Designing engaging and rigorous learning experiences

Yesterday I led an online workshop for Toddle at the Inquiry Educators Summit (TIES).  It was amazing, even though there was a Zoom outage in the UK and eastern USA during the time of my presentation.  Thanks to the amazing support in India, I was still able to deliver my presentation - and it was really odd because I could not see either my slides or the audience.  Although my intention is to provide a fuller account of this workshop, including a downloadable resource that Toddle can add to their Learning Library, I'm going to give a few brief reflections here.  First of all here were the intentions of the workshop:

• Learn how to incorporate higher order thinking skills into student learning experiences and assessments
• Consider how to get students to think and dive deep into their inquiries
• Understand the importance of giving students voice, choice and ownership in how they show their understanding

I'm always amazed at the wonderful notes that participants take using sketches.  It's a really creative way of taking notes and I'd like to share a couple that were made during my presentation and then shared on Twitter.  Obviously Sketchnotes done live over an hour's presentation cannot cover everything, but for me looking at these later it was interesting to see the main points that were seen as important during my session.  This first one is from Lucy Elliott, a PYP Coordinator in China.

Looking at this one I can see the message that comes up clearly is that teachers are the designers of learning.  I can see references to Bloom's taxonomy and the importance of designing so that students are using higher level thinking skills.  In particular that creating involves new and original work/thinking.  I can also see the reference to the SAMR model.  Again I see lots of verbs being used to provoke higher level thinking and reference to the importance of asking open-ended questions.

This one is from Shailja Datt, a PYP Coordinator in India.  This also mentions Bloom's and the SAMR models, and the verbs that can raise thinking.  This one also includes the other "R"s that I feel are important:  rigour, redefining the task and return on learning.

I'm very grateful to both these that were shared on Twitter as it helps me to reflect on my presentation.  I hope to receive the chat (which I also couldn't see) later and at that point I will write a blog post to answer any outstanding questions.

A free webinar

Living in the UK I've been in lockdown for the past 7 weeks - and while in some respects it has driven me crazy, it has also given me time to do many things that would not have been possible before.  One of these is a free webinar that is being organised as part of TIES (The Inquiry Educators Summit) which is happening this coming weekend, 16th and 17th May.  There is a stellar lineup of presenters and keynote speakers and I'm honoured and excited to be part of this.

Here are some of the things I'll be discussing:

• The importance of engaging and rigorous content
• Higher Order Thinking Skills in Bloom’s Taxonomy and the SAMR Model
• Why we should not be asking students to do “tell about” summary projects
• Redefining the task to focus on rigour and a return on learning
• Different types of communication
• Adding more rigour to informational projects
• Going beyond technology to focus on craftsmanship

Click here to register for TIES

Future Forwards Volume 5 - from shining stars to connected constellations

Today ASB published the next volume of Future Forwards. The online edition is available at this link. Future Forwards is a collection of thoughts, hypotheses, discussions, and reflections on practices, research and ideas that are relevant to emerging new paradigms of teaching and learning.  Previous volumes of Future Forwards have focused on how ASB's R&D has built a culture of active innovation at the school.  However we are aware that to effect transformation across education worldwide, we need more schools to "move past being distinct and shining stars of innovation, to become connected constellations of innovation."  Volume 5 of Future Forwards therefore contains explorations of the frontiers of education from 3 other schools around the world.

Paradigms - Looking to the Future
These chapters are about paradigm shifts - different approaches that radically challenge established conventions. Here you will find chapters on professional development, design thinking, multi-age classrooms and social entrepreneurship.

Ideas - The Next Step
These chapters are about how current research is changing or impacting existing practices or established norms. In this section you can read about ASB's partnership with a local school, research into digital wellbeing and social media use among third culture kids, the future of higher education, gender equity and meeting the diverse needs of language learners.

Practices - Innovating in the Now
These chapters describe the application of an instructional practice in a completely novel way or the successful mash-up of different practices. In this section you will read blended learning, student leadership in technology, curiosity projects in art, Maker, using sensors in the classroom and creative coding.

These eBooks are completely free - enjoy and please consider sharing them with others in your professional network.

If you missed the earlier volumes, here are the links:

• Future Forwards Volume 1
• Future Forwards Volume 2
• Future Forwards Volume 3
• Future Forwards Volume 4

Future Forwards Volume 4

Today ASB published the next volume of Future Forwards.  The online edition is available at this link. Future Forwards is a collection of thoughts, hypotheses, discussions, and reflections on practices, research and ideas that are relevant to emerging new paradigms of teaching and learning.

Paradigms - Looking to the Future
These chapters are about paradigm shifts - different approaches that radically challenge established conventions. Here you will find chapters on experimenting with drones, creating an app to support French language learning, exploring a walking workstation in school, yoga and meditation for adolescent decision-making, and creativity and innovation.

Ideas - The Next Step
These chapters are about how current research is changing or impacting existing practices or established norms. In this section you can read about engineering design and the STEM crisis, improving reading for English language learners, and Day 9 prototyping

Practices - Innovating in the Now
These chapters describe the application of an instructional practice in a completely novel way or the successful mash-up of different practices. In this section you will read about designing for environmental sustainability, the journey to standards-based assessment and reporting, problem solving (the Global Social Entrepreneurship Summit), using technology and analyzing data as key assessment, making and tinkering in the PYP, Community and Social Responsibility (CSR): a model for 21st century learning, inquiry in Kindergarten, iPad apps for creation in Early Childhood, using student data profiles to visualize student success in the Middle School, improving the world (the Technology, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Summit) and finally a chapter written by my colleague Sharon Brown and myself on coaching your colleagues about our Technology Integration Coaching programme.

These eBooks are completely free - enjoy and please consider sharing them with others in your professional network.

If you missed the earlier volumes, here are the links:

·        Future Forwards Volume 1

·        Future Forwards Volume 2

·        Future Forwards Volume 3

Bringing Science into How We Express Ourselves

Students in Grade 5 recently completed their How We Express Ourselves unit of inquiry.  The central idea for this unit was "Through play we express our feelings and ideas and come to new understandings".  The students were inquiring into communicating through play, the imaginative use of materials and the roles of toys and games in play.  At the same time they were exploring the science concepts of force and motion to design a one minute game to play with their 2nd Grade buddies.   Finally students were able to reflect on their learning.   The whole 6 week process was documented and turned into a video.  Enjoy!

Approaches to teaching and learning part 2: integrated -v- interdisciplinaray

I'm reading a recent IBO publication about approaches to learning and thinking in a little more depth about student-centred learning.  Over the past year and a half I've been part of many conversations about learning, and about inquiry, project based learning and collaboration.  The publication by Na Li discusses these different approaches.

Inquiry - students solve real problems by asking questions, analysing problems, conducting investigations, gathering and analyzing data, making interpretations, creating explanations and drawing conclusions.  The skills that are addressed through inquiry are critical and creative thinking, self-regulatory skills, metacognition and communication.  Studies show that there are challenges to designing good inquiry based learning units:

• motivating students
• the mastery of inquiry strategies
• covering enough content knowledge
• the management of complex activities and resources
• practical constraints (class size, technology etc)

I think that many teachers who do not use inquiry are confused about what it involves and worry that students don't learn enough facts.  Actually content knowledge is very important for inquiry and teachers often front-load the content that students will need for their inquiries.  In addition more scaffolding and more teacher questions are needed for younger students who engage in inquiry.  Another very important aspect is formative assessment - which should be used by teachers to guide the planning of the inquiry units.  Both content knowledge and skills should be formatively assessed, and teachers need to be able to observe and identify students' abilities to use inquiry strategies.  These shifts in pedagogy generally require teachers to have additional training in order for the effective implementation of inquiry-based learning.

Problem-based learning (PBL) - similar to inquiry, PBL is often done in small groups with the teacher as facilitator.  Knowledge and skills are developed by solving authentic problems.  There is similarity between inquiry and PBL because PBL involves inquiry strategies.  Studies that have looked at the impact of PBL on knowledge and skills have shown that:

• PBL has a positive effect on skills, however PBL has a different impact on content knowledge depending on students' expertise levels and knowledge base - in particular students with a low level of prior knowledge may be overwhelmed when applying new knowledge.
• Students may learn fewer facts and less content in PBL, however they acquire a more elaborate knowledge and may perform better in retention and transfer of this knowledge.
• Diversified assessment is needed to get a clear picture of students' knowledge and skills achievement in PBL.

Collaborative learning - both inquiry and PBL rely on collaboration as students come together to solve problems and construct knowledge through interacting with others.  The effectiveness of collaborative learning depends on factors such as the composition of the group and the prior knowledge of its members.  Without enough prior knowledge students do not come up with high quality explanations, nor do they construct deep understanding through considering the multiple perspectives of the group members.

How do these various approaches to learning match with either an integrated or an interdisciplinary curriculum?  An integrated curriculum starts from authentic real-life problems and then brings in content knowledge from different disciplines.  This sounds to me more like the PYP transdisciplinary approach.  An interdisciplinary curriculum, however, is designed around the content knowledge of one discipline with relevant content knowledge from other disciplines being aligned and mapped.  This to me seems more similar to the MYP.

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Inquiry, questioning, designing thinking and problem solving

This is the first in a series of blog posts where I'm looking back at my learning over the past year.  I've decided to start with inquiry which is at the heart of the PYP programme, and at the same time is important when considering how to solve problems using design thinking.  Here are some of the things that I've been thinking about related to the connections and  synergy between inquiry, questioning, design thinking and problem solving.

Last year I was involved in supporting students in Grades 3 - 5 in Independent Studies.  This was a time when students could follow their own interests and inquire into something they were passionate about.  At the same time, this was an innovative approach to education so I started to think about the connections between questioning and innovation.  What I learned was that innovators ask more questions and these questions are also more provocative:

• They ask "what is?" questions, to find out what is happening in the here and now.
• They also ask "what caused?" questions - both these types of questions are descriptive questions.
• Next come the disruptive questions, the ones that move your thinking forward.  These are the "why?" and "why not?" questions.
• Finally they ask the "what if?" questions, these ones lead to the heart of innovation.

During Independent Studies I worked with our iCommons Coordinator, Ms Heeru, and she introduced me to the "question formulation technique".  This started with the difference between open and closed questions. A closed question is one that can be answered with a simple phrase or one word answer.  Examples include "Where are you from?" or "Do you speak English?"  Closed questions are:

• quick and easy to answer
• fact based
• keep control of the conversation with the person asking the questions

The first word of close questions is often a word like:  do, would, are, will and if.

Open questions are ones that require longer answers because:

• they are about opinions or feelings
• they involve the respondent thinking
• they give control of the conversation to the person replying to the question

The first word of open questions are often words such as: what, why, how and describe.

The question formulation technique was devised by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana as a technique to teach students to ask their own questions.  It is a process that allows them to think more deeply and refine their questions and one that encourages divergent thinking, convergent thinking and metacognition.  As I considered the process of divergent thinking (generating a wide range of ideas, thinking creatively) and convergent thinking (analyzing and synthesizing information while moving towards a solution), it reminded me of the flair and focus stages of Design Thinking, which is something I became really interested in last year as a result of being part of ASB's Design Thinking Team and going to the a DT workshop in the summer at the Henry Ford Learning Institute.

In Design Thinking the first stage is Empathy - this is where there is a flair with ideas coming from all over the place and where you consider both the explicit and implicit needs of others.  This is followed by the focus of the Define phase where some ideas are thrown out in order to come up with a unique, concise reframing of the problem, grounded in the insights developed in the previous stage.  After Design comes Ideate, which is a huge flair.  The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) uses divergent thinking as the flair where students are generating ideas about possible research topics, perhaps using "out of the box" thinking and coming up with inventive new ideas.  It is a process that can be taught to students of all ages to help them handle challenges.

Creativity involves more than simply divergent thinking - it involves synthesizing the ideas and facts.  In the PYP inquiry cycle we talk about tuning in and finding out.  After this comes sorting out which to me matches really well with convergent thinking.  During this stage of the inquiry cycle students look at all the facts they have collected during the finding out and try to make sense of them all.  It is suggested that fostering creativity involves planning for both divergent and convergent thinking and that metacognition, being able to reflect and think about your own thinking, is essential for learning.  The QFT is a process for fostering these skills.

Since the summer Design Thinking institute, I've been thinking about how DT it can be used in education as a way of solving "wicked problems".  There are many definitions of wicked problems:

• a wicked problem is difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements
• it's an incomprehensibly complex and messy issue that we have trouble defining as well as attempting to solve
• it cannot be reduced to a single cause explanation - it's complex because of the interconnectedness of things
• it's not governed by simple cause-effect relationships
• it hides below the surface of our immediate perceptions
• it's a divergent problem - the more it is studied the more people come to different solutions and interpretations

Design Thinking for wicked problems goes through an inquiry cycle.  As previously mentioned, some parts of this cycle can be used by students to formulate questions before they start their inquiries.  Let me elaborate a little more now on the process, which starts with empathy.  It's important to start with this because it allows you to put aside your own wants and needs that will bring you to what could be the ideal solution for you, but not necessarily for the wants and needs of another person. Walking in someone else's shoes is important so that you design a solution for them.  This stage is the intellectual identification of the feelings, thoughts and attitudes of others - it deals with you listening to both their explicit needs and trying to hear the implicit ones too.

The next step in the process is to define or reframe the problem and to make sure you are clear about who the person is who needs the solution.  You need to listen in a focused way so that you can choose your goals.  Whereas empathy allows for a lot of diverse opinions, define narrows the focus and form a clear picture from what could be a lot of chaotic data.  At this point you may end up throwing ideas out.  Defining the problem involves making a problem statement, also called a User-Needs-Insight statement.

The third step of the process involves ideating - brainstorming the many different options available and writing down all ideas no matter how crazy they might seem.  It still includes listening to the ideas of others and possibly deciding on the best combination of ideas.  It's important to bring together a lot of ideas and diverse perspectives.

Prototyping comes next - often this might involve making a model, trying out an idea or bring an idea to reality.  This allows you to see in a practical way what does and doesn't work.  It's a place where you have have failure with low risks, and will allow you to move forward.

The last 3 parts of the process have mostly been about your own ideas, but feedback brings us back to the "client" again and this feedback will allow you to know what will or won't work for him or her.  You can then change or refine the design to make it better and more personal.  At this stage it is important to allow honest feedback.

Reflection is the final stage of the process.  Looking back allows you to move forward as you will only improve if you can reflect on what didn't work - knowing this allows you to work out how to overcome any new challenges.

We have used DT in a number of different ways at school this year, including trying to re-design a local sports club to meet both the needs of the teachers at ASB and the needs of the local Indian community.  If you would like to know more about any of these things that I've been thinking through this year, click on the links below to read my blog posts in full.

Connecting the Unconnected

Open -v- Closed Questions

The Question Formulation Technique

What is Design Thinking?

Digging Deeper into Design Thinking

Using Empathy to solve Wicked Problems

Design Thinking - the process

Design Thinking - rapid prototyping

Design Thinking - deep dive

Design Thinking - continuing the deep dive

Design Thinking - prompts and provocations

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Make meaning before making media!

The expression above has become my mantra this year after taking online courses with Bernajean Porter and especially after doing the face to face practicum while she was at ASB in September.  This week I've been thinking about this along with the inquiry cycle and Kathy Short's claim that some kind of presentation is essential to the process of learning and doing inquiry because that is where students figure out what they know and don't know.

The important thing about presentations, is that students must think about what they want to communicate - what it is that is so important for everyone to know - before they think about how they want to present it (they have to think about the meaning first and then the media second).  As Bernajean mentioned many times - agency is important.  After deciding what they want to communicate, students need to have a whole list of different ways that they might be able to present this information to different audiences, and then they need to find the best match between the information and the presentation mode for communicating their ideas.  Within each mode (for example video, slideshow, podcast etc) there will still be a choice of which tool will be the best one to use.

Agency - choice - is important.  Kathy Short writes: "if [students] are let out of the process, then teachers are always in a position of having to motivate them, because what they are doing doesn't pull from their own internal motivation."  Employers frequently bemoan the lack of creativity in school leavers, which is not surprising if at school students are always told the type of communication, the mode of communication and the tool that they should use.  Gary Stager also comments on this in Invent to Learn:  "Students learn creativity by being creative.  They can develop self-esteem by engaging in satisfying work ... Students learn perseverance by working on projects that make them want to stick with them .... Study skills are best gained within a context of meaningful inquiry."

After the presentation, it's time to reflect - this is an essential part of inquiry as students need to think about what they have learned about the content/meaning and what they have learned about the process/making media.  Finally students need to reflect on how this new knowledge and understanding is going to be used - which is the action part of the PYP.  Once again I come back to a quote from Invent to Learn:

Most often kids will exceed our expectations, especially if exceeding our expectations is our expectation.

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Research -v- Inquiry

I've written about inquiry many times before, but one of the joys of facilitating online workshops is that I often have to think - and re-think - about curriculum and pedagogy over and over again depending on the workshop and the cohort of participants.  Over the last few days I've been reading Kathy Short's interview with Yvonne Siu-Runyan and considering inquiry as curriculum.

Inquiry is the basis of the PYP, and one of the 5 essential elements of the PYP is action.  Kathy explains how inquiry and action are linked.  She talks about how we come to ask questions - because something interests us or because something causes us tension or confusion.  As we try to answer these questions, we come to new understandings, but at the same time new questions emerge and, because we have found out the answers to our questions, we need to be able to apply this new information in our lives which leads to taking action as a result of our new understanding.  Of course the action may well lead to further questions.

The real difference with inquiry as an approach is that you must start with exploring first, before asking questions - it's not possible to ask questions or think critically about something that you know nothing about.  And it is for this reason that many PYP units start with frontloading and with students being totally immersed in the topic in order to build this background knowledge that will allow the asking of meaningful questions.  As Kathy says: "In inquiry, the focus is on exploring the topic from as many perspectives as possible before finding questions or issues for in-depth investigation."

Research is often about collecting facts, but inquiry goes further as students use these facts to ask questions that will deepen their understanding.  When students start to inquire, the teachers may not know which questions the students will ask or where these questions will take them - the students may even want to go further than the teacher's own knowledge on a topic which means that teachers will be learning alongside the students.  In this situation the role of the teacher is not to provide the answers, but to bring in ideas and perspectives that the students may not yet have considered but that will support the inquiry - and this role involves a huge amount of listening as the teacher needs to find out what the students already know so that he or she can provide different perspectives about what the students don't already know.

For this reason I'm always wary about planning out a unit of inquiry beforehand.  I think it's good to plan powerful provocations and then to sit back and listen to the students and evaluate what they are saying - to collect their questions and then to plan more learning engagements based on these.  I think the difference between researching a topic and inquiry is that in the latter situation it is the students who own the learning and who are digging into questions that are significant for them, and are showing their knowledge in different ways.  The way they present their understanding is something I want to think about a little more in an upcoming post.

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Prompts, provocations and authentic student achievement

To start a unit of inquiry, as a tuning in so that students are curious about learning, we often start with a provocation.  In Invent to Learn Gary Stager writes "A good prompt is worth 1,000 words!"  But what is a good prompt?  Gary explains this in the following way:

• Brevity - clear, concise and self-evident
• Ambiguity - the learner needs to explore the prompt in his or her own way - it shouldn't be too prescriptive
• Immunity to assessment - if students care about what they are doing, they will want to do a good job.  They will be collaborating, peer reviewing and editing, making adult assessment unnecessary.

A good unit of inquiry or project goes beyond simply having a good prompt.  In addition, Gary writes, learners also need appropriate materials, sufficient time and a supportive culture, including a range of expertise.   What we need to is give students a prompt and then let them follow their ingenuity.  Gary says that "the richest learning often results from getting in over one's head or when encountering unforeseen obstacles ... good prompts do not burden a learner, but set them free."

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The Question Formulation Technique, Design Thinking and the Inquiry Cycle

Following on from my last post - a guest post from our iCommons Coordinator Heeru Bhojwani - I would like to write about a method of questioning that she introduced to me recently.  Devised by Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana, this is a technique to teach students to ask their own questions.  It is a process that allows them to think more deeply and refine their questions and one that encourages divergent thinking, convergent thinking and metacognition.  As I considered the process of divergent thinking (generating a wide range of ideas, thinking creatively) and convergent thinking (analyzing and synthesizing information while moving towards a solution), it reminded me of the flair and focus stages of Design Thinking.

In Design Thinking the first stage is Empathy - this is where there is a flair with ideas coming from all over the place and where you consider both the explicit and implicit needs of others.  This is followed by the focus of the Define phase where some ideas are thrown out in order to come up with a unique, concise reframing of the problem, grounded in the insights developed in the previous stage.  After Design comes Ideate, which is a huge flair.  The Question Formulation Technique (QFT) uses divergent thinking as the flair where students are generating ideas about possible research topics, perhaps using "out of the box" thinking and coming up with inventive new ideas.  It is a process that can be taught to students of all ages to help them handle challenges.

Creativity involves more than simply divergent thinking - it involves synthesizing the ideas and facts.  In the PYP inquiry cycle we talk about tuning in and finding out.  After this comes sorting out which to me matches really well with convergent thinking.  During this stage of the inquiry cycle students look at all the facts they have collected during the finding out and try to make sense of them all.  It is suggested that fostering creativity involves planning for both divergent and convergent thinking and that metacognition, being able to reflect and think about your own thinking, is essential for learning.  The QFT is a process for fostering these skills.

Step 1 - The Question Focus
This is what we refer to as the "tuning in" stage of a PYP inquiry and involves using a stimulus or provocation to encourage students to ask questions.  One difference is that this is not a "teacher question" but is a focus for student questions.

Step 2 - Rapidly Producing Questions
This stage uses a protocol to encourage students to generate their own questions in groups.  The rules for this are:

• Ask as many questions as you can
• Do not stop to discuss, judge or answer any questions
• Write down every question exactly as it was stated
• Change any statements into questions

Step 3 - Categorizing the Questions

Once all the questions have been generated, they are categorized into open and closed questions. Closed questions can be answered with a yes or no, or with a one word answer.  Open questions are those that require an explanation. They are looked at again to see if the questions can be rewritten and sharpened - some closed questions can be improved and turned into open questions.

Step 4 - Prioritizing the Questions

Students start to look at the questions to find out which ones are the ones that will help them get the information they need.  This stage involves comparing all the questions assessing which are the most useful.  Students may also sequence the questions as some may need to be answered before others.

The PYP supports student learning by having them draw on their prior knowledge and by providing provocations and experiences so that students can construct their own understanding.  The pedagogy is significantly dependent on students' inquiry and students become more engaged and take ownership of their learning.  Students are encouraged to be curious, to ask questions and to explore and design their own inquiries that will help them find responses to their own issues and interests.  Classroom experiences are planned by teachers to help students respond to the questions they have generated.  I think that the Question Formulation Technique could be a great way to have students focus on what they want to learn.

Would you like to know more about the QFT?  Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana have written a book about it entitled Make Just One Change.

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Open -v- closed questions: the importance of the first word

I was talking with our elementary school librarian today about questions.  We were discussing how in Independent Studies we moved the students from simple to more complex questions to research using command words.  During this discussion she told me about a book she was reading about open and closed questions.

A closed question is one that can be answered with a simple phrase or one word answer.  Examples include "Where are you from?" or "Do you speak English?"  Closed questions are:

• quick and easy to answer
• fact based
• keep control of the conversation with the person asking the questions

The first word of close questions is often a word like:  do, would, are, will and if.

Open questions are ones that require longer answers because:

• they are about opinions or feelings
• they involve the respondent thinking
• they give control of the conversation to the person replying to the question

The first word of open questions are often words such as: what, why, how and describe.

The process of moving from closed to open questions was described to me by Ms Heeru.  She said students could first of all generate questions, then be informed about the difference between open and closed questions, then go back to their list and identify which of their questions were closed questions, and finally rewrite these to make then open questions for research.  As we plan for our last unit of inquiry with our Grade 5 students after the PYP Exhibition is over, I want to try out this process with the students as they discuss their transition to Middle School.

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What's in the digital toolkit?

All this year our students in Grades 3-5 have been involved in Independent Studies.  They chose a topic they were passionate about or wanted to investigate more and have had the time to do an in-depth inquiry.  They have formulated simple questions, made them into complex questions using command words, come up with keywords and related search terms, looked for information, paraphrased and organized this information and now it is time to share their knowledge with the rest of the students.  This week we have been asking the students how they could present their findings.  We don't intend to teach the students anything new as far as presentation tools are concerned, so we wanted to find out what tools they actually felt confident in using - what they already had in their digital toolkit.  Here's what they said:

• We could make a video (using WeVideo, iMovie, Animoto, GoAnimate)
• We could make a presentation (using Google Slides, Powerpoint or Prezi)
• We could make an eBook (using Little Bird Tales or FlipSnack)
• We could make a website (using Weebly or Google Sites)
• We could make a poster (using Glogster)

We then asked them to make a choice about what they actually wanted to use.  The Wordle below shows which of these tools were the most popular:

So the students are now working independently on their presentations and we are thinking about which tool we want to use to pull them all together.  For Grade 5 we are thinking of an eBook where we can embed all the videos, posters, presentations and so on.  For Grade 4 we are thinking of making a website.  If you have suggestions for tools we can use to show all of our students' understandings, we'd love to hear from you - please leave us a comment below.

Photo Credit:  Web toolbox 2011-2012 by Aivar Ruukel, 2012  

How do curious people feel when they present their findings?

Today our 2nd Graders presented what they found out as a result of following their curiosities.  While many students said they felt nervous sharing their investigations with so many parents and other students, the word that occurred most often when students reflected on the Curiosity Project was that it had been fun.  Parents commented too:  that they were amazed by the things that 2nd Graders were curious about.  Who would have thought a 7 year old wanted to dissect a heart?  Who could have imagined a 7 year old would want to plan and plant up a miniature garden?

I've been interested to see how the Curiosity Project - an intensive 6 week project - compares with Independent Studies which is ongoing throughout the year for students in Grades 3-5.  I was particularly interested to know if the investigative skills we have been working on with the students in Independent Studies carry over into others areas of the curriculum.  Recently our Grade 4 students have filled out a Google Form to reflect on their Sharing the Planet unit of inquiry where they have been inquiring into different biomes, writing up their findings into Google Presentations, turning them into PDFs and then making them into FlipBooks.  The things that students identified on this questionnaire that had carried over from Independent Studies were as follows:

• an understanding of  copyright, plagiarism and the importance of paraphrasing
• knowledge of where to go in order to search for images that are labelled for reuse
• an understanding of the different creative commons licences 

Developing research skills is an important element of the PYP.  When I look at the list below, taken from Making the PYP Happen, I can see that both the Curiosity Project and Independent Studies is helping our students to develop these important 21st century skills.

Covering content and other games of Trivial Pursuit

Some years ago I was at my mother's house and we were watching Who Wants to be a Millionaire? on TV.  One question was which way does the River Nile flow? with the options being North, South, East or West and I can remember the contestant struggling over this.  To me this was a very simple question.  I thought that everyone knows that rivers flow towards the sea, everyone knows that the Nile is in Egypt and that Egypt is south of the Mediterranean Sea, and therefore everyone must know that the Nile flows north.  I must have said something along these lines, about how I was surprised to see someone struggling over such an easy answer, and was surprised by my brother's response:  "The answer's always easy when you know it."

I was thinking about this last week as I was re-reading the Grant Wigging article "The Futility of Trying to Teach Everything of Importance" which was one of the readings for last week's module of an online workshop that I'm facilitating.  This article has certainly provoked some interesting discussions among the participants and has prompted me to go back yet again and re-read it from other's perspectives.

Wiggins refers to us facing a Sisyphusian problem:  the boulder of "essential content" can only come thundering down the (growing) hill of knowledge, and his article is about how "the problem of student ignorance is thus really about adult ignorance as to how thoughtful and long-lasting understanding is achieved".  As the expression goes, you don't know what you don't know!  However what Wiggins advocates is enabling students to learn about their ignorance, take pleasure in this learning and be able to take control of the resources that will help them know more.  This is what he refers to as developing habits of mind.

Wiggins calls for a move away from scopes and sequences that assume a logical progression through knowledge, he argues we must move away from covering content that simply "reduces essential knowledge to Trivial Pursuit"  and instead we should concentrate on developing a "thirst for inquiry" and a "perpetual need to think".

Although some of the participants in my online workshop have criticized parts of this article (which is good of course, as it promotes discussion), I think Wiggins does stress the importance of inquiry and going where the questions lead.  He writes:

One learns the power of the questions only by seeing, for oneself, that important "facts" were once myths, arguments and questions .... Since it is impossible to teach everything we know to be of value, we must equip students with the ability to keep questioning.

Another take away I had from this article relates directly to what we are doing this year in ASB with Independent Studies and the Curiosity Project  (where students pursue something of interest to themselves) and with our goals of personalized learning.  Wiggins writes:

The deep acceptance of the painful realization that there are far more important ideas than we can ever know leads to a liberating curricular postulate:  all students need not learn the same things.

I think that this is true and something that we will need to accept if we are really to walk the talk of personalizing learning.

Photo Credit:  Trivia Caught by Stephen Train, 2007 

How do curious people share their learning?

This week in the Curiosity Project students were asked what they thought curious people did when they had found the answers to their questions.  Here are some of their replies:

You could make a book about what you've learned.  By doing art.  By making a collage.  A puppet show.  By doing a gallery.  By talking and telling people. If it was about people you could make a family tree.  You could make a website.  You could make a small video and post it on Youtube. (Calum)

They can share their learning by:

• Making posters
• Drawing a picture of what they did and labeling it is a good way to share.
• Writing what you did, how you did it and why you did it in an email or a letter.
• Making a video of your learning for eg. an experiment and showing the video maybe even on youtube.
• Speaking to the person and sharing their learning is one of the best ways that you can share

(Zainab)

There are many different ways in which a curious person can share their learning.  For example: They can answer the questions that they asked to begin with, they can express through words, they can share through videos, they can make posters, or maybe some people can make an experiment.  You can also express through writing or drawing a diagram.  (Nirvaan)

They  share  there  learning   by   using :  computers, books, posters, videos, pictures, models and their own brain. And choose an interesting fact  to share and sometimes take  one question  and  join  another and it becomes a better question. (Sahana)

Next week an entire morning will be given to the students so that they can share what they have found out about the subjects that they are curious about.  I'm very interested to see what they will choose to do in order to share their own learning.

Photo is of a mural painted on the wall in the secondary school

Allowing natural curiosity to flourish

I came across and blogged about this video more than half a year ago, but I'm revisiting it again as I feel it ties in quite well with all the thinking we've been doing recently with our Grade 2s about curiosity and with the introduction of Independent Studies with students in Grades 3 - 5.  The more I stand back and simply observe and think, the more I appreciate how important it is for teachers to step to the side and facilitate learning by giving students the skills that they need to pursue the curiosity that they already have.  I've been amazed by some of the subjects that have sparked the curiosity of our elementary students and look forward to seeing where allowing student to follow their passions will lead them.

Born to Learn from Born to Learn on Vimeo.

Curiosity - where the spark comes from

Yesterday I was in one of the 2nd Grade learning spaces while the teacher, Scot, was talking to the students about curiosity.  He explained to them that everyone learns new things all the time, but that curious people learn on purpose.  He described it as being like a light bulb being switched on - they get curious and they really want to know things.

Once our curiosity has been sparked, we learn by asking questions.  He explained to the students that questions are like food for the brain - they are the things our brain likes to eat.  When a question comes into your mind, it means that this is what food your brain is asking for.  Pay attention to your questions as they are important to help you learn, and capture your questions because if you don't capture them and write them down, then they will just go out of your brain.  Scot explained that for curious people the questions are never really done.  These people listen out and notice for more questions to appear.

Today the students were writing about where the spark had come from for the questions that they are going to investigate for the Curiosity Project.  Here is what some of the students are curious about and why:

Crystals:  I chose this topic because I really like crystals.  And also one day I found a crystal in my 

own garden. And thats how I always was  wondering about crystals.  (Tisha)

Buoyancy:  I'm been curious about buoyancy because my mom said the word and I said to myself, "What is that?" It just flipped in my head! That's the story of how I became curious about buoyancy. (Reza)

Polar Bears: I first became curious about polar bears because I saw a big poster about polar bears in my room so I got curious to know abut the bears.  I got my idea when I was staring at the poster (Anjali)

The heart: I became curious about the heart and dissecting because I love science and you might see me with my friends making a frying pan with stones in playground.  And I love finding bones and dissecting things, and about dissection, I always see what's inside rocks. I became curious about hearts because I wanted to know what was inside them and how they work.  That's the story of how I became curious about dissecting and hearts. (Nirvaan) Miniature gardens:  When it was the queens diamond jubilee, my cousin entered a contest where he had to make a miniature jubilee garden.  He won! Then when the curiosity project started, I thought back to that day, and decided to do it on that. That is where my curiosity started.  (Zainab) Dogs: Everywhere that I go I see dogs. We are going to get a dog so I became curious about dogs. I became curious about different dogs because there are all kinds of different dogs, but the ones I like the most are poodles. That’s the story of how I became curious about dogs. (Shahd) What occurs to me is that it is sometimes the tiniest thing that sparks curiosity, and that if nurtured this curiosity can turn into a lifelong passion.  As parents and as educators, nurturing this passion is an awesome responsibility. Photo Credit:  Question mark by Leo Reynolds, 2006

The amazing things that 2nd graders are curious about

We are now into week two of the Curiosity Project with our 2nd Graders.  Having thought about what curiosity is, and found out about some teachers at school who have followed their passions, the students have started to narrow down the things that they are curious about and want to find out more about.  I'm constantly amazed by the minds of primary children - how much they want to know about some very complex subjects.  Here are some examples:

First I wanted to learn about the sun, but then I figured out that my thoughts about the sun came from my brain and that all thinking comes from the brain too. This is why I want to study about the brain. (Herman)

How do cheerleaders do the splits in air?  How do they learn to tumble and do back flips? (Ashlynn) I'm going to learn what buoyancy is because I want to know why the Dead Sea is so buoyant. I am going to test  how much salt is needed to float a dozen eggs. (Reza) I think I might choose how text messages, telephones and the internet work. (Mya) Next week Grade 2 are going to have a Curiosity Project Breakfast Party.  Parents have been invited so that they can work with their child and support their child's investigation.  At the party parents will help students to gather information from the internet and books, and they can help their children to design experiments and create interview scripts so that the students can interview experts.  These experts are members of the ASB community, their families and friends who are knowledgeable about the topics that the students have chosen. The Curiosity Project is unfolding extremely well.  I'm looking forward to the breakfast party! Photo Credit:  Bulle by Clément Seifert, 2006

The importance of curiosity

I have written in a couple of previous posts about a project that is being run at the moment by one of our 2nd grade teachers called The Curiosity Project.  Curiosity is one of the PYP attitudes, and is seen as being an essential part of inquiry.  The document Making the PYP Happen explains this in the following way:

Children, from birth, are full of curiosity, and the PYP provides a framework that gives crucial support for them to be active inquirers and lifelong learners. 

Through inquiry students "develop their natural curiosity.  They acquire the skills necessary to conduct inquiry and research and show independence in learning.   They actively enjoy learning and this love of learning will be sustained throughout their lives."

But what is curiosity?  How does a 2nd grader think about it?  Here are some comments from students in the class that shows how important they think that it is:

I think curiuosity means something you want to find out about. Curiosity is something you are excited about doing. When you feel curious and you find out things, that feels good.  I think this project is awesome because we can make, do and find out about ANYTHING we want to. (Nirvan)

Curiosity is when you want to know and learn something that you do not know about.  You want to know more and more about it and do not give up. You will be curious about something only if you are interested in it.  I think I am a curious person.  I keep asking my parents questions starting with “who”, “when”, “why”, “what” and “how”……. (Ayla)

Curious means you are inquisitive. You want to learn about the world. You discover new things.  (Anjali)

*You are curious and you really are interested in something  and you want to learn more about it.

*You are inspired about something that you have seen or done and you really get into it and want to use that in your life.

*You are a curious learner and learn about loads of things and every time you learn about something you want to learn more.  (Zainab)

Curiosity is something - the part of your brain where you dream or where dreams come from. Curiosity has another word - imagination. It is an important part. Without curiosity we wouldn't think of anything. (Reza)

Photo by Joe Benjamin, 2009