Taking Action!

What an exciting week in my classroom. My students have been learning all about 'The Power of One' meaning that one person can influence change in the world. A big part of this unit is students figuring out ways that they can get involved and make a change in their school, community and the world. 

Action.

Taking action is a large part of the PYP. The goal is not just for students to learn different concepts and memorize them. We want our students to apply their learning outside of the classroom as well. We call this Taking Action. Each classroom at our school has a 'Taking Action' poster either inside or outside the classroom where we post pictures, notes and examples of students who are taking action.

Sorry about the blurriness...

  Originally, I thought that students had to bring in examples of what we are learning about from home and when I taught kindergarten it was very difficult to remind students to bring things from home. At an IB conference I went to in Indianapolis two years ago, I learned that action can take many forms. 

Since action is all about a verb, I started to write down on sticky notes when I noticed students taking action by sharing a thought wit the class or noticing something in books and let students know that this was taking action. I soon began to realize that students were taking action every day!

So back to second grade... My students this week really ran with Gandhi's quote "Be the change you wish to see in the world." They decided to come up with their own action plan. They wanted to encourage others to pick up trash, stop littering and recycle more. On Monday, they are going to be making an announcement to the school to get the community involved in their action, as well as make posters to hang around the school reminding people to pick up their trash and recycle. 

How awesome is that! Students taking action and getting excited about it! 

Also, something else we did this week was a Pathway to Change. I got this idea from A Year of Many Firsts. Students traced their feet and wrote on them how they can make a change. It is our hope that anyone who comes into our school will read our feet, which will inspire them to make a change. Check out the pictures below.

Our pathway goes from the front of the school all the way to the second grade classrooms. We have already received a ton of compliments from students, teachers and parents about how impressive and motivating this project is. The only downfall is that it has slowed some students down when walking to their next class because they are stopping to read our feet!!!

Whether you are a PYP school or not, encourage your students to take action with their learning. you could also start your own Action Board in your classroom or in your school to encourage students to take that next step to apply their learning.

Learner Profiles and Attitudes

Happy (almost) Easter everyone! One more week and we are on Spring Break. Whoo hoo! Something that people ask me when it comes to teaching the PYP is "What is the biggest transition going from non-PYP to a PYP school?" Honestly, I think there are a bunch of things, but one of the biggest transitions for me was the vocabulary, specifically using the Learner Profile Words and Attitudes. 

Learner Profile Words

The learner profile traits and attitudes are characteristics that we want our students to not only know, but develop within themselves. It is like a 'character development program', but it is incorporated within the PYP. At our school, the learner profiles and attitudes are posted in every classroom (forgot to take pictures of mine, oops!) and teachers use these words throughout the school day. 

My first year, I really struggled with using this vocabulary, but once you start making it a point to say the words daily, it becomes a part of your teaching. For example, you may start a lesson by saying "Today we are going to be thinkers..." or you might notice a student doing something and say "Wow Susie, you are being so caring by helping your friend zip up their coat." When you use the language often and refer to your posters throughout the school day, students begin to use it as well.

Attitudes

Once a week as a lower elementary team (K-2), we take a half hour where we meet to talk about the learner profile traits and attitudes. Usually we read a book and complete an activity that surrounds the learner profile trait that we are focusing on that month as a school. We call this 'Team Time'. It is a great way for the students to practice and develop these traits. You can see our monthly Learner Profile focus at our school below, which also incorporates the attitudes.

Our current unit of study in second grade revolves around the phrase 'The Power of One', we we are learning about local and famous heroes. The past week we learned about Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges and how they made a change. But something I really like that we are doing in this unit is thinking about what learner profile traits and attitudes these people display. It is great to see that students are recognizing these traits in others. My hope is that my students see these traits and attitudes in action and develop these traits within themselves.

Happy Easter!

Provocations

First of all, conferences went really well this year. My students did a great job 'running the show' and displaying their learning to their parents. They also surprised me because there was a point where I was explaining their PYP portfolios and I thought no one was listening, but most of them were able to explain to their parents what they were all about. I even heard some of them using the same language I used! So sometimes when I think my students are not listening, they actually are. Who would have thunk!

So we just wrapped up our Marketplace unit, which was awesome! For our summative, or final project, students created their own classroom business. They chose to produce bracelets and sold them for $1.00 during lunch. We counted the up the profits and students end up making $94.00! They decided they wanted to spend some of it on themselves as a special treat, like popsicles or ice cream, and then donate the rest to the school.

Making posters to advertise our business 

Making our product

 

Selling our product

Since we finished up a unit, that means it is time to begin another! At the start of every PYP unit, it is important to find out what students know about the topic and what they are curious or wondering about because students drive where we go in the unit. The way we get this information is through provocations. Provocations not only help teachers learn what students know and want to learn, but it gets students excited about the next unit as well. 

There are many different ways to do a provocation. A lot of teachers pull out pictures that relate to the unit and ask students what they know or notice about the pictures. Some teachers do KWL charts or have students to a free write on a topic. But some of the best provocations get students to really think and get them involved in the topic. 

At an IB Conference, there was a teacher that was teaching about migration and she wanted her students to understand what it means to migrate and to constant pack up and move. She told her students to bring their backpack in and put any materials that they students thought they would need during the day in their backpack. Some students packed everything from their desk, including textbooks they had never touched all year while others packed a notebook and pencil. Throughout the day students moved from the classroom, to outside, to the library and all around the school! Students were able to experience what it was like to migrate from one place to another and how you have to think about what items are truly necessary. This provocation got students excited to learn about migration as well as provoked a lot of questions they wanted to investigate. 

My goal this year was to work on improving provocations by doing more than showing students pictures and asking what they knew or questions they had about them. Our new unit surrounds the phrase "The Power of One", where students are to understand that all it takes is one person to influence change in the world. 

I started by having students discuss what this phrase means to them and discussed how these people are considered heroes. I then had them create a bubble map by putting 'Hero' in the middle and they had to write characteristics of a hero and write people who are/were heroes. 

But the most powerful part of the provocation came two days later. I set up a scenario where students were going to vote for a book that we were going to purchase for our class from the book fair, but the only students that were allowed to vote were students that were 7 years old. I told my 7 year old students to put their heads down and I heard some of my 8 year old students say "Wait a minute, do we get to vote?" I said "You are not 7, so you can't vote". Some of the 8 year old students said they didn't care and it did not bother them, but there were two that were very upset. When asked what they were thinking and feeling they said "This is not fair. It is like how women were not allowed to vote and only men were a long time ago and like how the black people were not allowed to do stuff, but the white people could". (These ideas were discussed on MLK Day.) Some other students also described their feelings. Even the students that could vote said it was not fair. After this discussion I pretended that I didn't really care and still said, "well 7 year old's you are still going to vote, so put your heads down and lets vote."

That's when it happened.

One of the students that was allowed to vote, stood up, took two steps towards me and with his hands on his hips said "Ms. Mulville, this is not fair."

I said "Wait, are you standing up to me right now?" in the most serious tone I could convey. 

A bit nervously, he said "Yes, this is not fair."

Non more than a second later, another student came up and said "This is not fair." and the domino affect began. I had 6-7 students standing in front of me shouting "This is not fair!"

This is when the discussion began. Students realized that one person stood up for what was right and then others joined in. Students began to say "It is the Power of One!" Just from this simple scenario students began to understand what this statement meant and how they can make a change. 

My students wrote a quick reflection about what happened to them and how they felt and then I asked students to write down names of people that they want to learn about that made a change, or if they didn't know the name of the person, what change they made. 

It looks like this unit we will be learning about Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges and Harriet Tubman. 

My students are so excited to start this unit and so am I! I can't wait to see what they are going to learn from this unit and the changes they are going to influence in our community.