Note: I am currently taking an International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme course to refresh myself in preparation for this fall. For posterity, I will be posting written assignments and activities from that course to this blog. A lot of it might seem random. Bear with me!
How I learn:
At this point in my career, my teaching philosophy is based on the convergence of my personal classroom teaching experiences, child development theories, and learning theories.
In that sense, my personal learning theory is closest to Constructivist, driven by my belief that intelligence is incremental. My challenge to myself as a teacher is to keep current with best teaching practices and to be aware of and work to reduce my own personal biases and weaknesses in the classroom. This means daily, lesson-by-lesson self-evaluation and professional development.
How I teach:
Because I have primarily worked with children ages 5-8, the influence of learning theory on my teaching style is tempered by my understanding of the development of students at that age.
My ultimate goal in early years teaching is to aim at teaching students how to think, how to question, and how to develop skills that will help them ultimately further their personal learning goals. I believe that the best way to teach students that their “intelligence” is a changeable entity and that they can develop tools to shape their knowledge is to engage students in active learning where they are pushed to think about the why and how of what they are learning.
There are basic content goals (literacy, number recognition and theory, etc.) that must be taught, as well as and social/emotional development, so at an early age I don’t think that teachers can place as much responsibility on the students to make connections and expansions. At the same time, much can be taught to students at a young age through collaborative and guided learning. Appropriate scaffolding and modeling are key to the success of any lesson.
CONTENT-EXTEND-CHALLENGE (Module 1, Activity 4)
a. Content:
I have always agreed with the concept of multiple intelligences (Gardner). I don’t think that most people are dominantly innately talented in one area, but I do believe that students will tend to learn better with different modes of instruction (visual, kinesthetic, etc). Because of that I consistently try to diversify my teaching strategies across subjects.
I also believe that intelligence is a malleable, workable entity (incremental), but, more than that, it directly benefits a student to see their own intelligence as something they can alter and change through the practice and development of critical skills.
I also made a lot of personal connections between my own teaching practices and the methods and routines from Project Zero Visual Thinking. I love making visual representations of what the students are learning and how they are thinking, and the suggested routines here are wonderful and specific.
One of my favorite activities is having active Read-Alouds where I ask students questions and observations, focused around a specific concept, while reading a book to them. In order to be able to run this lesson, the students have to be used to questioning and thinking critically about the story without losing the plot, and that requires a lot of practice and development of mini-strategies. I found a lot of common ground between my lessons leading up to the active Read-Aloud and Project Zero.
b. Extend:
The 5 Es–Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate–from the pH Factor very clearly describes the steps of constructivism to the point where I can clearly see how they align with the PYP program. I went back and evaluated non-IB units that I have taught and see where I could modify lessons to create PYP-appropriate material. What I now realize is that with those previous lessons and in many non-IB textbooks much of the “extension” work intended for the pre- and post- sections of lessons would actually fall along the lines of the 5 Es, but those sections were often been passed over in classrooms I have worked in because of time restraints. In a content-based curriculum, the amount of material covered within a given time is the primary concern of the instructor and that comes at the expense of concept learning, especially steps like Elaborate and Evaluate.
c. Challenge:
I would be interested to explore specific instances of how the PYP meets content standards while not compromising the IB Learner Profile. I think this might be especially challenging with early learners that don’t have a large schema to reference for content or content building strategies. I have previously worked with a 2nd grade (8-9 year olds) textbook-based program, ThinkMath!, that was ultimately incorporated in my elementary school’s IB curriculum, but since I am working with much younger children, I am wondering how the early years of PYP are structured and planned.
How widely applicable is the PYP in terms of content? Are there resources that give examples of entire PYP units with the broken-down lessons?
Ms. Lee Makes Lessons 