experience or domain to another-is facilitated by discussions around concepts. We have cellular evidence that we build memories by making connections and building rich networks of associations and multiple pathways for access. Concepts help this happen; they are the superhighways of learning. This is not simply a middle school phenomenon, either. Advanced academic programmes like the IB Diploma are headed in this direction. Instead of prescribed content, complex options and stipulated factual knowledge focus on thinking, connecting, and building. Concepts are what makes that possible.

Abenaa Uttenhal, an MYP year 2 advisor teacher at Bladins International School reflects, "When we teach the mentor curriculum through concepts, students can more clearly see the connections to their every day life - they get it! The discussions we have in class make us think about ourselves. It makes us realise who we are in the world. We are important in the world but we are not the only ones in it. Teaching SEL through concepts helps it to make sense to the students, it makes learning relevant and makes students see 'this matters to me'."

Inquiry-based learning

Concepts change the way that teachers teach, and students learn. They inflect the nature of classroom assignments and assessment, (formal and informal). For example, an MYP history teacher may choose for their class to study European origins instead of presenting a lecture about northern European civilization in the last Ice Age. By doing so, the teacher can create an opportunity for students to develop their inquiry into important ideas about the relationship between space, place and time, and what material culture suggests about society and identity. Concept-driven education facilitates classroom discussion that will focus on how things are the same and how they are different; also, how what we know about the past, for example, can help us to understand the present. Concept-driven education helps students develop structured inquiry into big ideas that matter and then help them assess how much they really understand through a rich and varied programme of assessment-some of it potentially highly digital-that allows a flexible choice of content that supports conceptual learning, or that is compatible with national curriculum. These are 21 st-Century requirements for teachers engaged with future students being born now who will probably live into the 22 nd century.
Sebastien Barnard is the Communications and Marketing Manager for the IB in Asia Pacific. He based his post on presentations by Robert Harrison, (@Robert_ibmyp), IB Head of MYP Development.

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Concept-based learning for today's students

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Everyone talks about concept-driven, inquiry-based learning, but what does it look like in practice? What does the curriculum look like and what requirements can we imagine that might lead to the desired outcomes? How do we overcome the tyranny of content-driven classrooms and examinations?

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There's no doubt that learning environments play an important role in student success. That's why it's so important that teachers know how to create flexible classroom layouts, giving students a voice and even a daily choice in terms of their own learning.

Flexible learning environments can inspire students and keep them motivated. We look at why this is and how to adopt this model into your own classroom.

Creating Flexible Teaching and Learning Spaces

To create a successful learning environment, there are many factors to first consider. First and foremost, the needs of both learning and teaching must be balanced, according to intelligent learning space provider Envoplan. This ensures that both teachers and students achieve the most fruitful experience possible from the classroom space.

Next, the balance needs to extend between learners. One of the many benefit of flexible learning environments is that they allow space to test and optimize learning for each child or set of children. A successful learning environment can differ between groups of students, so a space designed to be flexible allows teachers to cater to these strengths as needed. Cristel Hutchinson at furniture manufacturer Haskell, says teachers can take a note from the design industry to test out what works for each group of students.

Since designers always test out prototypes and gather feedback from users before reaching the ideal design, teachers might consider testing out new layouts and asking students how they feel. In turn, this can make students feel more involved in their own learning, which can make them feel more connected to their personal success.

If you're interested in flexible learning environments but aren't sure where to start, an article by furniture design company Smith System lists its benefits and offers a few ideas for tackling the challenge. In the article, educator Kelly Almer stresses that it takes time and patience to adopt a more flexible room. It won't always work the first time, and it will require strategy and testing. However, being patient and prioritizing functionality can ensure that the switch is both fruitful and sustainable.

Increasing Student Choice

Flexible learning environments are becoming a priority in schools because they enable teachers to create unique environments that emphasize student choice. As explained by the office interiors provider Connecting Elements, flexible furniture gives students more autonomy regarding where and how they learn. As a result, this empowers them to feel more in control of their education, which may improve focus and productivity.

Justin Raudys at Prodigy agrees that flexible seating is an important way to expand student choice. He cites a teacher who uses bean bag chairs in a classroom with a large number of high needs students. The teacher says that providing seating choice allows mutual respect and trust to build between teachers and students, which are two key factors for improving learning outcomes.

In contrast, rigid classroom environments that don't change can actually have a negative impact on student learning outcomes, according to Clear Touch Interactive. Being stuck in a stagnant space that doesn't change visually or physically can cause one's mindset to also become stuck in the same thought patterns, making it harder to think outside the box.

Adaptable Work Spaces

Creating a more flexible classroom starts with using adaptable student desks and chairs. Mobile work spaces provide opportunities for individualization, which Learning Transformed authors Eric Sheninger and Thomas C. Murray say allow students to create a learning environment that bests suits their learning style.

Educational writer Bella Abdurachmanov at The Learning Mind agrees that moveable desks and chairs let students design their own workspaces, depending on what they require that day. If a student wants a more quiet space one day, for example, there could be options in the classroom for sitting solo. On the other hand, there might also be options for sitting in a group.

Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, adds that the latter is especially important, as it enables students to engage in equal discussions. Having desks that can be easily moved into a circle, for example, can promote fruitful collaboration amongst students.

This also reflects a growing shift away from the traditional classroom model, where the teacher lectures at the front of the room. Creating opportunities for students and their teacher to work collaboratively helps decrease power dynamics and place more focus on student ideas.

Examples of Creative Desks and Seating

To see what adaptable desks and chairs in a classroom might look like, consider this roundup of classroom layout ideas by the Plato to Playdough blog. Here, founder Malia Hollowell showcases a wide variety of real-world flexible classroom environments.

One desk layout uses soft yoga balls instead of chairs, which can create a more dynamic seat for younger kids and keep them focused. Another idea is to add a working area with foldable beach chairs, which can change things up and keep learning fun.

A reading spot with a special feature could make learning even more exciting for younger students. The Simplified Classroom blog showcases a canvas teepee in one classroom. Sitting in the teepee to read is a privilege that can be earned after successful completion of chores, like putting things away and cleaning. So in addition to being a playful and creative classroom workspace that inspires creativity, the rules around using the teepee also teach responsibility and independence.

Edutopia executive producer Stephen Merrill highlights another teacher who uses flexible seating as a way to teach responsibility. In that classroom, there are multiple styles of chairs and seating, including high-top tables and a sofa. By setting expectations for how each workspace is to be used, students learn to sit in a place they can experience most success for the task at hand.

Comfortable, Welcoming Environments

A flexible, student-centered learning environment is one that feels comfortable and welcoming. The Room 241 team at Concordia University Portland points out that students can't learn well when they feel uncomfortable.

That's why it's so important to emphasize creature comforts in the classroom and make it a safe place in which to relax, share and learn. Keeping the classroom clean is a simple way to make students feel at ease, as messes and clutter can cause anxiety that deters student learning outcomes. Plus, clean classrooms emphasize flexibility because it's easier to move furniture and adapt to learning needs at a moment's notice when you don't have to clear clutter out of the way.

Another way to make classrooms more comfortable for students is to adorn walls with colorful stimulation and complexity. E-learning provider SweetRush points out that these two factors are key in enhancing the learning experience for students. Hanging art on the wall is an easy way to achieve both of these marks.

Creating a large bulletin board or other presentation space for hanging art can keep student work organized. The art can be changed on a monthly basis to keep things fresh for both teachers and students.

Blogger and kindergarten teacher Greg Smedley-Warren gives an example of how to organize a student work wall. He uses colorful, vinyl mustaches with clothespins, placed neatly in rows on the entryway wall into his classroom. Seeing their work displayed as they enter makes students feel excited and proud and can set a positive tone for the rest of the day.

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Flexible Classroom Design: How to Create a Student-Centered Learning Environment

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Flexible classroom design emphasize student choice and improve learning outcomes. Here's how to create a learning space that adapts to student needs.

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Enhanced PYP

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Enhanced PYP

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Enhanced PYP

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3 Ways to Build Student Agency into Your Lessons - Dr. Catlin Tucker

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Although many teachers recognize the importance of making students active agents in the classroom, it is easy to overlook student agency when we plan our lessons. However, the ability to make key decisions about their learning is a powerful motivator for students. If they are invited to tailor the learning to their interests, decide how [...]

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Readers Writers Workshop Support PYP Blog 

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Readers Writers Workshop Support PYP Blog 

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Developing approaches to learning (ATL) | SharingPYP Blog

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V2 Summary of PYP Framework_Enhanced model (1)

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Making Teaching Visible

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As someone in charge of coordinating a program that is committed to a transdisciplinary approach, I shouldn't be asking this. I should know. But for too many years, I've relied too heavily on the shallow understanding that transdisciplinary learning simply is "learning that transcends the traditional subject areas".

But I'm not quite sure I deeply understand what that means, even after several years of workshops, reading, discussing and thinking about this question: What the heck is transdisciplinary learning? Which leads me to wonder, "Would I be able to recognize it, if I saw it?" Which most certainly means I can't help people adapt their written, taught and assessed curriculum to be more transdisciplinary, if it wasn't.

So, it was time to learn more about this concept (which is also unknown to both Microsoft & Google, as evidenced by that little squiggly red line that obnoxiously appears every time I type the word).

And, as someone who is committed to the social construction of understanding, I'm sharing my thinking with you all, that you might learn from and with me, and hopefully add to my understanding too.

My question: What can I listen and watch for so that I know a teacher/team/school is committed to and understands transdisciplinary learning?

To begin to answer my question, I pored over the IB document, The Primary Years Programme as a model of trandisciplinary learning.

From that document, I synthesized that transdisciplinary learning is written, taught and assessed curriculum that:

engaging, relevant, challenging & significant

innovative

based in the exploration of real-life issues

a new vision & a new experience for learning

radically different from traditional education

universal (grounded in timeless, abstract, universal & transferable concepts)

embedded in the essential elements of the PYP, particularly transdisciplinary knowledge, key concepts & Approaches to Learning (this represents THE CORE of the PYP)

transcends

traditional subjects, but still has relevance across subject areas. Transdisciplinary learning isn't about getting rid of subject areas. Rather, it is complemented and supported by the subject areas.

to what is real in the real world

may involve

what is commonly known as Problem-Based Learning

most definitely involves

collaboration (by teachers & by students)

problem-solving

students to be autonomous

all students to contribute in a variety of ways

for spontaneous and easy connections across learning

students to acquire and sufficiently & competently apply Approaches to Learning, which are the tools of inquiry

students to explore our human commonality

lifelong learning, since it mimics learning we do in real life

an awareness of the commonality of the human experience

broad perspectives

deep understanding of timeless, abstract, universal and transferable concepts

a local issue or problem that also has global implications

students work individually & in groups of different sizes and different make-ups for different reasons

students to be actively constructing meaning through inquiry

that the relationships between the teacher & student changes

higher-order thinking

participation/involvement/engagement

the inter-relatedness of complex issues

students the relevance of what they're learning. No student or teacher doubts the authentic reason for learning what we're learning

teachers out of their comfort zones

eliminates

values & supports

Based on this synthesis, I wanted to develop a checklist that I could use to help me when observing in classrooms and perhaps teachers could use too as a self-assessment. ( Disclaimer: I can imagine that some of my many astute colleagues in the PYP community will balk at the idea of reducing the very complex idea of Transdisciplinary Learning into a simple checklist; but I'm going to give it a go anyway).
When watching or reflecting on a collection of lessons or on a unit, ask:
Were students:

involved, engaged, participating? (C3.5)

exploring a real-life, authentic issue? (C2.6a) Was the issue/problem a local one, with global connections? (C2.7)

focused on constructing an understanding of timeless, abstract, universal and transferable concepts? (C3.1a, C3.6)

collaborating in groups? Did they use different grouping methods throughout? (C3.10a, C3.14a)

having to collaborate? Did the teacher have to collaborate in preparation? (C1.2)

independent & autonomous? Did this take the teacher out of her/his comfort zone? Did s/he feel out of control at times? (C3.2, C3.5)

obviously studying one subject-area in particular? Were students able to make spontaneous connections to other learning? (C3.1b)

acquiring and applying the tools of inquiry (Approaches to Learning) ? (C1.1c, C2.1d, C3.1a)

exploring multiple perspectives? (C2.8, C3.6)

understanding and thus able to articulate why they were learning what they were learning? (C3.13)

able to contribute? ALL students? (C3.7, C3.10)

Although I've taught in or coordinated a PYP for six years and I've visited with other PYP practitioners and visited other PYP schools, my experience is that Transdisciplinary Learning remains elusive. I look forward to continually deepening my understanding of this essential component of the IB Primary Years Programme.

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What the heck is transdisciplinary learning?

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As someone in charge of coordinating a program that is committed to a transdisciplinary approach, I shouldn't be asking this. I should know. But for too many years, I've relied too heavily on the shallow understanding that transdisciplinary learning simply is "learning that transcends the traditional subject areas".