Making the PYP Happen

  The PYP Teacher capabilities I have chose to focus on in my professional development are: I will support students to initiate and engage in their own inquiries I will promote student reflection and action in response to their learning. I will select teaching approaches, resources, technologies, learning experiences and assessments that are inclusive and effective for diverse students Success in each of these areas may look like: Reflecting on past Units of Inquiry (transdisciplinary learning) and analysing how students took agency throughout the unit, and how I can strategically implement further opportunities for this to happen. Researching and developing teaching strategies for student reflection. Providing more intentional time for students to question and plan for researching further and finding answers to their questions throughout the course of learning. More specifically researching forms of assessment that are inclusive and effective for diverse students and helpful for m...

My understanding of the PYP principle of 'student agency' is developing as I have been learning about the importance of agency, and the benefits of students taking agency of their learning for example: increased engagement, development of responsibility, deeper understanding etc. I also have a much better idea of planning as a PYP practice, and how student agency influences and assists the development of planning for teaching and learning. I can apply what I have learnt from this module throughout the planning of next term's unit of inquiry alongside the transdisciplinary learning that takes place throughout it. Agency is supported as we are learning in a way that fosters our own agency, which models to us the effectiveness of agency for learning. We can then apply our own experience and understanding of agency in our contexts. I am actively trying to pursue using inquiry as a pedagogical approach in maths at the moment, as it is interwoven with our unit of inquiry. I am at...

My understanding of the PYP principles is evolving through having a greater understanding of International Mindedness. I think that many of the principles stem from this type of mindset and I have learnt a lot more about what that is and can look like throughout the learning in Module 2. My school already fosters a great environment of international mindedness through many different ways however, I know in my own practice in the classroom I have much more to do in this respect. I am new to teaching and even newer to IB, so I have a lot more opportunity to develop this mindset within my own classroom e.g. incorporating perspectives of a certain topic/focus from different countries around the world, how familiar processes for x, y or z are carried out in different parts of the world etc. Agency is supported throughout this workshop through learning through 'role play'/personas, opportunities to research the specific focuses or topics and the mode in which we choose to present our...

 My understanding of PYP principles and practices and beginning to evolve, I had an idea of what international mindedness and global citizens were. However, now I feel as though I have a better understanding of what these concepts mean specifically in the PYP and a picture of how this can look inside PYP classrooms. I have learnt through the module course work as well as, through other participants' responses to the course work some ideas of how to further promote learning of these principles in the classroom. Up until now interweaving these concepts into learning seemed overwhelming however, now I can see how it can thread through learning quite naturally. For participants, agency is nurtured through this workshop through choosing which mode of presentation and how information is structured in response to learning activities. Agency is also supported through engaging with others in order to learn from one another. At the moment, I am developing international-mindedness in my stude...