​​In this challenge, we are going to examine the connection between the themes with your program of inquiry (POI).  We will begin by looking at a sample grouping of content standards for second grade that are being taught at my school.  This is like gathering and mixing the ingredients of your cake together. 

Take a look at these standards.  What stands out the most?  Are your units driven by a balance of science and social studies, regardless of the unit of inquiry? Do you have standards that feel out of place? 

There are multiple possibilities on how you can teach these standards.  A large part of choosing a theme is deciding which subject is driving the learning.  In this case, I chose How We Organize Ourselves, since social studies stood out to me more. 

Now let’s take a deeper look at the theme descriptor to determine which concepts will be our anchor to create the central idea, lines of inquiry, teacher questions, and connect our key and related concepts.  

How We Organize Ourselves:  An inquiry into the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities; the structure and function of organizations; societal decision-making; economic activities and their impact on humankind and the environment.

The one I am choosing to guide my content above is the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities.  This will help me to bridge the idea that human-made systems impact the communities of all living things, which connects my science with the social studies in a cause and effect relationship.  Amazing, eh? 

New to PYP:   Repeat the process above if you are beginning to map your content standards and choose your concepts from the transdisciplinary theme descriptors. 

Established PYP:  Review your program of inquiry (POI) by answering these questions.

• Have all the concept families been allocated throughout the POI?
• Is there a connection between your theme concept and your standards/guidelines
• Are there any duplicate concepts?  If so, is the spacing 2-3 years apart? 
• Can you identify and list the missing concepts?
• How will you present it to your team and coordinator? 

Post it on Twitter @thinkchat2020 or Linkedin at Lu Gerlach.  I will create a video message of our challenge and you can tag your response to it. 

Remember, we create our own meaning from learning, so there is no one right answer.  Have fun with it and I can’t wait to see what you create!

Our second challenge will have two parts to differentiate based on where you are on your PYP journey. 

​Part A (Introduction):  we will review the big ideas of each part of transdisciplinary learning, so everyone is on the same page.  If you already have a solid understanding of that part of transdisciplinary learning, then feel free to skip it and go straight to the challenge,  

Part B (challenge):  we will complete a challenge and post it in on Twitter @thinkchat2020 or LinkedIn @Lu Gerlach https://www.linkedin.com/in/lu-gerlach-9721991a8/

In the last challenge, we talked briefly about the six transdisciplinary theme descriptors.  Now, we will delve further into them and their power to magically transform your curriculum design.

Just like baking, we must first decide what it is we are going to create, so we can determine which tools and ingredients we will need.  

To create units of inquiry, we will delve deeper into the construction of the transdisciplinary theme descriptors to help understand their unique parts and how they impact our unit design. 

We are going to zoom into the descriptor for How We Express Ourselves to help you better understand how to use it. 

An inquiry into the ways in which we discover and express ideas, feelings, nature, culture, beliefs and values; the ways in which we reflect on, extend and enjoy our creativity; our appreciation of the aesthetic.
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I have underlined portions of the descriptor, because they are concepts or big ideas that can be explored from multiple lenses.  Concepts are big ideas that are nouns and have universal impact and application.  In this theme descriptor, it is pretty easy to see that the concepts are:  ideas, feelings, nature, culture, beliefs and value, creativity, appreciation, aesthetic.  In other theme descriptors, it can be a little more challenging. 

For example, let’s explore Who We Are.

An inquiry into the nature of the self; beliefs and values; personal, physical, mental, social and spiritual health; human relationships including families, friends, communities, and cultures; rights and responsibilities; what it means to be human.

In this descriptor, it can be a bit harder to identify the root concept.  The root concepts I have identified are self, beliefs and values, health, relationships, rights and responsibilities, and human.  At first glance, you might contest that families, friends, communities, and cultures are also concepts. You would be correct.  In this context, they are sub-concepts under relationships. 

​I told you, this is pretty tricky. When planning, it will take a moment to decide on which type of health or relationships to focus on.  Does that make sense? ​

The transdisciplinary theme descriptors are important, because they provide an anchor for your unit of inquiry.  They are your north star throughout the process to help you make connections.  They are so important that you will use them to guide your creation of the central idea and lines of inquiry.  

When teaching a unit, you can use the transdisciplinary theme descriptor as a whole to help you plan and teach, but your team will zoom into a portion of the descriptor to focus and connect throughout the unit. 

For example:  In Who We Are, one of the concept families is human relationships, which includes families, friends, communities, and cultures.  Depending on age, we may choose family and friends.  Another grade level may choose communities.  A third grade level might choose cultures.  The important bit to remember, one grade level is not responsible to cover the entirety of a concept family.  By the time a child has gone through your entire PYP program, they will have explored all of the concept families in the descriptor.  Amazing, eh?  

We will take a look at how to do this process with content standards in the next episode.

​As this podcast has shaped itself, I’ve noticed that we started out looking at our own inquiry practice and applied this to everything else.  Then, we examined different strategies to bring about agency, action, the learner profile, and international mindedness in our classroom and with our students.  Now, it’s time to return to where we began and take a hard look at our transdisciplinary practices, since they touch every nook and cranny of the program. 

At the beginning of the calendar or school year, it’s nice to reflect back on our progress and make some new goals.  This was my aim as I created the transdisciplinary challenge.  So many of the things we have discussed are driven by us, but the end user is our students.  As educators, I think we control a lot of the transdisciplinary connections that are made or not made in our classrooms.  This is why this challenge is so important to me. 

For this challenge, we are going back to the second episode where we discussed the inquiry thinking strategies.  We are going to use the engaging strategy - PicCollage Reflection.  Here is a reminder of what we will do. 

To encourage creative thinking, reflect using PicCollage.  This interactive app allows you to express your thinking using a digital scrapbook approach.  You can use personal and stock photos, clip art, sound, and backgrounds to create reflective pieces that are saved in jpg format. This is a wonderful portfolio piece that synthesizes thinking of bigger concepts.

I’ve used PicCollage, since I was a teacher in Dubai in 2014.  It’s an amazing tool to get kids thinking and making connections to the big ideas.  Now, it’s your turn to try it out or revisit tools you haven’t played with before.   Your task is to use PicCollage to answer this question: ​​

Transdisciplinary learning is a process.  It requires a precise balance of subject content to bind all of the learning together.  It's made with love.  The educator wants to create something special for each student in their classroom, so they purposefully plan for agency, inquiry, and conceptual connections to naturally come about during the day.  At the end, they have create a beautiful masterpiece that can be shared with the entire community. 

Similarly, making a cake takes the same level of precision and care in selecting the right balance of ingredients to ensure proper texture and flavor.  It's made with love.  The baker wants the recipients to enjoy the final product and remember it for years to come.  

​Be sure to post your reflections on Twitter @thinkchat2020 and/or LinkedIn at Lu Gerlach.  I will create a video message of our challenge and you can tag your response to it. 

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by Lu Gerlach

Now that we've had a chance to look back and apply our thinking, it's time to challenge ourselves again.  You heard me...we are returning to where we started and creating a five session challenge!  These episodes will help us to sharpen our skill set and reflect on how we can improve our transdisciplinary practice. 

The challenge will have two parts to differentiate based on where you are on your PYP journey.
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• Part A: we will review the big ideas of each part of transdisciplinary learning, so everyone is on the same page.  If you already have a solid understanding of that part of transdisciplinary learning, then feel free to skip it and go straight to the challenge. 

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• Part B:  we will complete a challenge and post it on Twitter @thinkchat2020 or LinkedIn @Lu Gerlach

You will hear many iterations of transdisciplinary learning, but my favorite is this explanation.

To achieve transdisciplinary learning, we align our learning and teaching with the PYP six transdisciplinary themes.  These themes provide a lens on how we look at the content we are teaching and provide an anchor as we connect to different areas (PYP From Principles into Practice:  Learning and Teaching).

When you walk around a school that is transdisicplinary, you see learners:

• Asking questions that can be explored from multiple vantage points
• Developing an understanding of the world by using a wide variety of texts
• All time is dedicated to learning through various subjects
• Big ideas are re-visited throughout the day to provide multiple iterations
• Everyone in the school speaks the PYP language naturally

These are a few of the earmarks of a transdisciplinary campus.  Now, let's take the challenge to assess your campus!

by Lu Gerlach

Welcome to the third and final episode of our application series.  If you haven't had a chance to apply your learning of the learner profile and international mindedness, I'd suggest you do so before moving forward.  It's a great chance for you to synthesize and apply your understanding of the big ideas to your school/ unit context.  This is our ultimate goal with any professional development to make meaningful application to what we are already doing. 

As we know, agency and action take up a lot of space in our practice within the PYP.  They shape everything we do, so we need to take time to apply their role into our practice.  

Take a look at the table below to remind yourself of their role. 

Let's use this strategy to help us take a deeper look at how to use agency and action more readily in our practice. 

• Look at the choices I have presented to demonstrate agency and action.  Which ones do you think you can implement right away?  Which ones for the remainder of the school year or beginning of the next one, depending on where you live? 

 

• Look again at your choices.  Which ones do you not have listed that you would like to explore, but you don't quite know where to start?  These are the ones that will yield the biggest fruit. 

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• Take a moment to brainstorm ways that you can break down these unexplored choices into bite-size chunks.  

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• ​Now, take these ideas back to your team and share your honest feedback.  As a team, decide which pieces will be the next step in your action plan and annotate them in your PYP unit planner. Our goal is tangible application.

​Let’s take look at an example for those who might need a bit more inspiration

• Implement right away:  Types of Actions (Level 2).  I just need to introduce each of them to my students and provide concrete examples and images to guide their thinking.  This needs to be present daily in my physical or virtual learning setting.

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• Implement the second half of the school year (northern hemisphere):  Collaboration (Agency Overall).  This will take some time to figure out within a hybrid/ virtual learning situation, because I’m still learning how to navigate meeting rooms and small group projects online. 

• Brainstorm with my students different ways they would like to express their understanding of big ideas​

• Have students work in small groups to research and apply a strategy and teach it to the class.  (For example:  have a group learn how to create a Powtoon and share the process with the class)

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• At milestones within the unit, allow students to choose from the pool of strategies, which one they think best fits the task and situation

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• Ask students to reflect on the process and identify what worked and needs to be modified in the future. 

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• Repeat this process throughout the unit and regularly reflect which tools work better than others; add more strategies to the toolkit to keep students engaged

​It’s only a great idea on paper until I share it with my team.  This will put it into action.

Final Thoughts
Something that came to my mind after our agency and action series.  We live in a world of endless choices: what career we will choose, what colleges we want to attend, which cities we want to live in, and so forth.  If we don’t get students to practice with making choices at a young age, they will struggle greatly to make informed choices when it truly matters.  

The last three episodes have been focused on applying our knowledge and understanding into our practice.  This is so important if we want to make lasting change and grow in our practice.  Reflection and application are never easy, because they often require us to change.  As we know, change can be scary and daunting at times.  My goal has been to get the dialogue started, so it’s easier for you to approach your team with tangible suggestions for improvement. 

See you in the next episode and hold on to that passion!

by Lu Gerlach

​Welcome to our second episode in our application series!  Today, we will look at ways to apply international mindedness and reflect on our practice.

​ When we apply international mindedness, what might this look and feel like?  It’s hard to put into action something that is so tied with our disposition and belief system.  Here are some ideas that we shared previously:

​The first step is looking at this list and thinking about some actions that you would like to take on within the next term.  My advice is to choose 1-2 items, so they can be truly mastered before trying something new.  It’s all about learning transfer; repeated practice and meaningful application will make it happen. 

The second step is reflecting on our practice using a reflection quadrant. We will use a table in paper or electronic form that you can use with your students.  It’s a great way to capture ideas in short sections, so it’s not too overwhelming.  This is a perfect way to get older students to reflect on their learning process and make suggestions for improvement.  Let’s try it out.

To set-up our reflection quadrant, fold a piece of paper in half two times to make four boxes.  Label each box accordingly. 
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• In the first box (upper left side), label the box is Potential
• In the second box (upper right side), label the box is Desired
• In the third box (lower left side), label the box is Current
• In the fourth box (lower right side), label the box is Growth

​Now, we are going to take our time to reflect in each box answering the following questions.  Remember, our path towards growth begins with an honest assessment of the situation as it really is and not how we wish it would be. 

In the upper left side, Identify the potential for international mindedness to happen in your class and/or school.
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In the upper right side, brainstorm ideas which represent a desired situation or “the bigger picture” that you would like to see happening with relationships in your class and/or school. 

In the lower left side, add notes which represent the current situation with relationships in your class and/or school. 

In the lower right side, identify and list the areas of growth that may inhibit the development of international mindedness in your class and/or school. 

Now, take these ideas back to your team and share your honest feedback.  As a team, decide which pieces will be the next step in your action plan and annotate them in your PYP unit planner. Our goal is tangible application. 

In our next episode, we will apply our understanding of agency and action in a new way.