|
Hello friends, it’s been a long time. I’m glad to be back to record the last three episodes of our series on a PYP classroom success criteria. It has been quite some time since I’ve recorded an episode, which reflects the imbalance in my schedule. Sorry for being so absent, but many wonderful things are coming, which makes me excited!  This past week, I was fortunate to attend the IB global conference in Dublin, Ireland. There were so many examples of education for an inclusive future, which was the theme of the conference. When you step back to think about inclusivity, what does it mean to you?
As part of the global conference, I led a leadership session that explored what it means to create inclusive professional development. Over the past two years, I’ve met with over a thousand educators in public/state, private, and international schools through IB workshops and my work as an independent consultant. A common message from these interactions is that many teachers feel disconnected from the top-down professional development and decisions made by governing bodies that directly impact their teaching and the learning of their students. I took a risk to meet with school leaders, middle leaders, and teachers to openly discuss the need for inclusive professional development. I won’t lie, but I was quite nervous and full of imposter syndrome. We explored the need for more democratic schools where everyone in the school has some say in how it is operated. We particularly focused on discussing uncomfortable issues within our schools that are slowing down our progression and made proactive steps to unpack their causes and an action plan. Just about now, you are asking yourself, “How is this connected to differentiation?” If teachers have little decision-making opportunities in their school community, then it’s highly likely that the same experience will transfer to their classroom. Learners will have less chance to make decisions in their learning due to external mandates, thus there will be very little authentic differentiation. Donna Mathew, a fellow PYP educator and Sketchnote Queen asked, “To what extent can we differentiate an inquiry classroom? What are the different ways of doing it?” I would like to focus on answering these questions for this session. Let’s do this! To what extent can we differentiate an inquiry classroom?Let’s take a moment to define what differentiation looks and feels like in our practice. First, we must know our learners: their unique background, personal experiences, how they feel about various subjects and tasks and how they learn best. Lynn Erickson and Lois Lanning in their book, Transitioning to Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction: How to Bring Content and Process Together state, “In order to provide appropriate differentiation, teachers must first know their students well from a variety of perspectives.” What does this mean for our practice? We take time to first to learn our learners, before shaping their learning. Then, we are able to move forward with differentiating the learning. Let’s take a moment to identify what is our role in the process. For this, I will defer to the great and powerful Carol Ann Tomlinson. In her book, The Differentiated Classroom, Tomlinson purports, “During planning, a teacher should generate a specific list of what students should know (facts), understand (concepts and principles), and be able to do (skills) by the time the unit ends…Activities should lead a student to understand or make sense of key concepts and principles by using key skills.” As I unpack this quote by Erickson and Lanning, I can’t help to think of the purpose of an authentic and agentic unit of inquiry. It leads learners to determine their understanding and connections between the various parts of a unit. Differentiation is HOW learners make those connections through unique processes and products. To begin, teachers must think differently about unit planning. We do this by answering these questions. Teacher Questions
These questions are deep and set the stage for more authentic decision-making on part of our learners. There is direct teaching, modeling, and guiding on the part of the teacher. The main difference is that learners help to decide what ideas, tools and processes will be used while they are teaching. It becomes a true partnership. What are the different ways of doing it?At this point, I think we recognize that differentiation is more than creating a choice board or various tasks in small group stations. They definitely have their place in supporting learners, but differentiation is not a passive act. It’s allowing learners to make decisions about their learning based on where they are on their learning journey.
Tomlinson reminds us that “In healthy classrooms, the teacher helps students dream big. Not all of the dreams will be alike, but each student needs to have big dreams and concrete ways to climb to them. Thus, the teacher teaches up.” What does this mean? We don’t dilute the curriculum to make it more accessible. It’s quite the opposite. We give more opportunities for our learners to make choices and mistakes in their learning. We can begin this process by co-answering these questions with our learners. If the unit planning remains a one-sided conversation of the teachers, it’s difficult to truly differentiate learning. We need the unique perspectives and ideas of our learners, since they know how they learn best. Learner Questions: these are questions teachers use with learners to create engagements
These questions transition from the teacher driving all of the thinking to the learners making choices based on their curiosities, abilities, and goal development. Be prepared for different outcomes, because no two children will think the same way. Along with these processes, we are providing tools that promote independence and inquiry such as:
There is a natural relationship between agency and differentiation. It’s about relinquishing our control of the planning and teaching process, so learners can make mistakes and discover their unique learner profile. Are you willing to let go of the control? Just like a well-intentioned school leader, are we going to ignore the needs of our learners while moving forward with our initiatives?
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Categories
All
Archives
February 2025
|
RSS Feed