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​Welcome to our new series on the approaches to learning.  My brain is a bit toasty after the transdisciplinary challenge, but don’t you feel pumped?  I really enjoyed going through that experience, because it really helped me think differently about transdisciplinary learning.  I hope it helped you too.  

Now, we are giving our brains a slight reprieve.  I shouldn’t say that, because you may think our next series is going to be easy peasy.  You should know better by now that my easy is usually someone else’s medium hot! 

I’m excited to explore the approaches to learning or (ATLs), because they have been historically the most undervalued part of the program.  My opinion only,  but, I have seen such improvement with usage since the PYP enhancements in 2018.  

Who are the ATLs for? Which teachers can use them?  How do we use them?  These questions will be explored in this episode. 

​I absolutely love the ATLs and I’m super excited to delve into them further to figure out different ways we can use them.  I’m sure I’ll have to make some graphics to make the learning come alive for me, so watch this space for a guide announcement.  It’s coming shortly. 

Just a reminder, the ATLs and the Learner Profile attributes are the two components of the IB program that follows a child from grades PK to 12.  They might look differently based on the development of a child, but their purpose is universal.  The primary goal of the ATLs is to create independent thinkers who are able to think, reason, and apply skills to multiple learning situations.  This is a challenge, since so many children struggle to remember content and skill acquisition from prior years. 

​ATLs are divided into five categories:  thinking, research, communication, social, and self-management skills.  Within each domain, they have categories and sub-skills that target the learning. We are going to take our time to examine each domain and uncover their skills and what they mean.  

I’m absolutely obsessed with the revised ATLs, because they provide a clear road map to read the learning target, while providing flexibility on how to get there. Once again, we are going nice and slow to explore and play around each category.  Whether you are a novice or experienced PYP educator, you should find new ideas you haven't considered.  Spoiler alert:  I’m going to provide some tips and tools on how to use the various sub-skills.  Remember, our goal is to create independent thinkers, so the students must do the heavy lifting while acquiring the skills, so they can remember it.  I’m going to practice with some tools to get you ready.  Do I hear minor challenge activities for you to try out and implement in your classrooms or schools?  Why, yes you do. 

For the early years teachers, you can find the ATLs in the guide PYP From Principles into Practice:  The Learner on pages 15-19.  The section highlights what teachers must do to set the stage for learning to happen.  I think this part is often skipped, because we want to see the objectives for the students.  A reminder that you are the most important part in making the ATLs happen in your classroom.  Slow down and read the parts about you first. 

Here’s what teachers must do to encourage thinking skills:  

• Model the language of thinking, such as “I wonder”, “I noticed”, “I inferred”.
• Ask open-ended questions.
• Provide sufficient thinking time to respond to questions, and so on.
• Offer open-ended materials.
• Provide time for reflection at all stages of learning—before, during and after
• inquiries.
• Co-create and reflect on individual learning goals within the zone of proximal
• development.

This sets the stage for inquiry to naturally happen in our classroom without heavy planning.

For grades 1-6, we follow the same protocol.  Your ATLs are found in the guide PYP From Principles into Practice:  Learning and Teaching on pages 26-37.  The section is set-up in the same way, but the ideas are more expanded to meet the developmental needs of the students.  Regardless of age, the ATLs really help the students to dig deeper into their own learning.  

Here’s what teachers must do to bring about thinking skills
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• Model the language of thinking and reinforce the processes of thinking.
• Ask open-ended questions.
• Provide sufficient thinking time.
• Implement and model a range of “visible thinking” techniques.
• Explicitly ask students to discuss and reflect on the value and limitations of the resources used through their inquiries.
• Provide time for reflection at all stages of learning—before, during and after inquiries.
• Promote a range of tools for reflection and ensure that reflection activities are responsive and varied.
• Reflect on existing competencies, co-create learning goals.

My mini-challenge to you this week is to take a look at the beginning part of the ATL descriptors and what teachers must do.  Examine the five categories and identify 1-2 areas that are still a growth area for you.  Commit to them and try to find strategies on how to accomplish them as we go through this ATL series.  

I had to throw a challenge in there somehow.  Once you start, you can’t stop!

As my podcast series evolved, it seemed like all of the strategies were geared to supporting students in their abilities.  I think that is brilliant, especially during this crazy year we’ve had.  I enjoyed this process of collating and creating unique ideas to support student learning development.

When it came to the topic of transdisciplinary learning, I knew I had to take a different course, since this process is mainly driven by teachers.  Students do participate in the process, but it’s after the teacher(s) have laid the foundation for transdisciplinary learning to happen.  You are the most important part of transdisciplinary learning.  Every decision you make either creates or stops transdisciplinary connections, so we need to plan wisely. 

Some might argue that student driven learning is centered on transdisciplinary learning.  This is true.  But, you need an open-minded teacher to set the stage for this type of learning to exist for the students. 

My ultimate goal is to create learning that is tasty and invites my learners to take a bite out of risk-taking, inquiry, and demonstrating their own agency. 

If you are new to the PYP, I am sorry if I have confused you massively.  If all of the ideas are too massive, push the rewind button and consider revisiting these ideas in a year or two.  There will come a time when you’ve had enough practice and professional development that the ideas will click in your mind. 

If you have been on the PYP journey for some time, well done.  We need your level of experience, repeated exposure to big ideas, and knowledge of the program.  I hope the ideas in this series were beneficial to you. If not, I’m sure there will be something else that comes along that springboards an aha moment. 

As we bring this series to a close, I want to provide my suggested sequence of how to proceed. Everyone is different in their thinking, but I’m a bit linear and methodical.  Have you noticed the order of my podcast series?  

Suggested order of steps: 
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• Identify the concepts from the theme descriptors.  This is your anchor, so it’s super important.  
• Create or re-write central ideas to emulate the big ideas from the theme descriptor that you have chosen
• Write lines of inquiry that reflect the big ideas in your central idea
• Map your content to support the teaching of these ideas, including the specialist and supporting teachers
• Assess this process regularly to identify further transdisciplinary connections
• Teach your units as units, not different subjects.  
• Assess understanding of the big ideas (concepts) and the knowledge and skills (content)
• Allow students to voice agency 
• Regularly reflect with your team about your journey and suggest next steps

When I write it down in a checklist, it seems so easy, but this will be one of the hardest things you do.  With that said, it will become the most fulfilling part of your educational career.  Our goal has always been to provide students with the tools they’ll need to be successful tomorrow.  Transdisciplinary learning does that beautifully. 

I’ve put you through the ringer the past few weeks, but I hope you have found some utility value in the process. Now, we are going to explore something a bit lighter to give your brain some food for thought, but allow it to rest.  We will examine how to use the approaches to learning in a deeper, more enriching way.  

This transdisciplinary challenge has been a journey, which has stretched our thinking in new ways.  As we go into this last challenge, we will evaluate the transdisciplinarity of our practice.  Just like our cake, we want to ensure that all of the pieces are there to make a cohesive, rich product that we can share with our school and world community. 

​Every process becomes better when we regularly evaluate its effectiveness and areas of growth.  Through continual feedback, we are able to see clearly the path towards the next steps.  This has always been the goal of assessment.  Now, we will apply this to your transdisciplinary program of inquiry. 

​In this week’s challenge, you will perform a SWOB Analysis to examine the effectiveness of transdisciplinary learning at your campus.  This process emerged from the business sector to examine the effectiveness of an organization in sales, market share, and productivity.  Since education is our business and our niche is transdisciplinary learning, I found it only fitting that we should apply the SWOB analysis to our final process.  Here’s what the SWOB examines: 

• Strengths - what do you do well? 
• Weaknesses - where do you need to improve?
• Opportunities - what are your goals? 
• Barriers - what obstacles do you face? 

The value of the SWOB analysis is being honest, because this is the only way we can mark true growth.  This is an opportunity for you and your school to own your truth and find ways to make improvements. I speak about my own school as well, because no person or place is perfect. 

I hope you enjoy this process and I hope you post your ideas on Twitter @thinkchat2020 or LinkedIn at Lu Gerlach.  

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!

​Thank you for returning after last week.  I know it was a lot and probably blew your mind, but this is the process of becoming a more transdisciplinary educator. I was told recently that nothing worth having comes easy.  If it were easy, then more people would be doing it.

You will see how your efforts come about in different ways.  There will be times you put the pieces to create a beautiful cake.  Other times, it will look terrible, but taste great.  This is the process of becoming better at our craft. 

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​In this final transdisciplinary challenge, we will focus on evaluating our practice even deeper. To prepare for that experience, we are going to explore simple steps to evaluate your daily practice.  If you are not ready to complete an entire school or grade level evaluation, these may be easier steps you can take to reach your goal. 

​Everyone on this planet needs continual evaluation of their progress, so they can grow and develop in new ways. I’m currently taking an online facilitation course, because I stink at leading online webinars where no one engages.  My first presentation was this week and my rubric made my heart sink.  At second glance, it outlined clear areas of growth and targets for the next step that I can achieve this week.  When I stopped having a pity party for one, I realized that this feedback was super relevant and necessary for my development. Now, I actually feel excited about this week, because I know I can do better and I will have experience on my side. 

In the challenge, we will go over specifics on how to evaluate your school on transdisciplinary learning as a whole, so you might make an action plan with the next steps. It won’t be a lot of steps, but it will require an open mind. 

During the past few weeks, we have started this process by focusing on ways to improve our transdisciplinary understanding through: 
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• Gauging what transdisciplinary learning looks and feels like
• Delving into our theme descriptors to anchor our curriculum mapping
• Examining ways to look at our regrouping our standards differently
• Including our specialist and supporting teachers into the planning process

Along the way, you’ve had a chance to reflect upon your individual situation and evaluate your schools progress in those areas.  This has been the heart of the transdisciplinary challenge, because it requires an openness to change. As we know, change is very difficult for many people, especially if they think the planning is perfect as it is.  So how do we get around these obstacles to move our program forward? 

As the PYP program has evolved, the IB has been strategic in putting in safeguards to ensure that the program of inquiry is continuously being evaluated and modified to meet the current needs of the school community.  The POI rubric is a tool that will take the heavy lift in ensuring your learning is more transdisciplinary and conceptual. 

The three sections in the POI Rubric are: 

• The Central Idea
• The Lines of Inquiry
• Balanced Articulation of the Themes

If you reflect back on our journey through the transdisciplinary challenge, you will see that we have covered these ideas in-depth.  Hmm....I wonder if it happened by accident or if I’m a genius?  I let you decide. 

To get your own copy of the POI Rubric, you can search on the Program Resource Center (PRC) or Google. 

Well my friends, you now have the background knowledge to move forward with the final transdisciplinary challenge.  Yay!

You are now able to create a dynamic cake that is rich with learning from across the school, not just your classroom. This provides a depth to the learning, because learners are able to concepts being applied in a variety of ways.  We are ready to decorate our cake to make it unique and memorable. This all begins with a conceptual central idea and lines of inquiry.

​When we are trying to make transdisciplinary connections, we often leave out the specialist (Art, PE, etc.) and support (EAL, Special Needs) teachers from the process.  Since transdisciplinary means across all disciplines, we should be incorporating everyone into the process, not just our content from the homeroom classroom perspectives. How can we do this authentically? 

If you proceed to the task and it’s difficult for you, consider going back Confession #41 for some practical ideas to jumpstart your thinking.  Our goal is to become better, but it may take more than 20 minutes. 

​In this week’s challenge, we are going to dig deeper into your program by zooming at a single unit of inquiry.  I would choose one that your team agrees needs to be changed, so you receive less resistance when presenting proposed changes.  Thinking smarter, not harder. 

​Look at your central idea and answer these questions

• Is it specific to a subject area that I am teaching? 
• Is it solely driven by content standards or guidelines? 
• Is it limited in scope? 

Here is an example of a central idea that may be solely driven by your content and have limited scope, which makes it difficult for the specialist and supporting teachers to connect.

• Migration initiates change

Although this central idea has concepts, it does limit the connections to outside teachers.  How do we correct this?  Just change a few concepts and you will see a huge difference.
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• Movement can bring about challenges and opportunities

Now, the scope of the central is broader, so you are able to connect more easily.  Now, I can connect to the following: 

• PE:  Different moves in a game can change the outcome
• EAL:  Moving letters in a word creates a change in sound
• Music:  Using a variety rhythm patterns can create movement in music
• Dance:  Changes in choreography impacts the feeling of the performance
• Visual Art:  Using shapes and lighting can create movement 

There are so many more ways to connect just by making a simple switch from migration to movement.  

Look at your lines of inquiry, know and do part of your unit, and determine if they are equally conceptual and broad.  We will apply the same questions that we used in the central idea.

• Are they specific to a subject area that I am teaching? 
• Are they solely driven by content standards or guidelines? 
• Are they limited in scope? 

Here is an example of some lines of inquiry that may be solely driven by your content and have limited scope, which makes it difficult for the specialist and supporting teachers to connect.

• The ways social networks affect personal journeys
• How adaptation leads us to certain destinations
• How the interconnectedness of the world affects individuals

Let’s look at a more conceptual example
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• Relationships and events affect outcomes
• Adaptation creates opportunity for growth
• Interconnectedness often shapes identity

These lines of inquiry are a bit more broad, so our specialist and support teachers are able to make deeper connections to their content.  This process does take time in a quiet space with your team to make these changes, but it’s possible.

As always, feel free to post your ideas 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!

We can’t chat about transdisciplinary learning without connecting to the specialist (PE, Art, ICT)  and support (EAL, Special education, etc.) teachers.  Transdisciplinary learning is all about learning across disciplines, so why are our specialist and support teachers often left out in the process?  Aren’t they also another discipline?  

This reminds me of different layers of a cake that add color, richness of flavor, and texture to the overall experience. 

​In my experience, specialist and support teachers are often on a lonely island on their own, since most homeroom teachers plan while their students are with their teammates.  When planning with the specialist and support teachers does occur, it’s often framed on how they can support the homeroom teacher, when it really should be a 50-50 relationship.  So how do we move forward to a better way? 

Let’s take a few minutes to look at ways to strengthen transdisciplinary connections with specialist and support teachers. 

​Per the IB standards and practices, all teachers should have access to the school curriculum documents.  This is just best practice, so everyone feels a part of the school community.  How does this look at your school? 

At my school, every teacher has access to the entire scope of planning documents.  We have mapped our standards along with our unit of inquiry planners.  The specialist teachers plan on the individual unit planners.  My support teachers have their own curriculum that they must teach to a span of age levels.  We have created planning documents for them to reflect the PYP unit planner. 

It’s not perfect by any means and I’m always trying to find ways to make it more meaningful.  The important part is that they have access to the curriculum documents like everyone else.

​The main way that my specialist teachers connect to the unit of inquiry planners is through the concepts.  They have connected their content with the conceptual understandings of the unit planner. Their primary goal is to build relationships between ideas and explicitly teach them to their students.  The specialist and support teachers are trying to support the generalizations being taught in the homeroom, so students lay a deeper foundation of understanding. 

With the pandemic, they’ve had to shift their focus from each grade level to their core team.  They focus on a set of key and related concepts that they can use within a hybrid and on the go learning environment. It’s been a challenge, but we are taking slow steps to become more integrated into the transdisciplinary process

​One of former colleagues, Jorge Rodriguez - Twitter @physed, suggested that specialist and support teachers should have their own central ideas and lines of inquiry. As a whole, they can build a conceptual understanding and help to support ideas between the various classes.  I absolutely love this idea.  My specialist and support team launched their own central idea and lines of inquiry for each quarter.  This allowed them the flexibility and depth to explore deeper and make connections to the big ideas in their unit of inquiry.  All of them co-created the shared and individual learning experiences.  It was magical to see. 

The PYP has always been about thinking outside the box.  I really like this idea of a specialist unit planner, because usually I see weak connections between the homeroom and specialist or support teachers, which can lead to many misconceptions.  This stays true to the philosophy of transdisciplinary learning in a different way. 

Once again, this is one way of connecting our team together, but it’s not the only one.  

​Because most specialist and support teachers are focusing on skill development, they can naturally use the approaches to learning (ATLs) to guide their process.  The ATLs provide many ways to stretch the thinking of our learners.  

Choosing the ATLs can be from the homeroom unit of inquiry planner or planned when creating specialist central ideas and lines of inquiry.  We haven’t explored the approaches to learning, but they are skills in five areas that help to build independence, such as: thinking, research, social, self-management, and communication.  The ATLs are quite malleable and can be applied to any curriculum framework. 

The learner profile attributes are equally flexible in their use.  Any teacher can use them to guide character development, behavior, and reflective practice.  How you choose them is very open, but it’s more about the intention behind them. 

Now that we’ve crammed our brains with ideas about specialist teachers, let’s go take the challenge. 

​In this challenge, we are going to further examine how to make connections with our standards or guidelines by transforming them from subjects to categories. Just like our cake, we are taking random ingredients and putting them together to create something new. 

​In previous episodes, we have explored using a set of 2nd grade content standards.  We will continue to use them to build our understanding and make connections.  Here they are again as separate content areas. 
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​One of the ways to make our teaching more transdisciplinary is by looking and treating our standards differently.  We can start by taking the four columns of standards and putting them into one pile.  Remove the label of science, social studies, ELA, and math.  This is how we make our metaphorical cake. 

From the pile, we try to put the standards together in a new grouping that is driven by a category heading.  This heading will probably not reveal itself until the end, so don’t worry.  Just go with your gut instinct of what standards will go best together. Here is my sorting example. 
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​As you can see, I’ve gone from four subject areas to three groups.  This was largely driven by the connections I made between content areas. This does take a minute to do. 

Map Content Standards: If you don’t have any standards mapped for your unit, this is the first place to start.  Then, take them and follow the steps above to re-work how they look and feel together. 

Re-Map Standards: If you have mapped your standards, consider re-working them into different categories above.  Try to break away from content areas towards more conceptual thinking.  

Post it on Twitter @thinkchat2020 or LinkedIn at Lu Gerlach.  

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!

​One of the greatest challenges as a PYP educator and coordinator has been making transdisciplinary connections using our standards.  Whatever school situation, it has felt like a tug of war between the standards vs. the PYP.  What many people don’t realize is that the standards drive the learning in the PYP, but we look at their relationship differently.

My hope in this episode that you will see how the different content areas and the elements of the PYP come together to create something colorful.

If you enter a traditional classroom, you will find the teacher is leading lessons founded on district or curriculum planning guides.  The lessons are departmentalized and there are absolutely no connections between them.  This happens, because the district has different curriculum departments that create pacing calendars and planning guides in isolation.  Their purpose is to ensure the content is covered throughout the year, not necessarily to find connections between the learning. 

A teacher will have a read aloud for the reading lesson and a different one for writing that has been chosen by the district curriculum guides.  There is no connection between the social studies and science that is being learned at the same time.  

As a result, the learning is compartmentalized and the learners have to remember a lot of the terms in isolation, which meets short-term learning goals for a unit, district, or end of year assessment.  By the following year, the student has dismissed the content and they cannot replicate processes to new learning situations. 

These images show the difference between attending school to learn "subjects" or "content" OR teaching learners how to connect the big ideas between the subjects to make sense of their world. 

If you enter a transdisciplinary classroom, you will find some direct instruction of subject-area content, since facts are the foundation of understanding.  But, the learners go beyond the facts in isolated content areas and try to bridge them together through the use of key and related concepts. 

Learning has a purpose, which is called the central idea.  This central idea provides an anchor for all the learning in the unit of inquiry, because it’s been derived from a concept(s) in the transdisciplinary theme descriptor.  The content being shared within a unit always ties back as an example of the central idea.  We do this through the lines of inquiry, the know and do of the unit.  

As students go throughout the day, they are learning about the lines of inquiry, central ideas, and/or key and related concepts to create connections between the various content areas.  This is what creates generalizations and transfer. 

If we go back to our standards from our previous challenge, we can see use an example to help us see this connection in action.

• Social Studies:  Examine different resources of places & regions
• Science:  Basic needs of plants and animals based on location
• ELA: Folktales 
• Math: Coins up to a dollar; Symbols:  cent, dollar, decimal

In isolation, the standards don’t look like they have much connection.   When you look deeper, you can always find ways to connect them together using concepts. We will explore the relationship of using standards with central ideas and lines of inquiry when we explore concepts in our next series. For now, let’s take baby steps and use the key and related concepts. 

When I look at the standards above, the related concept that comes to mind is LOCATION.  

• Social Studies: The resources we have are largely determined by their location.  
• Science:  Plants and animals will have different needs based on where they live, the climate, and their ecosystem. 
• ELA:  all folktales are centered around how a particular culture interacts and perceives the world.  This is largely determined by their location. 
• Math:  based on where you live, the symbols for money will look differently, but they generally have the same purpose. 

Our goal is to find a connection between the content we teach, so it’s easier for our students to make meaningful applications.  Quite simple really, right? 

Let’s go on to our challenge to see how we can do this with our own curriculum.