Moving this Blog

MY OPEN LETTER

Hi Everyone,

You may or may not know this, but this blog is really 1 of 3 blogs that I write. I’ve decided to export this blog to my other professional blog, Judy Imamudeen, so I can better consolidate my ideas about teaching and learning. I also have a more raw and personal blog called  Ms. Judy’s Brain that you can check out, but I rarely speak about education there.  Still lots of fun and interesting stuff there too.

Thanks for all of your support. Blogging is a journey and this is where the trail leads for me now.

Hugs! Judy

 

 

 

Community, BIG and small

On my teaching evaluation a few years ago I got a recommendation to do community service projects with my kids. Truthfully I kind of dismissed it–I teach 3-5 years, for goodness sake–how am I supposed to do authentic community service with egocentric little ones?!!  It’s taken me a while to really take on this challenge to develop the spirit of community service into practice. However, little children can be so incredibly kind hearted and caring naturally,  I have come to the understanding that I really need to think about how I can bridge this sweetness into a larger view: the Community.

Well, this past unit seemed to be the perfect impetus for this. Our central idea was: People can help our communities by working in different ways. One of the key concepts that we were working on was responsibility, so I really wanted the kids to understand that no matter what age or ability level, we can be helpers in a community. Secondly, we were exploring the attitude of appreciation, so I wanted them to demonstrate ways that we can say “thank you” to others for their help. These 2 learning intentions solidified into a final project, in which our little classroom community came up with a way to say “thank you” to helpers in the larger community.

After much reflection and class discussion, we decided that firefighters have a really tough and dangerous job. Since it was around Christmas, we thought cookies would be a sweet treat that they would like; also, I knew it would be a selfless act to give away something that they really wanted for themselves (cookies!) to another person which would teach what it means to be of service. We also made a card with a special message to our everyday heroes.

I was really surprised that the kids didn’t complain about not tasting the cookies, and they really enjoyed making them. When we visited the fire station to deliver the cookies, we dressed up in some festive Christmas hats to spread some holiday cheer. Originally, it had been my intention to just drop off the cookies and say thank you, but the firemen would have none of that–they had to give us a proper tour of the station. Although I am not posting all of the pictures of the trip, they really went far beyond our expectations of a field trip to their station. They took us through their training courses, putting on uniforms, climbing ladders and let the kids try to operate their tools. It was awesome! Everyone really got to appreciate how hard they have to work to do their job.

J.P. gives them all high fives before we leave.

My Crew and the Wuxi Firemen.

Students present a card and Christmas cookies to them.

We wrote our message in Mandarin and “signed” our names with our hands.

After the “day in the life” of a firefighter, we gave them our present of cookies and our cards. It was an incredible experience. I hope this first experience of a community service project helps to develop the concept of giving, in which, when we give from the heart, we always get more than we give.

How to Spell Transdisciplanary Learning in the Early Years

 

Seriously, how long will I have to write transdisciplanary before my spell check program acknowledges that it’s a real word. No matter how many times I ask it to “add it to the dictionary”, it still gives me the red line.  Doesn’t my computer know I am a PYP teacher. What nerve, I tell you! lol

As any Early Years teacher knows, there can be a fine line between topic and concept.

Look at my next unit:

People can help our communities by working in different ways.

• People play different roles in a community. (responsibility)
• How helpers impact a community. (connection)
• How tools help people to do their jobs. (function)

What comes to your mind?–Community Helpers, right? –A bunch of lovely centers/corners. We can have police, fire fighters, nurses, doctors, construction workers, etc…..Lots of role play- Fun Early Years unit, right?

Not to me. I find this unit a challenge because now I am asking myself how can I steer this inquiry away from being a topic to developing those concepts of our roles and responsibilities in a community. I’m thinking about what approaches  I can use to embed multiple disciplines so that students can explore and create in contexts that are authentic for them. Preschool STEAM– Of course!

STEAM, in case you don’t know is an acronym that stands for:

S. cience

T. echnology

E.ngineering

A.rt

M. ath

Aha, I can hear you say how can ” doing nifty projects” make it transdisciplanary? Fair retort. Point taken. So I’ve decided to up the ante and instead of centers or corners during this unit, we will have PROBLEMS.  In the beginning, I will have to provide them through literature links and set up these provocations with my main teacher question: HOW COULD SOMEONE IN THE COMMUNITY HELP HIM/HER? Later, however, I expect students to generate them.

As I am in the planning stages of this unit, I will have to report back with our progress, but my head is spinning with so many ideas. I can’t wait to see what the students come up with!

 

 

Life is Play

It really wasn’t until I had my own child that I deeply understood the quote from Fred Rogers, “Play is often talked about as if it was a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.”

 As I have watched not only my own child grow, but also the immense amount of growth that goes on with my students, it becomes more obvious to me the need to honor that Life is Play for the young.

Students construct such deep meaning of their world by finding ways to relate to it through enriching their understanding of:

• Relationships: through shared experience and connection with others.
• Environment: awareness of beauty and the ability to create their own private world of imagination and thinking.
• Systems: understanding how the world works in their lives and in the lives of others.
• Decision making: determining what is important to them and for others; making choices that develop their self-esteem.

As I step back into the Early Years this year, I wonder how as a teacher I may guide play better through provocations, asking questions and expanding their thinking. Not only do I wish for them to practice foundational numeracy and literacy skills, but I want to engage and challenge them so that they can create and build deeper conceptual understandings and open up their view of the world.

 

I look forward to the year ahead, and the wonderful complexity of how young children develop their ideas through imagination and creative action. This is the joy of my “work”-to be the observer and provocateur of children involved in play, as play is now my life’s work as well.

 

 

Trandisciplanary Learning

Transdiciplanary -that sure is a mouthful to say and I think it might take me a lifetime to master but I love the process. I think of it as trying to link as many subject perspectives into a single learning context. A bottle neck of connections. In this case, it was the Central Idea: Humans have values and belief systems that can impact their actions.

As we embarked upon this inquiry, I wanted the students to ponder:

• How do we know what people believe in? (key concept: form)
• How do we know if the opinions we have about things are truly accurate (key concept: perspective)

So we began with our literacy link, investigating facts vs. opinions in the books that we had pulled from the library for this unit.  I asked them to do some close reading (and yes, I used the magnifying glasses to illustrate this point), thinking of themselves as “data detectives”digging for clues. Students had to record this information in their journals. Later on we discussed what kind of data was commonly found, and if this was fact or opinion–how can we tell the difference in books, which they recognized as numbers, figures and dates.

After tuning in, I posed them how we might find out what our school community believes in.So now enters the math link, looking at the data management strand of our standards.The students agreed on a survey, in which we spent a couple of lessons developing their understanding of the mathematical principles of collecting and organizing data. We talked about 3 important elements to accuracy in our survey results:

1. Good survey questions yield accurate data.
2. We can’t assume answers, we must ask for clarification if we are unsure of their answers.
3. The larger the survey sample, the more reliable our results.

The students then designed simple, yes/no/maybe questions about various beliefs, which mostly focused on supernatural elements like Do you believe in God?  Do you believe in ghosts?

Students all agreed on a sample size of 30 respondents for their surveys, and started roving the corridors to ask their questions. Afterwards, we analyzed our data, and the students reflected on their results, which then circled back to literacy, in which they had to write these reflections. The students had no idea that they were doing “math” or “literacy” of course. They just knew it was “unit” time, and I think this is the key to what it means to this crazy word that I can hardly spell: TRANSDISCIPLANARY.

 

So now we segue way to how we can communicate our findings to our school community. Many ideas were suggested but we decided to use graphs. I toyed with teaching them the Excel program, but I determined that they really needed to focus more concretely on the math vs the technology–at least for now. So then began a couple serious math lessons on creating pie charts, in which we reviewed fractions and angles before we even began making the pie charts. When we made the pie charts, discussion arose about whether or not we should color them, and if we should use the same colors or different colors. Also, whether certain colors represented certain ideas; for example Yes should be green or yellow.  At the end, the students agreed to let students represent their findings individually, and be open-minded to displaying their results in the way they wanted. I thought this was an interesting discussion, and it was a natural link to what they not only knew about each other socially and culturally but their beliefs about artistry.

What I loved about this project, which grew out of a couple of questions, was that the students were highly engaged and involved–not in math, not in literacy, not in art–but in LEARNING!  And although this unit is still underway, the thinking hasn’t ended because the project did; it continues on.

My Challenge with Inquiry-Based Learning

The longer I teach in the PYP, the more I recognize how much learning I have to do, especially since I am coming from an American educational background, in which my own student learning experiences did not include inquiry-based learning, let alone my professional teaching training. I’ve had little framework in my personal life experience. So I often find that I have to step away from national standards and think about how I can best construct meaning of the central idea. Most of the time it feels exciting, but sometimes it feels overwhelming–there’s so much unknown as I am a guide on my student’s learning journey. And I’m often wondering to myself: Am I doing this right?

I’ve decided that my that the only way I know I am moving in the right direction is if I see that student action is taking place. Are students taking personal responsibility in their learning? Are they inspired into action?–do they need a nudge or a push to get them moving?

Taken from Jessica O’Hanley’s webpage

Granted not all action will be a project or consist of a product. I love how Sonya Terborg’s blog lays out 6 ways in which action can be demonstrated by:

1. Having-more knowledge, more care, more determination and more respect.
2. Thinking differently-wondering and/or changing your opinion.
3. Feeling differently-empathizing, loving, admiring, worrying or feeling inspired to make a change.
4. Doing something or NOT doing something like giving time, money and effort to a cause or stoping a behavior.
5. Saying-explaining, discussing, debating, asking or thanking.
6. Being-changing one’s behavior as to be more patient and respectful

I think when I use these ideas as guideposts, I can reflect better on the inquiry and determine what worked and what didn’t work. And, like all things, I need to remain patient with my learning journey, staying open to the process of discovery and growth in this professional area of mine.

I wonder how other educators determine if they are successful in their practice of inquiry based learning. Please share what you consider as your markers of success!

 

 

Ancient World, Modern Times

Have you ever taught a unit that you wanted to do over again-either because you bombed at it or because it was so engaging? Well I’m closing the year on a high because this unit went so much better than expected.

Our central idea was: Ancient civilizations have influenced many things in our modern world.

The art teacher and I decided to use the Greek civilization as our model for an influential civilization. The history of us provided the fodder for our discussions and then we began to talk about the Greek philosophers as we began tuning into and engaging into our unit. The students were intrigued by Socrates, mostly because he drank poison. These lively stories cultivated a keen interest in crafting questions that “hurt our brains” to think about, as we explored metacognition.  

As we delved into aspect of the Greek civilization, I decided that I would focus on reading content of our unit on myths and legends, Greek and Latin roots in our English words, while developing their listing and speaking skills. I provided a variety of media sources other than books, and decided to introduce them to podcasts to add a twist to the listening skills. Listen Current  was a great resource and provided listening guides for their podcasts which was very ELL friendly and helped us to tackle challenging vocabulary terms.

I asked them what ancient cultures they were curious about and explained that we would do podcasts, in which they interview each other about their civilizations.They were so excited, which genuinely surprised me. It was hilarious to see them craft questions for these interviews that were meant to “hurt each other’s brains”, going deeper than their typical questions.  We used the app Spreaker Studio to create very simple podcasts.

The podcasts took longer than I expected, as they needed more guidance with writing scripts and all those tricky questions made it a bit of a challenge to find research materials that were at their reading levels. However, it created a need to find multiple sources of information and it was a true RE-SEARCH unit, in which they had to keep reading, watching videos and keep looking for information on the internet.  They would stop and discuss their civilizations naturally and made a lot of great connections. The students researched the Aztecs, Chinese, Egyptians, Incas, Mesopotamians, Mayans, Norse, Romans and Nubians.

My co-teaching partner and I had talked about having the kids put together a “museum of ancient history” as summative task, but the podcast ended up taking up more time than we expected and instead we had them decide to take something that we take for granted in our modern world and trace it back to its ancient roots. Students chose topics that resulted from some things that they learned about from these podcasts–from armor to lipstick, from books to medicine. It was a rich variety of topics. The kids made “fortune tellers” that described the why and how of this invention, and then they shared them, taking turns with each other.

 

 

 

 

Although I would do things a bit differently if taught again, it is a good feeling to know that our students can appreciate the drive, creativity and curiosity of ancient people. I was generally concerned if this was too heavy of a history unit, but the curiosity and motivation sustained itself.

 

 

 

Have you ever taught a unit that you thought would be awful and turned out great OR vice-ver
sa, you thought it was going to be wonderful and turned flat? I wonder what makes students’ so committed to their research on topics.

 

 

Concept Based Learning in the Early Years

Have you ever seen this “picture of practice” on the Visible Thinking webpage:  Concept Keys Strategies ?

I remember the first time I saw this Kindergarten teacher demonstrate how she explicitly used concept-based learning in her classroom, I was really in awe and secretly jealous–mostly because her students could articulate ideas in English since my students could barely respond to “hello”.  It provoked me and posed a challenge;  and like a piece of dirt that got into my oyster shell, by Jove, I was going to make something beautiful out of this irritation!

So began the drive in me to pull off explicitly teaching the key concepts that drive the PYP. As an Early Years teacher, it’s easy to use “play-based learning” as my shield to avoid teacher directed lessons, having a morning meeting/circle time to have teacher-directed lessons. So I decided that I would do a math-literacy integration instead that would develop using the key concepts in our unit. It would be a pseudo stand alone unit and  I wanted to scaffold the big understandings, introducing the key concepts in a systematic way.

So  I decided to explore this connection as a part of our Where We Are in Place in Time unit which was actually focused on Transportation : Different types of transportation help people move from place to place.  The lines of inquiry were as follows:

• Different forms of transportation (form)
• How transportation has changed over time (change)
• Where you live affects the transportation you use (connection)

I focused on shapes as a part of looking at the first line of inquiry (shapes found in different parts of transportation), using those same concepts as the lens in which we could think about shapes. As I thought about it, I couldn’t resist coming up with another Central Idea that I would use to assess their understanding: People can find shapes everywhere and we can become more aware of them in our environment. 

As a teacher whose 3-5 year olds are in the pre-emergent English stage, my first thought was about the key vocabulary that they would need to describe shapes, not to mention finding shapes in their environment. Of course the names of shapes are obvious key words, but I also wanted them to know words like line, corner, curved, round, straight, short, long. I had several morning meetings,  dedicated to developing their conceptual understandings.

During this time I brought the 3 key concepts for our unit: Form, Change and Connection. I talked about how the Key Concepts unlock our thinking and I “opened” everyone’s brain before we began lessons. The kids loved it! Also, to encourage their language skills, I had sentences starters to help articulate ideas, such as “This is a….” or “I see a…”  and “I think that..” I also had the negation of those phrases so there could be some debate, such as “This is not a ….”.  I used a “marble jar” to encourage them speaking English (since the go to language in my classroom is Mandarin); I would drop a marble in the big jar every time they used those phrases in their speaking. It was very effective and I found that several students made growth, initiating more conversations in English during playtime and requiring less prompting from me to speak in English.

Sorry, I digress…

We probably spent a week easily on just the key concept Form so I could introduce and develop their language skills. The children were always hunting around looking for these shapes, eager to point them out and intentionally creating them.

“I can try that”

“Look Ms. Judy!:

“This is circle”

“I found a circle”

“This is oval”.

The following weeks we looked at how shapes can change. For example if you “stretch” a square, it becomes a rectangle. I used wooden blocks and popsicle sticks to demonstrate these ideas. During circle time we played “Guess the Change” game, in which I would make a shape and then have them close their eyes while I changed it; students then had to tell me how it changed.

Then I introduced the key concept of Connection. First I used literature to inspire them to think about the connection between shapes and letters. Books like Alphabet City by  Johnson and  The Turn-Around Upside Down Alphabet Book by Lisa Campbell Earnst were fun favorites of the kids. Later in the week I brought out blocks and popsickle sticks and asked the kids to show me what they know about shapes to make letters. Before I knew it, they were making connections with the key concept of connection and expressing what they knew about letters: “This big B, two circles. Little b, one circle.”

Since play=inquiry in the Early Years, I created many opportunities that allowed them to think about what they learned and show me that they were thinking about the shapes within letters and how we can form them. Some were spontaneous and some were “suggestions”.  I also worked diligently on engaging them in questioning  (“what if I ….”) and encouraging them to express their ideas in complete sentences.

 

Playing “patty cake”, and making a letter F–“no circle. yes, straight line-1, 2, 3”

 

After 2 weeks of this, I introduced a T-chart and Venn Diagram (curved vs. straight lines was my example) activity in which the students sorted the letters based on shapes. It was an assessment, but they didn’t know that. However,  because I offered these as a choice rather than an obligation, only some students wanted to do it at first. I used all sorts of materials to inspire them to do the sorting activity and then I did games like “hide and seek letters” to “hide” these letters inside the charts. Oh my goodness, what I wouldn’t do for concrete data! I wish I had pics of this but I was too busy playing with the students to snap any of them.

Well, this was really my first  attempt to test if I could go deeper with teaching young students conceptual understandings in a systematic way. I think the kids got a lot out of it and I definitely noticed that more acts of inquiry arose, particularly experimenting with how to draw lines. I’m still in the midst of assessing and reflecting on my approaches to teaching and learning.

What about you- How have you taught the Key Concepts to young learners? Please share in the comments below.

 

 

 

Coding in the Early Years

Well I am back in the Early Years until one of our teachers returns from maternity leave. It’s been an interesting shift back since this is a mixed classroom, with 3-5 year olds. I decided to incorporate coding as a part of our math language development, with a focus on positional words.

I’ve had to do a lot of songs and games to get my ELLs familiar with all of this language. They really loved this video from Scratch Garden: Left and Right Song.  Then we started talking about how we might do programming in the real world with giving directions to one of our “robot” friends. In our introductory activity, a friend had to get to the telephone, so students would take turns to “program”them with the directions they needed.

 

Emily counts her steps to the telephone.

 

Anuja thinks about how he might “program” Emily.

There was a lot of discussion about how to walk to the telephone- you can walk “this way, then that way”. As a result of eliminating confusion and focusing on the positional language ( in this case, right/left/backwards/forwards), we took away some of the foam mats so the path looked more obvious ( and it mimicked more for using the BeeBot- which is where we were heading).  Something great about using the mats was that the kids could really see the one-to-one correspondence that they needed to grasp  for programming. However, this activity did have some limitations because they couldn’t understand how a code might need to be cancelled if something changed in the program.

However, this was their first step and had more success in this way as the students began to get the concepts. This paved the way with using the BeeBot. We only have one in our class, so I used it as a center/station activity. We practiced looking at the symbols on the BeeBot and how we could use them and explored using it before setting up obstacles or using it in play scenarios.

Elena decides to link up a train to the Beebot

As their understanding progressed, we worked on the BeeBot and Foos apps on the iPads. Our tech integrator came in to assist during our school’s celebration of the Hour of Code. He was happy to see how some of the kids were progressing and helped me to assess where students were at in their learning journeys.

Anuja smashes it through Foos and gets to a game level.

A Twist on the Ole Book Report

In our school, we do the Daily 5 but I’ve found that during their Work on Writing, students rarely write anything that pushes them to grow. I’ve introduced the 6-traits of writing and the writing process to them, and still my 4th graders weren’t producing anything beyond comic strips. I finally had to step in and assign a writing assignment so that they were challenged to grow. Enter the Book Report.

But book reports aren’t very exciting and I wanted them to feel enthusiastic about this assignment. So I  put a twist on it, calling it The Battle Of The Books.  They were sold! In order to get them reading a Just Right book, I helped with their selections, which they had to read and discuss with a partner. After they were finished reading the book, they had to decide whether someone should or shouldn’t read this book, providing arguments for their case. Convincing others was the Battle!!

Since we have a 1:1 classroom, I also wanted to include such me technology into their presentation of their book reports. I thought a polling or voting app might do the trick. After researching and inquiring with colleagues, I decided on Plickers. It turned out to be a great choice, as it was easy to use and students got instant feedback. This app uses something like a QR code and there are 40 unique codes that you can assign to students. The students answer questions based upon how they are rotating the code. On the Plickers’ cards, they have  an A, B, C and D on them, so the rotation corresponds to the letter.

We invited students from the 2nd, 3rd and 5th grade to listen to my students presentations. It was an awesome experience for them. You can see a glimpse of it below: