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.

​​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!