When planning is an inquiry…

We used to plan all the learning experiences in advance. If the entire unit is planned out in detail, where are the opportunities for learners to drive the inquiry? How do they take ownership of their learning and lead it in new directions?

We do, at my school, plan the big picture, of course. We build on where the learners have come from and ensure clarity on the conceptual direction. We know what we hope the learners will come to understand and the skills and dispositions required to support the learning. But plans are flexible and responsive to what the learners reveal. The individuality of the journey, the specific teachable moments, and the ways the learning might impact or transform each learner, depend on how the inquiry unfolds.

As we shift to an increasingly emergent model, the learning is becoming more meaningful. The more we take an inquiry stance, seeking to notice what our learners are curious about and how best they learn, the more competently we can support them in moving forward. The more thoughtfully we reflect on what is revealed, the more effectively we can respond.

When questioned recently about our strategic plan, I realised that this is also how we, as leaders at my school, plan. We know where we have come from and we can identify goals for moving ahead. And then what? We value the power of ‘what if’ and ‘how might we’ questions to provoke thinking, encourage dreaming and support our inquiry stance.

Here too, it seems our model is more emergent. The more attentively we observe and notice ourselves and others, the more we are able to explore possibilities. The more thoughtfully we reflect on the nuances of complex issues, openly examine tensions and actively disrupt the status quo, the more ready we are to experiment with innovative solutions. 

Creating a carefully laid out action plan in advance, with specific strategies and tasks, is not, it seems, our optimum style.

Thinking beyond ourselves – a whole school inquiry…

‘Thinking beyond ourselves empowers us to act.‘ This powerful central idea for our PYP exhibition has fostered awareness of self and others, revealed vulnerabilities and spawned a variety of meaningful student initiated action. But it’s almost the end of our school year and some of them are only just getting going…

What if we combined several of the ideas in the previous post and developed a whole school, year long inquiry, transcending the boundaries of trans disciplinary themes, explored by both teachers and students?

We start each teaching team’s planning session by revisiting our beliefs about action, considering examples of action and placing them on the iceberg.  (Try it and see the ideas that emerge). Next we reflect indivdiually and share examples of ways we contribute beyond ourselves. We break this down into contributions within the school community, the broader community and then globally. (Another provocation worth trying!)

We brainstorm possible, age appropriate ways that children might be encouraged to think beyond themselves, enabling us to create some initial, potential lines of inquiry. It’s interesting to see the beliefs and values that teachers bring to the planning… and it will be fascinating to see the student initiated inquiries and actions.  Exploring this big idea through different conceptual lenses will add further layers.

So far, in the Who We Are theme, Year 1 students will inquire into who we are as individuals within our learning community; how we build an effective learning community;  how kindness impacts our community; why and how we create an essential agreement.  

Also in Who We Are, Year 4 will inquire into how individuals contribute to our community; how we build connections within our community; and how knowledge of others influences our actions. Revisiting the big idea in Sharing the Planet, they will investigate the impact of our actions on a sustainable future.

Year 6 will explore forces that shape culture;  how our actions influence culture; the impact of thinking beyond ourselves; and how thinking beyond ourselves transforms us. This will be a year long unit spanning Who We Are and Sharing the Planet.  Inspired by the sustainable development goals, students will have opportunities to design their own lines of inquiry, depending on interests and needs, within or accross any of the concentric circles. 

I’m looking forward to planning with the other teams.  Year 3s might be inspired to explore diversity accross Who we Are and Where we are in Place and Time.  Year 5s are keen to explore values and it will be interesting to see where that might lead, across more than one theme. Thinking beyond ourselves takes on a different dimension when explored in the context of Phys Ed and team games. Our whole school focus on developing the whole child is firmly embedded, and the potential of this unit to further enhance that is exciting.

Once the Program of Inquiry is viewed flexibily, its potential expands exponentially…

No secret teacher business…

Our new approach to planning units has opened up teachers’ thinking. They talk about feeling liberated (from box filling or linear approaches), the organic way the elements are revealed and the easy visualisation of how we might develop the whole child.

Why would we keep such a successful approach as ‘secret teacher business’? First one then another intrepid teacher has shared our style of ‘table planning’ with the learners, so that they can thoughtfully plan their own inquiries, through the lens of various concepts, simultaneously considering what skills will be required, the dispositions they will develop and how they might grow through the process.

A Year 6 student considers the skills required for his exploration of psychology

‘This unit is really about being responsible, independent and creative…’ Year 3

This student started from a consideration of how he’d like to grow as a learner and individual. Now he’s thinking about how he’s going to help others…

Contemplating the descriptors in MTPYPH (student booklet) just like teachers do! (Photo Dean Kuran)

Collaborative planning – Year 3 version 🙂 (Photo Mel Sokol)

For more details, read Dean’s post here and Mel’s post here.

Agency begins with the belief that children are capable of planning and driving their own learning. What else do we as teachers do that the learners could be doing themselves?

What do you notice about yourself as a teacher?

It’s exciting to see teachers adopting the idea of thoughtfully considered reflective questions for themselves, as well as for the learners, in continued pursuit of the goal of developing the whole child – and the whole teacher! – rather than simply focusing on curriculum content.

If I want the children in my class to be creative, how might I encourage creative experimentation? How will I foster creative thinking and problem solving?

If I want to develop writers who consider audience and purpose in their writing, how will I help them find opportunities to write for an authentic audience?

If I think feedback is an important part of learning, how will I promote the giving and receiving of effective peer feedback?

If I want learners to be empathetic and understand different perspectives, how will I ensure that all points of view are considered to help them develop empathy?

If I want the next generation to make sustainable choices, how will I help them to understand the impact of their choices and to become thoughtful, principled global citizens?

If I want them to care about their environment, how will I foster a genuine sense of shared responsibility?

If I don’t want them to see mistakes as failure, how might I help learners use their struggles to develop resilience?

If I want my students to be positive, active digital citizens, how can I provide authentic contexts to practise digital citizenship? And how will I help them understand that positive active citizenship applies online or off?

In a recent collaborative planning session, while developing the notion of iTime (or Genius Hour) into an opportunity for self reflection and personal growth, the Year 6 team took this type of reflective questioning to another level!

What do I notice about myself as a teacher?

What skills and dispositions do I need to develop as a teacher…?

 

Documenting the planning process…

In the enhanced PYP, schools will have agency to decide on their own format for documenting planning, as long as collaborative planning follows the PYP guidelines. We’ll no longer be obliged to fill in the traditional boxes or follow the linear design of Managebac.

It was an honour to be invited by the IBO to submit an example of a school designed planner. It seemed like an exciting opportunity to collaborate with teams of teachers on developing something fresh, new and, above all, user friendly. So I was disappointed to read the terms and conditions that accompanied the invitation. Due to copyright restrictions, the IBO would own the planner design and we would not be allowed to share or change it without their permission.

Although I appreciated the invitation and understood their need for copyright restrictions (sort of), I declined.

In the spirit of collaboration, how much more valuable would it be to share drafts and designs both within the school and with the wider, global PYP community? How much more interesting could it be to seek and apply constructive feedback from educators all over the world? How much more exciting might it be if we took an inquiry stance, explored possibilities, had a go, reflected and made adjustments along the way?

Still. The process of considering and documenting new ways of planning is alive and well!

Every team in our school is enjoying experimenting with new planning formats and adapting them to their needs. Members of our online global PYP community have shared their own initial models, suggested ideas and given feedback on our drafts.

We always start with the child at the centre.

We have moved from the table…

to the beginnings of a draft planner…

We’ve shifted into Google Slides and added everything to the same deck. Teams have been experimenting with what to include and how to record it. Some have started adding documentation and reflections along the way, which is allowing it to be  a living document that encourages emergent curriculum.

Some questions that have been considered along the way:

• How best might we record the thinking that takes place during collaborative planning sessions?
• What needs to be recorded and how? (And why?)
• What is the purpose of documenting planning?
• Who is the documentation of planning for? (The IB? The teachers?)
• How do we visualise all the elements simultaneously?
• To what extent do learning experiences need to be planned and recorded in advance?
• How might we record the data that’s revealed by the provocation, so that we can decide where to go next?
• How do we integrate literacy planning into the same document?
• How might teams make this their own?
• How best will reflections be recorded?
• How might our learners participate in the planning process?

You’re welcome to join us on our journey!

Planning (but not too much) for inquiry…

 

There were so many things to be excited about during the planning of this unit with our Year 1 team:

• the honest reflection of the teachers who engaged in this inquiry last year and their willingness to view it through fresh eyes;
• the openness of the teachers for whom the unit is new and the ideas they bring to the learning process;
• how far we have come from the days when we thought we had to plan the whole inquiry in advance;
• our split screen approach to planning, in which we simultaneously consider the unit and the format of the new planner we are designing;
• the opportunities for the development of the whole child, both as a curious scientist and as a human being who cares about animals;
• the authentic learning that will arise from having caterpillars, chickens and rabbits in the learning space;
• the teachers’ own inquiry into how best to provoke, support and encourage the children’s inquiry;
• the agency learners will have as they help care for the animals, share their wonderings to lead the inquiry, develop their own theories, find the best ways to document their observations and choose how they might like to present their learning…

and now, the wonderful possibilities arising from the children’s initial wonderings:

• I wonder if they eat their poo.
• I wonder what patterns they will have on their wings.
• I wonder what they do when no-one is there…

Unit planning isn’t linear (either)…

Following on from our  non-linear consideration of curriculum, we approached collaborative unit planning in a similarly holistic way, with the child at the centre, to ensure a focus on our goal of developing the whole child.

As teachers considered the desired conceptual understandings and the content requirements of our curriculum, the potential to develop skills and dispositions in an authentic context were revealed…

Following this process with different year level teams and different units of inquiry led to a number of insights:

• Making thinking visible is an important part of the collaborative planning process.
• Considering all the elements simultaneously makes it easy to visualise the potential big picture.
• The visual process allows for collaborative construction of meaning.
• While always conceptual, some units are more knowledge based, others more skills based, and that’s ok!
• A holistic vision of the unit highlights  opportunties for natural connections that strengthen learning.
• Opportunities are illuminated for split screen teaching (inquiring into content and developing skills & dispositions simultaneously).
• Standing around a table might trump sitting behind computers for collaborative thinking!

(*we use ‘dispositions’ rather than ‘attitudes’ now.)

Curriculum shouldn’t be linear…

Learning isn’t linear. Consider your own learning… How do a range of separate experiences contribute to the development of your understanding? How does that understanding deepen, the more you engage with the same conceptual ideas in different contexts?

So, why had we historically planned the order of our units of inquiry in a linear way? (When would one unit end and the next unit begin? How many weeks would we need to devote to each? What dates would work best?) The time had come to view the process in a different way.

We started from the most beautiful questions that drive change –

‘Why?’ ‘What if?’ and ‘How might we?’

Why should curriculum be viewed as linear?

What if we put the child at the centre and considered the learning in a more wholistic way?

How might we approach the big picture through the lens of transferable concepts, rather than the calendar?

In each team meeting, we began by writing the ‘related concepts’ (PYP terminology for the big transferable ideas) in each unit on individual sticky notes and arranging them to allow us a visual perspective on the learning as a whole, then underlining the concepts that are most transferable.

This simple activity raised a number of insights, such as:

• There are opportunities for further development of understanding, through concepts repeating in different units.
• Some concepts are more highly transferable across different areas and more applicable in life.
• Sometimes a unit has too many concepts, leading to less depth in the learning.
• Some combinations of units have concepts that interconnect more, while others are more subject specific.
• Some units lend themselves more to transdisciplinary learning than others…

Approaching the exercise conceptually, visually, in a non linear way led teachers very quickly to valuable conclusions about the big picture of learning – which units would flow on most logically from each other, which units might be best run concurrently and which units lend themselves to ongoing learning, woven throughout the year.

Some examples of ongoing, concurrent or even year-long, units of inquiry:

A Prep unit, exploring reading and writing as an inquiry.

Central Idea: We can receive and communicate meaning through symbols. 

Lines of inquiry:

• How sounds and words are represented
• How we  receive and communicate meaning through written text

A Year 5 unit which, after the initial provocation and exploration, will continue as a Genius Hour project, with learners pursuing their own inquiries and action.

Central Idea: Ideas inspire possibilities for action.

Lines of inquiry:

• How we bring our ideas to reality
• Skills and attitudes required for taking action

And our whole school, year-long central idea: Our choices define who we are as individuals and as a community, with different lines of inquiry at each year level, such as:

Prep (self)

• How our choices help us learn
• Choices in how we express our learning
• How we choose to use our environment to support our learning

Year 3 (individual and community)

• Who I choose to be  as a member of our learning community
• Choices that affect our learning community
• How diversity enriches our learning community

Year 6 (personal, local and global)

• Active citizenship
• How choices and decisions are made
• The impact of our choices and decisions  – personally, locally and globally

Learning isn’t linear…

What if collaborative meetings always led to action?

What if collaborative meetings always led to action?

Starting with the end in mind, our team leaders considered what they would like participants to FEEL, THINK, BE, HAVE, SAY and DO after their collaborative meetings…

The consensus was for people to come out feeling motivated, empowered and challenged, with a sense of purpose and shared vision, eager to move forward with the implementation of new ideas. (Meeting Wise!)

So…

How might we create a culture of productive collaboration?

Team leaders reflected on the culture of their teams by using match sticks to represent their team dynamics, which proved to be both an interesting exercise in visualisation and a powerful reality check. (Thanks, @kjinquiry!)

The next step was to consider the conditions that might contribute towards a productive collaborative culture. Which of these are most important for all team members? How would you prioritise these and what would you add?

• having a positive image of the child
• being comfortable with cognitive dissonance
• having autonomy/ a sense of agency
• feeling safe
• assuming positive intentions of other team members
• having a clear purpose
• contributing actively and equitably
• being willing to grow, see things in new ways and open to change
• having knowledge and understanding of pedagogy

And then…

How do we develop  a culture of productive collaboration within our teams?

Some of the ideas that were shared:

• Create an essential agreement and agree on meeting norms
• Acknowledge mistakes and share insecurities
• Celebrate successes
• Constantly reflect – individually and as a group
• Listen to and acknowledge all perspectives
• Ensure agenda is available in advance and input is open to everyone
• Celebrate the zone of discomfort and ask people to try things
• Be non judgemental
• Develop trust and respect so tensions are easily talked through
• Listen to each other
• Always focus on the child
• Ensure everyone has a voice
• Compromise, affirm, reassure and encourage
• Allow time. Be creative in finding time!
• Keep asking questions  – Why? What if? How might we?
• Be flexible
• Try to understand where everyone is coming from
• Take turns to plan and facilitate meetings
• Bring others/ experts into the planning and reflection process
• Be available as much as possible
• Know when to lead and when to follow

And also…

How do we ensure our meetings are valuable?

Team leaders jotted down things they currently do in meetings and then evaluated those against a list of criteria that make meetings really valuable…

Collaborative planning and reflection meetings should: (adapted from IB PYP standards and practices)

• take place regularly and systematically.
• address all the essential elements of the PYP 
• be based on agreed expectations for student learning.
• consider the different learning needs of students.
• address horizontal and vertical articulation.
• include analysing and responding to student learning eg looking for misconceptions and patterns
• involve teachers modelling the attributes of the learner profile.
• ensure that our practice aligns with our learning principles.
• take an inquiry stance, eg through framing inquiry questions.
• consider the development of conceptual understandings.
• include planning provocations, addressing our agreed purpose and criteria

These are some of the wonderings that came up as a result:

• Who needs to be at meetings and how often should they take place?
• Are there other ways to deal with administrative matters, outside of meeting time? 
• If we spent time setting the tone for our collaborative meetings, would they be more productive?
• How can we support teams which are not functioning productively?
• How can we work around timetable constraints?
• How can we share what we value about culture and content with our teams?
• How might we address challenges in a solution focussed manner?
• How can we get people to step up to facilitate a meeting?
• What kinds of student data should we bring to meetings?

And coming full circle to where we started…

What action will this collaborative meeting lead to?

What will our team leaders (and you, the reader)  FEEL, THINK, BE, HAVE, SAY and DO as a result?