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Things I have learned:
1.  Transdisciplinary learning is fun and engaging for the students.  It helps them develop strong critical thinking skills.  2.  Students can assist, where appropriate, in the planning process of the units.
3.  The timeframe is very flexible.  Most units I have ever taught have been 6-8 weeks. It's good to know they can be shorter.  Sometimes 6-8 weeks feels too long and redundant.
Connections:
1.  I love the idea of a whole school approach to vertically planning units.  I would love for my school to do this.
2.  Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate AND reflect!!
Question
1. What are some ways students may show agency (besides helping in the planning process)?

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Things I have learned:
3-POI builds on the students' learning from previous years and extends their understanding of the transdisciplinary themes.

2- Transdisciplinary learning allows student agency and gives them the autonomy over their skills learned.

1- The world of education is globally changing and with education usually being so traditional, the transdisciplinary POI has now allowed new developmental ways of teaching and learning in the classrooms.

Connection:
2- Both articles taught me how important student agency is. It gives students the opportunity to also reflect on their own findings across the curriculum within their POI unit. The connections of real life experiences and then some kids find themselves doing more research for themselves because of the engage/eager of the topic. Students reflecting also increases their knowledge.

1- However, the reflection for teachers is also just as important, because it brings about changes each year. For example, the year we went into the Pandemic all of our units became Virtual. A year and an half later, we had to make major changes due to now being back into the building and new teachers on our grade level. So, being able to reflect as teachers and students is very vital.

Question:
1- One question I may have is being that the world is changing economically and education is changing globally, will there ever be a financial increase within the schools to help improve the students' experiences?

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3 Things I Learned:
1.  Teachers can develop units to run for at least 3-4 weeks, minimum.  This is so good to know because the units at our school run for at least 6 weeks.  But, knowing that they can be shorter will be a plus for some grade levels who need more time to dive into their units.
2. We have also used all teachers on each grade level to develop the POI.  Now I know that a core group of teachers can develop a skeleton, then share it with everyone else for development.
3.  It's essential to think about the available resources in order to provide meaningful and authentic context for inquiry.  We must continue to believe that resources such as people, places and technology are meaningful to our students.

2 Connections:
1. Developing the POI is an ongoing process that can be very tedious and there's always a need to revise and refresh in order to help expand the learning, while making more connections.
2. Collaboration is KEY!

Question:
How do we keep the teachers motivated because the development of the POI and units can be A LOT of work for them?

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3 Things I learned

1.Planning Transdisciplinary units must be intentionally planned to promote authentic and meaningful connection made across and between subject areas.

2.The transdisciplinary programme of inquiry should be developed collaboratively with a shared understanding of what students will learn and what is considered significant for students as individuals, learning communities and internationally minded citizens.

3.The central ideas is a statement that frames the transdisciplinary unit of inquiry. Central ideas are globally significant and invites student inquiry.

Connection

1. I connected with the evaluation of the programme of inquiry.  I am a reflective person, and I am always searching for ways to improve or make something better. I enjoy the process of reflecting on the effectiveness and success in order to make modifications for a stronger and robust units.

2. Identifying authentic opportunities for thinking and responding like historians, athletes, artists, scientists and so on.

Question

How do we support teachers with releasing ownership and allowing student agency and inquiry to lead the learning?

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3 Things you have learn:
- The programme of inquiry is a long-term plan that provides students the opportunities to evolve their theories, address misconceptions and deepen understandings.
- The six transdisciplinary themes capture human commonalities that are significant and relevant regardless of where students are in the world and to which ethnic or cultural groups they belong.
- Following the PYP planning process, a collaboratively designed programme of inquiry builds a whole-school, long-term plan for learning based on its specific context.

2 Connections or insights
- When learning is organized around transdisciplinary themes, authentic and meaningful connections are made across, between and beyond subjects. The iterative relationship between the learner, the learning community, and learning and teaching bring to life this transdisciplinary learning experience.
- A high level of collaboration is required when planning transdisciplinary units of inquiry. The planning teams, consisting of teachers, subject specialist teachers and students (where appropriate) plan the

units together throughout the year.

1 Question you have
- The reading was very clear and easy-to read. I would like to know, from you expertise, what is the most common challenge when a school starts to create a transdisciplinary curricula? And how to manage it?

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3 of Things I Learned:
1. Transdisciplinary learning offers students a broad, balance, and concept-based learing experiences locally and globally.
2. It promotes student agency- the importance of students making connections between different learning experiences.
3. Students see a more deeper understanding in what they are learning.

Connection- Both articles discussed the impotance of students making connections between learning ecperiences and transdisciplinary learning prepares students for the future.

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3 Things I learned:

1. The POI is a long-term plan that provides students the opportunities to evolve their theories. (I never thought about students developing theories per say.)

2. Transdisciplinary Themes---learned about the influential work of Boyer on human commonalities and the perspectives of Tye and Kniep; addressing international challenges, while being interconnected in the following ways: culturally, ecologically, politically, economically and technologically.

3. Flexible Timeframe graphic helped me better understand how teaching teams can set the length of each unit of inquiry.

2 Connections or Insights:
One: Identifying authentic opportunities for thinking and/or responding like historians, athletes, artists, and scientists.  I connect this to our 3rd grade teacher who does an excellent job of like role modeling opportunities for students.
Two: Making connections between one subject and another is highly intentionally planned but may occur spontaneously or incidentally too throughout the learning process and units of inquiry.
1 Question I have:  On the timeframe graphic, what does discrete beginning and ending mean?

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3 Things I learned:
1. Planning for transdisciplinary learning has to be intentional and meaningful. It increases student's engagement and learner outcomes.
2. It promotes student agency.
3. Transdisciplinary units promote students' ability to make connections, and conceptualize their learning.

Connection:
IB and concept-based units, have various similarities. The activities and reading today reminded of a time in the class where I created concept based units. I connected the learning across content areas.  My first connection was reflecting upon my training as a Relay Educator.  My ultimate goal was to  push the students to think at a higher level, and build students' capacity to take ownership of their learning.

Question:
How do we get staff members to understand that this work is not an additional task but a more effective way of doing the work?

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3 things I have learned:
1. Planning transdisciplinary units of inquiry helps students to think deeply, creatively, and open-mindedly.
2. It gives students a voice on the direction of the research - giving them a broader outlook or big picture.
3. I need to remember that students need experts from the field to come in to speak or demonstrate because students are not exposed to these experiences outside of school

2 Connection: When I taught science, I reached out to as many outreach programs as I could through the College of Charleston, the DNR, etc. College professors would come in to demonstrate light being refracted, sounds/pitch, how to test rocks and minerals and find the rock cleavage, the looking at the sun with solar filters, etc. I struggle finding experts in the field of mathematics and wonder what types of demonstrations could be given to fourth graders. Connection 2: The IB transdisciplinary units of inquiry reminds me of the training I received in NY at the Units of Study by Lucy Calkins. The Central Idea was Civil Rights and the concepts and inquiry assignments were transdisciplinary. This consisted on reading two different primary resources of the same event and discussing perspective, interpreting job advertisements of this time that showed racial injustice, student lead investigations, etc.

1 Question: Of the seven key concepts, I would like examples and a description of form and function. Also, if the time frame is 3-4 weeks, how would this be managed with other core subjects?

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3 things I learned:
1.  I learned that the units of inquiry can be based on the unique location of each school. Originally, I didn't think that a school's geography or community played as much of a factor as the global goal of the unit. After reading the article, I found it interesting that when designing a unit, it is important to keep the locality of a school in mind so that it better fits with the community of students.

2. From the article, I learned about lines of inquiry. I learned that a lines of inquiry are "statements that define the potential scope of an inquiry." What this means to me is that lines of inquiry are questions that help focus the unit and guide students to understanding the central idea.

3. I learned that it is ok for not every connection to be planned. On page 15, the article shows a "moving from" and "moving towards" chart. This chart showed me that it yes, planning a transdisciplinary where subjects have thought out connections is a goal, but connections can also be "spontaneous or incidental." It can be just as important to investigate unplanned connections as it is to discuss the ones a teacher plans for.

2 connections:
1.  In the "role of subjects" section of the article, I was connected with the idea that bringing people into the school from the learning community to show students different perspectives. I recently brought in someone for my Science class to do a Zoom about recycling. This was a valuable experience because my students heard from someone who works in the environmental field to connect and extend their thinking about the organisms skills we are learning about in class.

2. I also connected with the idea that the development, adjustment, and refining of inquiry units can be on going. My standards are changing for 4th grade Science next year, so the units we have been working on this year, will need great adjustments to fit my new content. I really appreciate the flexibility that units of inquiry offer because they provide teachers with autonomy and students with more opportunities for learning in new perspectives.

1. Question: One thing I am still curious about is how to make planning the units most effective given my team is departmentalized. I think that it can be a challenge to plan a unit that matches with all teachers times for subject's units as well as finding the time to plan the units themselves. Is there a way to make a unit differentiated so that when school interruptions occur in a class, it doesn't disrupt the entire year?

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3 Things I learned
1. Collaboration is key within an IB community, in all stages. Before, during and after learning has happened in order to ensure that the best IB learner is being formed.
2. Each unit is an ongoing learning and it should take between 3 to 4 weeks so that it can truly be a transdiciplinary experience.
3. There must be 3 to 4 lines of inquiry in each unit and they need to provoke inquiry, curiosity.
2 Connections
1. I do enjoy being part of the reflecting part with students and team.
2. We also meet once a week within our grade level to review, discuss our current units.
1 Question
More than a question I would truly believe that this is the way all students must learn. So, it would be nice to really start impacting beyond our limits and try to get to the "things" we can't control. Looking for ways to impact not only IB schools but all global learning.

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3 Things you have learned
2 Connections or insights
1 Question you have

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A transdisciplinary programme of inquiry 

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A transdisciplinary programme of inquiry 