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Team Reflection from Akron- Ohio

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IB Coordinator

Prince William County, VA

mccurdae@pwcs.edu

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5th grade teacher

Akron Public Schools, Akron, Ohio

cshaver@apslearns.org

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Reid Bingham, Design Teacehr from Dwight NYC

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Reid Bingham, Design Teacehr from Dwight NYC

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my email is rbingham@dwight.edu

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Consider the three different examples of student reflections shared in the document.

What do you see evidenced in the student reflections? What are the different ways in which students have reflected?

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Pick one of the photos, and considering that photo respond to these questions:

What do you see in this learning environment?

How do you think this environment support learning?

What does it make you wonder about an optimal environment for all learning, including the exhibition?

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Good for collaboration, helps learn how to work together

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Letters and Ink Blog - Redefining education one letter at a time.

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Have you ever heard of or seen a new teaching strategy from a coworker and said, "I have to try that TOMORROW!"? That was me last week when I heard about Hexagonal Thinking from the Brave New Teaching Podcast. It just SOUNDS cool.

I immediately paused my podcast, put down my vacuum ( because who doesn't listen to podcasts while they're cleaning? It's a thing, I swear), and ran to my computer. I googled "Hexagonal Thinking" and found Betsy Potash's incredibly innovative strategy for critical thinking on her Spark Creativity blog. I was immediately obsessed and worked it into my Hamlet lesson for the next week.

Here's how the Hexagonal Thinking strategy works:

1. Students start with a bunch of hexagons that are labelled with different terms related to the concept you're teaching. In my case, it was the themes of revenge and madness in Hamlet.

2. Students shift the hexagons around, creating connections between each of the terms. Every hexagon that touches another must have some kind of logical connection.

3. Students justify 6 of their connections in writing.

Yes, it's that easy!

My school is in blended learning mode, so some of my students are virtual and some of them are in person. We use Google Classroom as our LMS, so I decided to use Google slides to create the activity for students, and Betsy has an amazing template if you head to her website. I wanted mine to reflect the mood of Hamlet, so I created my own based off of hers.

Here's how it looked:

Hexagonal Thinking in Google Slides

I made a square slide and connected a bunch of hexagon shapes together and colored them. I added a rectangle in the center of each with a drop shadow so that students could easily place the terms, then downloaded the slide as a .png file and made it the background of a new slide deck for the assignment. Finally, I chose a variety of terms related to the themes of Hamlet and added them as text boxes.

I've never done anything like this before in my class. They are seniors in their last semester of high school, so it takes a lot to get them excited about anything. When I introduced the activity, I knew it was a gamble. To my surprise, my young scholars were PUMPED!

What did the students think?

I knew students were engaged because as I flipped through their decks on Google Classroom, every single student was moving around their little text boxes. With the help of Hexagonal Thinking, I performed a mini- miracle. We actually had a lot of fun debating which words should go where, and students were quick to point out that I should have included Ophelia. It was amazing seeing the high- level connections that students were making and a lot of them were drawing conclusions that told me they will be so ready to write their culminating essays next week.

Here's a partially finished Hexagonal Thinking Map for Hamlet:

One student's digital Hexagonal Thinking!

The consensus with my students is that Hexagonal Thinking is an official win. Students are drawing conclusions and developing claims while backing them up with logical reasoning - all while playing with words. It kind of felt like sneaking zucchini into muffins to trick your kids into eating more veggies. I will DEFINITELY be doing this activity again!

As a bonus, I love that students can do this in person or online - and they can do a tactile version or digital. Here's how I prep all activities for in-person and remote ( or absent) students.

Short on time? Head to my Teachers Pay Teachers store for a pre-made, fully editable, print and digital copy of Hamlet Hexagonal Thinking (and other texts)!

Print and digital Hexagonal Thinking activity on Teachers Pay Teachers

Have you used Hexagonal Thinking with your students? How did it go? Let me know in the comments!

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ELA Strategies I Love: Hexagonal Thinking - Letters and Ink Blog

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How did Hexagonal Thinking go for my students studying Hamlet? Awesome. Here's how Hexagonal Thinking works in my ELA classroom.

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Be able to vocalize their thoughts and justify them to peers

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Be able to vocalize their thoughts and justify them to peers

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farleyc@milwaukee.k12.wi.us

ALBA School

Milwaukee, WI

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tracy's big break into the film industry 

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Mercedes Ramos-5th grade bilingual teacher

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Mercedes Ramos-5th grade bilingual teacher

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ramosm4@milwaukee.k12.wi.us

ALBA School

Milwaukee

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Jennifer Santiago - Milwaukee Public Schools, ALBA (Art Specialist)

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Jennifer Santiago - Milwaukee Public Schools, ALBA (Art Specialist)

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Jensanti7@gmail.com or lorbecjm@milwaukee.k12.wi.us

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Garcem@fusd.net

6th grade

Dolores Huerta International Academy, Fontana

California

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Guided >>>>Student Led

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E4: Watch and take notes. Add a brief summary to the padlet

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E4: Watch and take notes. Add a brief summary to the padlet

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E4: What is in a exhibition journal and planner?

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E4: What is in a exhibition journal and planner?

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1. Select a sample journal document or student planner

2. Consider tailoring the document to your school's context by adding further notes and ideas.

3. Which pages would you keep, which would you disregard, and what is missing?

4. How can you share this with your school?

5. Add your journals or planners for the exhibition to the padlet.

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Do a quick search on HexagonalThinking.

Record what you find.

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Using ‘Hexagonal Thinking’ to Deepen Classroom Conversations

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A novel activity using little more than geometric shapes can help students examine complex problems and connect big ideas.

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Sythesize the data collected from the notes into a brief summary.

Create a video of your team sharing the information. Be creative

Upload it to the padlet or Record from padlet

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Sythesize the data collected from the notes into a brief summary.

Create a video of your team sharing the information. Be creative

Upload it to the padlet or

Record from padlet

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• Think about your school community and list the different people who make up this community.

Do these people have a role in supporting the exhibition?

Create a list of the people who come to mind: you can list names or roles/titles.

• In a group share out your list. Compare with others in the group and add to your list if you come across new ideas that are relevant to your context.

• If time allows discuss within your group whether the people on your list would consider themselves relevant to the exhibition – why orwhy not?

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Nano PD Empowering Exhibition Experiences, Section 3

1. Explore the ten different examples for hexagonal thinking related to the exhibition feature. You will see one hexagonal thinking page for each of these areas

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Lomond Exhibition  Gallery Walk of Programme of Inquiry

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Complete parts 1 and 2 of the Nano PD "Empowering Exhibition Experiences."

Watch the videos and Complete the downloadable activities for your context.

Create
Create a list of relevant resources in your local community and school context (both in and out of school) that could

generate exhibition issues and opportunities for students.

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Visible or Invisible

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1. How do you support voice, choice and ownership in your role?

2. Share your examples on the chart paper.

3. Look for new ideas and shared practices.

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1. Who We Are

Motivation

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A diagram of a learning processDescription automatically generated

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Interview Triads  Roles

Interviewer : lead the interview by asking questions in the the prompt  without bias or assumption.

Recorder :  write down everything that is being said

Interviewee: answer the questions as transparently and honestly as possible with as much detail and depth as possible.

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1. Connect: How do we go from global issue to central idea?

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What are some things you can implement at the beginning of the year to support

Students as designers of goals with self-monitoring

students create the success criteria

grow assessment capable learners

co-creating central ideas

Add your thoughts in the

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1. What skills does an assessment capable learner need to develop for the exhibition and are there any barriers learners might experience?

2. How might we celebrate our learners’ agency and their assessment capability throughout the process of exhibition?

3. In what ways can we engage learners throughout the exhibition regarding decisions about monitoring, documenting, evidencing and reporting on their learning?

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Consider the quote

1. What meaning does the quote have for you?

2. Consider how the idea of student agency as discussed in this quote connects to the elements of the graphic organiser. What are your thoughts on how authentic student agency impacts the various areas in the graphic?

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1. How do you involve students with establishing classroom community?

2. How does agency support students with developing skills and dispositions? Can you share examples of this in the text and classroom?

3. What connections can you make between agency and the classroom?

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In groups of three, rotate through the posters with the central ideas listed.

Connect the central idea with a potential form of student action and write the action on the sticky note.

Discuss your ideas with your group.

What do you notice?

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Consider  each of the external ring elements area.

Using your own school context and work through each area as you

1.Document examples/evidence of this

areas

2. Ideas that may be an opportunity for

development.

Highlight a priority area to share back at your school regarding areas that could be further enhanced to support development of learning spaces for students during exhibition.

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1. Reflect on the hexagonal activity and consider the prompt, “How can I see this from another perspective?”

2. What were the different perspectives offered in the hexagonal activity?

3.How many ways were there to connect the different aspects of a particular exhibition feature? Is this an opportunity or a challenge for

schools?

4. Pick one new idea that you want to take back to share at your school.

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Reflect on your ideas from the video and your review of the sample journal/planner and respond to one or two of these questions:

How are we, in our unique school’s context, currently supporting learner agency throughout the learning and teaching process? How are we helping to create and support the culture and environment to do so?

Where throughout the exhibition planning process can individual learner and collective agency be supported in our context?

What connections can be made between agentic learners and the development of the approaches to learning skills?

What skills does an assessment capable learner need to develop in our context? What barriers do we and our learners experience in developing these assessment capabilities?

How could the four assessment dimensions (monitoring, documenting, measuring and reporting) be used to develop assessment capabilities to further support agentic learning culminating in the exhibition?

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Review the responses.

Create a copy of the Q&A for your personal use and contextualize it for your school.

Consider this your Q&A document about student agency in relation to the exhibition.

You may want to add this document to your eportfolio.

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Reflection : How can we move towards action?

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Reflection : How can we move towards action?

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Review the chart on the screen

Pick two to three areas

you would like to focus on at your school.

What concrete things can you do to move towards the right-hand column in those areas?

Make a list of ideas that you can share back at your school or add to your eportfolio

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In your group create a graphic showing how you would visually display the connection between the student, their learning and the purposes of the exhibition.

You can highlight certain elements that you feel are particularly relevant or important in your context and explain why. Use images and text to convey your understandin

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HookED SOLO Hexagon Generator This HookED app populates a SOLO Hexagon Template. Brainstorm content ideas and enter them in the fields below. Click “Generate Document” to populate the template. 10 Small Hexagons per page 2 Large Hexagons per page Print […]

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Read the Learning Community section in From Principles into Practice to further develop your understanding of the relationships and connections among community members.

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Elements of the PYP

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Using your list of community resources and your school POI

Check if your list includes resources that point to both issues and opportunities for students to consider.

Add ideas on how you can use this resource list to inspire teachers and students back at your school to consider both issues and opportunities.

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Readers Response Document click HERE

Make a copy for your personal use

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Learner agency is a key feature of the Enhanced PYP. As a community of educators, many of us are still working to create environments that support student agency. Recently, I've been imagining leaner agency, as the tip of an educational iceberg - that is, the visible evidence of empowered learning - but not the whole picture of what facilitates autonomous, mastery-driven learning.
It's complex!
When my classroom starts buzzing with rich, student-led inquiry, I know that learner agency is high. I'm also aware that many other things are also going right. Provocations have sparked curiosity, invitations (cognitive and interpersonal) have been accepted, collaboration has been fruitful, and teacher guidance has been "goldilocked" (pitched at a just-right level to keep students striving for understanding).

Honestly, learner agency is not visible all day, every day. And it's not the children, with strong opinions and giant questions, who lack motivation! I'm the reason that learner agency is not always unleashed. In my well-intentioned lessons, I miss their divergent comments, I offer a provocative question but rush their thinking time, or I give a factual answer when we should really marinate in confusion. Creating a high agency environment is a complex quest.
False Dichotomies
But complexity is good. Creating truly empowering classrooms should be challenging and even elusive at times. It's complexity that protects us from the trap of false dichotomies. For example:

Student choice OR teacher direction?
It's often a negotiation between an empowered learner and an invested teacher that creates a partnership supportive of agency.

Student voice OR teacher voice?
It's a constant, robust dialogue: a mix of questioning, explaining, critiquing, affirming, interjecting and listening that steadily helps learners to advocate for their needs and articulate emerging theories.

Student-owned learning OR teacher-owned learning?
It's a mess of collaboratively constructed understandings, during which nobody remembers (or cares) who led whom to deeper, richer realisations about the world.

These dichotomies often spark debate. However, they are of little consequence to classroom educators, working with children who need responsive, personalised guidance.

And they are never present in the documentation provided by the IB. (See The Learner, from Principles into Practice. The language of " moving away from/moving towards" supports teacher agency in making complex pedagogical choices.)
So...what supports learner agency?
Underpinning high agency environments are a host of not very new, not very innovative...but very important...educational practices. Here a few:

curriculum knowledge - Agency occurs when teachers know the curriculum so well, they can say "yes" to student-led inquiries because they are confident in making curricular connections and guiding conceptual learning.

For example, if I know that students need to understand "environmental adaptation (change)", one student might investigate the biological defences of cephalods while others map the behavioural migrations of birds - wherever their curiosity takes them!

assessment - Teachers who continually collect and analyse information about what students know and how they learn, are well-equipped to provide just-right, just-in-time guidance to sustain student-led inquiry.
For example, if I know each learner's current understanding of 2D space, I might invite one student to develop a mathematical proof
for alternate angles, while another spends several days constructing and measuring angles in a phase exploratory play.

psychological safety - Students advocate for their own learning when they trust that their mistakes are valued and respected by their peers and teachers.

For example, displaying mathematical working that contains errors or written drafts that have been abandoned communicates the message that errors are integral to learning. Developing communication protocols for posing conjectures, building on peers' ideas, and disagreeing with each other helps to build habits of respectful collaboration.

feedback (and feedforward) - Students exercise agency when they know the next steps to take on their journey of personal growth.

For example, when assessment data is shared with, and owned by, students, they can tell me what their goals are! They gradually become assessment capable learners who are co-designers of success criteria. One student will say, "I'm working on topic sentences in my paragraphs" while another says, "I'm working on replacing adverbs with more powerful verbs".

challenge - Only when students are challenged beyond current levels of understanding, do they experience the frustration and dissonance needed to ask questions, test theories and start investigations of their own.

For example, when students begin to ask "Is that always true?" or "Is that the only way?" or "Why did that happen?" or "I don't agree with that", I know that the learning experience is sufficiently challenging, confusing and engaging to be stretching their current schema, causing them to seek deeper understanding. If everyone's nodding, they probably knew it already.

And many more! My iceberg is an attempt to capture the complexity of supporting learner agency.

When we witness agency in classrooms, it is truly thrilling. Students are alive with purpose, passion and confidence. We should perhaps remember that many unseen, but important, factors support autonomous learning.

Beneath the iceberg, lies some powerful pedagogy.
Shannon O'Dwyer is the Deputy Head - Academics at The King's School (Preparatory School), an IB World School in Sydney, Australia. She enjoys the synergy of collaboration and the wisdom of teams. Shannon is inspired by great teachers and inquisitive children, every day. She loves to talk but usually retracts her first idea. Shannon tweets at @S_ODwyer and blogs at http://shannonodwyer.com.

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What Lies Beneath Learner Agency? Exploring the pedagogy that supports learner agency

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Learner agency is a key feature of the Enhanced PYP. As a community of educators, many of us are still working to create environments that support student agency. Recently, I've been imagining leaner agency, as the tip of an educational iceberg - that is, the visible evidence of empowered learning - but not the whole picture of what facilitates autonomous, mastery-driven learning.

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‘Student Agency’ Is Not Something You Give or Take - EdSurge News

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I feel strange saying that I, a Davidson College Junior named Andrew, have obtained ‘Student Agency.’ Does that make me a ‘Student Agent,’ a sort of…

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If you are struggling with giving your students the authority to decide for and plan the path of their own learning journey or if you are in two minds whether student agency will throw your classroom discipline and your well-designed lesson plans into question, then keep reading to the end!
It's totally understandable that shifting focus towards giving ownership of learning to children might sound scary to some, especially if you are obsessed with planning every bit and part of the inquiry cycle yourself and avoiding anything that would lead to deviation from your plans and lead to chaos. But shedding some light on different aspects of agency might turn the page on your concern.

I remember when I first came across "agency" in the released IB documents. I was devouring "From Principles into Practice" when in the first few pages of "The Learner", I was stopped and was baffled by the term "agency". It's ironic how a language which is supposed to facilitate communication won't sometimes let you digest some basic ideas. In my case, the absence of a direct equivalent for the word "agency" in Persian was impeding me from grasping the idea and challenging me to work out the meaning for a while. Not until I had gone through the chapter several times and with the help of these three amazing key words i.e. voice, choice, ownership, did I manage to finally decode the meaning. However, then, a bigger problem came up; I found myself not having the faintest idea how to put agency into practice. As a result, I started digging into the topic through listening to related podcasts, watching available webinars, and discussing and sharing my understandings with other members of our leadership team in order to unpack the concept.

I was once doubtful as some of you might be right now. I wasn't sure whether agency would work in our context. However, having worked in the IB system for years, I have learned very well not to let the fear of failure and doubts hinder me from approaching and exercising new ideas.

Therefore, during our summer workshops, as the PYP coordinator, I allocated an entire workshop day to the introduction of agency to members of our learning community. We started the session with working on an agency table which was based on the design of the " Examining Learner Agency In Your Setting " document.

The table was like a pre-assessment with the help of which the participants could assess their performance in three areas including: What is the learner doing? What is the facilitator doing? What's happening in the environment? This table was a great help to the participants especially the teachers as they realized that they've been unconsciously implementing agency in their classrooms, to some extent. Then we perused the " Agency In a Primary School Context" document and discussed the questions for further understanding. Later, the participants looked at agency from different conceptual lenses such as, Function and Responsibility, asked a set of questions (e.g. What is agency like? What is the purpose and how does it work? What are some ways to give students responsibilities? ) and exhibited their understandings using a diagram of their choice. Last but not least, the participants were encouraged to rethink the way they are with children and their teaching convictions since our thinking framework as teachers defines our relationships with students and the level of influence we impose on them. Finally, they paired and shared their ideas about possible ways of exercising and embedding agency in our own school.

As the follow up of the workshop, in all our collaborative meetings, we allocate a good deal of our session to reflect on things we have done so far in order to give students the chance to be responsible for their own learning. We debate the possible meaningful and intentional actions that students may take in each unit. We also share our ideas about ways of documenting our progress. These sessions have helped us go deeper into agency, and make more connections with our teaching framework. Now, we look at agency as an opportunity to reinforce the implementation of inquiry-based education, constructivism, and a path to help our students reach their full potential as they grow physically, mentally and spiritually.

In our ongoing journey to foster agency, there were a few points which facilitated its implementation for us. Therefore, I decided to share our experience with you and encourage you to read the tips below. I hope they will help you promote students agency in your learning community, as well.

1. Start with reading 'Examining Learner Agency in your setting'.This will give you a clear view of where you and your students are standing right now. It also helps you understand that as an IB teacher you may have already set agency in motion without being aware of it. Questions like what is it that we believe about learners? How are learners actively responsible for their own learning? Or Where are students exercising their agency? Will help you set your mind on the areas where you and your students need working towards.

2. Start small. Take some baby steps towards agency. Agency can be as small as gathering your students' opinions in setting their classroom or it can be as broad as supporting them to plan, modify and discuss your lesson plan or unit. Starting with simple tasks will facilitate the process and will give you and your students the confidence to move on.

3. Ask other learning community members for support. The coordinator and principal can play a great role in paving the way for you through advocating for agency and there are also lots of PYP teachers who are willing to share their experience with you. Use the IB platform to get connected with them (Programme communities)

4. Be a risk-taker and have faith in your students and in yourself. Don't be scared of the results or the fact that your influence may be reduced. Your students' creativity and their potential in leading their own learning will surprise you.

5. Set goals. Try to set SMART* goals at the beginning of each theme with your students to engage your students cognitively and emotionally. Let them know that they can affect their learning process and that their voice and choice are important. Enjoy and celebrate each and every achievement with them.

6. Remember, agency isn't only for students. All the staff needs to be heard and engaged in the learning process. We require agency for our personal development as each of us is a unique asset to add to the learning community.

* SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time- bound goals. The idea was first introduced by George T. Doran in 1981.

Sources:
Mahboobeh Hajizadeh is the PYP coordinator at Shahid Mahdavi Educational Foundation in Tehran, Iran. During her 9 years' experience in the PYP, she has worked as an English homeroom teacher and subject leader. She is passionate about holistic education, connecting mind, body, soul, and nature, and bringing joy and creativity to her learning community.

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Engaging with learner agency as a community

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If you are struggling with giving your students the authority to decide for and plan the path of their own learning journey or if you are in two minds whether student agency will throw your classroom discipline and your well-designed lesson plans into question, then keep reading to the end!

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This article shares one school's continuing journey to unpack, define and support learner agency.

Over the past three years we explored LEARNER AGENCY in an effort to develop an understanding of:

what agency looks like in action

what it does to a child

what teacher dispositions nurture it

what curriculum structures honor it, and

what role the environment plays in supporting it.

Initiation
We began toying around with the idea of agency after attending an early webinar of the PYP ( Early Years - Learner Agency). Some of our staff members connected with the idea of "choice and voice" and claimed that "we know it and do it". We shared our understanding with the IB through a set of examples from our school. We continued to feel good about our understanding until we received a message from an IB staff member to have a skype call with us - to help us reflect on our understanding, which wasn't "strong enough". She assured us that it's wonderful to see schools connecting with this idea and trying to draw parallels with it in their own context. She encouraged us continue inquiring into agency and keep her posted.

Self-Reflection leading to Inquiry
A bit shaken up, we reflected deeply on what we knew and what agency is. We read through some research available on the subject and realized that our choice of words indicated that we represented agency as something that we 'give' to the students whereas actually it's something every child already has. We learnt that for us it was more of an 'act' where children made choices from the range that we offered, however it really is a more complex interplay of learning environment, teacher disposition and student ownership that encourages an individual to make decisions - big or small. We learnt that the power equation in our classrooms was still very uneven and that students often followed the teacher's plans. However, a classroom that honors agency enables learners to take control of their learning-what, when and how they want to learn. We pondered over all these key ideas and wondered what we could do to "make it happen".

Brainstorming
We were determined to begin with baby steps and therefore thought to start with orienting staff members with the idea of agency through discussion. There were several questions that were raised around Time, Curriculum, Control, etc... Does it mean we let children decide everything? Does it require us to forgo our curriculum and leave it all to the students? Should we have fewer units; less content and longer chunks of inquiry? What's the role of the teacher in this kind of scenario?
Clearly, we were scared to let go...

Modelling
When experience helps children learn best, how could it be different for adults. If the teachers experience the sense of "owning- what, how and where you wish to learn" they begin to see the value in it. ISHCMC's Studio5 inspired us a great deal! We organized a session with our ICT teacher where the idea of agency was introduced in a very learner centric way. Teachers got a firsthand experience of what it means to take ownership of learning... what it looks like and feels like... what it takes to a be teacher in such a set up... how could we still keep an eye on our curriculum and learning objective while students own the process and take "responsibility".

Trial & error
We co-constructed a model of a 'Masterclass' led by & for the students, where students would have the opportunity, space and time to share what they are good at and teachers would experience what 'letting go actually looks and feels like'. If structure gave them comfort, we decided to structure it initially, later on it becoming a natural practice.

This is what our broad and flexible framework looked like-

Sharing and Learning sessions led by the students
Why do we want this? (Purpose)

Promote autonomy and agency through sharing and learning

Contribute to resilience, executive skills and self-efficacy

Even out the power equation in the classroom

How will it happen? (Process)

Students choose what they want to share (a skill, craft or knowledge) with their peers in any way they feel like

Every week 3-4 students volunteer to share, and rest of the class signs up for any one master class

Teachers to confer with the volunteers to see 'what' they are planning and 'how' - only to be aware of their plans and help them think through - certainly not to modify or change it!

What do we need? (Structure)

We will require one lesson per week to be allotted for this sharing and learning

These sessions could be happening in different areas - corridors, classrooms, outdoors etc.

Outcomes

The students were super-excited with this 'time and space' to share what they know and can do. They planned for their sessions with such meticulousness that the adults were left in awe! They spent time in school and at home figuring out what they 'know best' and can 'teach' their peers. Soon we had a flurry of 'Little Master trainers' teaching their peers classical and western dance steps, origami, cricket tactics, calligraphy, cooking, an instrument, chess, art ... and the list is endless. They organized all the resources they would need with such forethought and detail that we wondered if they were the same 7-10 years old that we thought were dependent on us (and their parents). Their parents were equally surprised to see the amount of effort these children were putting at home to look for the right material that would make their class 'effective'.

This process led the entire school community (teachers, students, parents) through a process of reflection and self-realization- leading to a shift in thinking.
Teachers
We saw students as competent and capable learners who can decide and plan on their own. The ones who hardly took interest in class activities also found their space and worked hard for it. Our perception of these children changed. We learnt how rewarding 'letting go' can be...
Students
We can choose what we want to share (and learn) and seek help from teachers and parents only when we think we are stuck. We picked up so many skills along the way by teaching as well as learning...
Parents
Children are capable and can organize and take responsibility when they own the plan AND the process. They are not as helpless as we see them.

Each class has added its own flavor and unique name to these Masterclasses - Freaky Friday; Whacky Wednesday; Talented Tuesday - depending upon the day they would like to conduct it. That's agency.

And so, our learning journey continues. Over the past three years, we managed to scratch the surface and will continue to dig deeper until agentic learning comes more organically to our school community.
PYP Coordinator at Pathways School, Vandana Parashar has been a primary educator for over 16 years in international schools from New Delhi to Tokyo. She believes in constantly engaging with research and innovation that leads to rethinking and questioning the existing norms in education. Passionate about self-directed learning and collaboration, she works towards empowering children with the right tools and mindset to keep them excited about learning and life. You can follow her on Twitter @Vandysays and her school @PathwaysSchools.

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This article shares one school's continuing journey to unpack, define and support learner agency. Over the past three years we explored LEARNER AGENCY in an effort to develop an understanding of: what agency looks like in action what it does to a child what teacher dispositions nurture it what curriculum structures honor it, and what role the environment plays in supporting it.

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Explain to parents that the role of teacher is a guide and facilitator to allow their child to grow with confdidence and become the person they are capable of being at the highest level

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Explain to parents that the role of teacher is a guide and facilitator to allow their child to grow with confdidence and become the person they are capable of being at the highest level

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Student agency is important to build awareness, confidence and reflect on strengths and weaknesses. Giving students clear expectations and communicating how they will be assessed sets them up for success in both self-reflection and giving and receiving feedback.