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When we shared our ideas we came up with 3 main reasons as to why implementing a concept-based curriculum is difficult.

Teacher Training: Educators need to be adequately trained to understand and implement a concept-driven curriculum. This often requires significant professional development to shift from content-focused to concept-focused teaching.

Aligning Assessments with Concepts: Traditional assessments often focus on factual recall. Developing assessments that effectively measure understanding of concepts and the ability to apply them in various contexts can be challenging.

Standardized Testing: In some education systems, standardized tests focus on factual knowledge, which can conflict with the goals of a concept-driven curriculum. Balancing these requirements can be challenging.

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Llamada con Cristina Bruneau Alfaro-20240703_210238-Grabación de la reunión.mp4

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My learning philosophy has changed and developed with the passing of the years. As a young learner I was extrinsically motivated and I learnt the contents of the school subjects due to external pressures and teacher expectation but I did not realize the usefulness, or power, of learning until I became an adult and learning became optional and my motivation became intrinsic. I discovered that learning had to be engaging and fun and I try to remember this when I am in the classroom. I co-founded a history club to continue refreshing and challenging my knowledge and as a result my interest in learning more about history has never left me.

One of the mottos of my teaching university is “All teachers should be learners” and this has stuck with me throughout my teaching career. In my opinion, a teacher who is continually making the effort to learn new things has more empathy for students who are on the receiving end of lessons. Education is an ever-changing field and to be a good teacher constant learning and developing should be the norm. I have learnt how to structure lessons and capture attention based on neuroscience studies, I am a firm believer in using technology to make learning accessible to all, regardless of language barriers, and now I have discovered an education system that has the lofty aim of making the world a better place. I am an IB PYP teacher with a strong desire to learn.

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U2 VT - What is happening?, what makes you say that?

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U2 VT - What is happening?, what makes you say that?

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Clip 1

What is happening? - Another teacher warns the protagonist to be confident in front of the class as they "can smell fear". The first exchange with the students is very tense with the teacher realising that the students have read everything on the syllabus and results in the teacher losing control of the class.

What makes you say that? - I can see that the first exchange is very tense as the protagonist is visibly nervous and taken aback by the students' knowledge of the syllabus. The students become more and more emboldened and leads to the teacher feelling inferior and under-prepared and one of the students making a thinly vieled insult stating that "it is a long way from Oklahoma State."

Clip 2

What is happening? - This is another class with the same students. This time the teacher starts the lesson by showing the children a picture that is not on the syllabus. She asks the students if it is good. The teacher states that there will be a new syllabus, one that poses the questions: what is art? what is a good or a bad painting and who decides?

What makes you say that? - At the beginning the students are lost and are quick to point out that it is not on the syllabus. This makes them feel unsure and insecure at first and in the beginning nobody whats to be a risk-taker and give their opinion about the art piece. This leads into a discussion about what art really is. It leads to self - questioning and doubt amongst the students with students giving personal opinions and reasons instead of shouting out prelearned facts. The students are encouraged to be open - minded and one student says pensively "Art isn't art until someone says it is." The class is much more engaged than the first class and the teacher has firm control over class behaviour.

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Rotating Stations – The children will be divided into 4 groups. Each group will get one of the Problem – posing or ‘Why’ and ‘how’ questions. Each group will be given a newsprint sheet. They will research, discuss and write their answer to the question on the sheet and hang it on the wall with a blank sheet alongside. After each group has done this, they will visit the sheet hanging on the wall next to them and write their reaction to what the original group has written. The groups rotate until they return to their own sheet, and they read the comments from the other groups which is followed by a whole class discussion.

Reference: Brookfield, S. D., & Preskill, S. (2015). The Discussion Book: 50 Great Ways to Get People Talking. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL29284073M/Discussion_Book

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U3 Forum Entry: Interrogative Forms and Inquiry

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U3 Forum Entry: Interrogative Forms and Inquiry

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1. Questioning has a very important role to play in discussion and inquiry and we can see this as it is represented in two of the learner attributes in the PYP; thinker and inquirer. Effective teacher questioning can guide the students to further their understanding of a topic but, as we see in Baby's Inquiry, Wilfred Gordon and Lindfor-Wells' example, that it is vital for inquiry that the students are given the space and the time to be the protagonists and to use their questions to guide learning and therefore questioning should be present in all stages of discussion and inquiry.

2. In the examples given, we see that the children are constantly inquiring. The baby in the powerpoint is inquiring into the sound of watches and we can see that he/she must be thinking why the picture of the watches is not making the same sound as the real watch. The child in Lindfor-Wells' example is carrying out a persistent inquiry. I particularly liked the question "but who lays eggs?" as it shows that the child is thinking about the possibility of lots of different animals laying eggs. We can also see in the story of Wilfred Gordon that he is clearly thinking and forming his own notion of what a memory is based on the responses to the question he asks.

3. These expressions are valid in all other disciplines and show that good questioning is transdisciplinary. The skills and expressions used in the resources for this forum could be applied to any topic as long as the child is curious to learn.

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The Sack of Doubt Activity

Part I

1.     Students are in their base groups. Each student writes on a piece of paper (with their name and the name of their team) a question that has arisen in our inquiry about why understanding of natural laws is important for humans.

2.     When everyone has had time to write their questions, they are exposed to the rest of the team, to see if anyone can answer their question.

3.     If someone knows the answer, the student who asked it records the answer in their notebook.

4.     If nobody on the team knows the answer to their question, it is given to the teacher who puts it in the class’ "sack of doubt".

Part II

In the second part of the session, the teacher pulls a question from the sack of doubt and asks if someone from another team can resolve it. If no one knows the answer to the question, the teacher resolves the problem. The teacher can use this to gauge the level of knowledge of the children and find areas that they may need to revise.

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U4 Forum Entry: Cooperative and Collaborative learning

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U4 Forum Entry: Cooperative and Collaborative learning

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Both Cooperative and Collaborative learning are forms of constructivist learning where the aim is that the learners create their own learning instead of the teacher giving them the information that they need to learn.

According to the video, cooperative learning is the teacher centred and product focused which is designed to work on close ended tasks or activities. Teachers divide the children into groups with predefined goals and roles and the children may be assessed on how well that they achieve those goals.

Collaborative learning is more focused on the process of working together and is based on the philosophy of interaction. In this style, the teacher only works as the facilitator and the children have more freedom to define their own roles.

While I agree with the majority of the video, I do not agree with the statement that collaborative learning is a style only suitable for use with older students. As a PYP teacher with experience in infant education, I know that children of all ages can take part in and benefit from collaborative learning.

Sources for my answer:

After watching the video, I still felt that I needed to get a clearer definition of what both terms meant and the differencies and similarities between them so I looked up the following article:  Gryshuk, B. R. (s. f.). Collaborative vs Cooperative Learning: Which Will Suit Your Course Best? https://www.educate-me.co/blog/collaborative-vs-cooperative-learning.

My basis for disagreeing with the video is my own experience of teaching and observing children learning.

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U5 Activity - Differentiation Activity – Jigsaw

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U5 Activity - Differentiation Activity – Jigsaw

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Pre-activity – The teacher asks the children some questions about forces (magnetism, push and pull and gravity). The students respond with thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs in the middle. This gives the teacher a general idea of the level of understanding before the activity.

1.     The children are in groups of 5/6. Each student is given a question card.

2.     The children must find other people with the same question card. The teacher must remember to help children that are not very socially adept.

3.     As a group, the students find the answer to the question and give a reason or evidence.

4.     The students then return to their base groups and must explain the answer to the other members of their base group.

Post Activity – The children repeat the pre-activity task to gauge improvement of knowledge about forces.

Tomlinson, C. A. (1999). The Differentiated Classroom: Responding to the Needs of All Learners. http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED429944

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N - When learning about differentiation I realised that I needed to learn more about how to differentiate for "middle" group of children that are neither the highest nor the lowest group. To do this, I also need to have anchor activities prepared for the children who typically find working independently difficult.

S - In my situation, my suggestion for myself is to introduce these ideas to the teachers in my school and, later, evaluate how well they are carrying them out. I liked Tomlinson's suggestion to stop considering the class as a whole group but to see the class as a group of individuals, all with their different backgrounds and experiences.

E - It is exciting to think that I can use this information to make my own teaching better but also to advise my workmates on how to solve the problems caused by having children of different levels in their classroom.

W - I worry that good differentiation may be considered an additional task by teachers and not viewed as an essential part of everyday teaching. It takes time but, as Tomlinson says, one of the best parts about a Teacher's job is looking under the surface and finding the individual beneath.

QEP VideoCoursesForTeachers. (2011, 5 octubre). Carol Tomlinson on Differentiation: Responsive Teaching [Vídeo]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01798frimeQ