Inquiry Is......

 This year I moved and joined as the Head of School at a pre primary school. It took me a while to settle in and understand the working of a preschool is quite different from a high school. It has its own set of challenges and needs. The constant support of the ex HOS and the lovely team of teachers, am finally beginning to feel at home.

As I began my journey with my new team of teachers, we began with a very hands on and interestign PD session to explore - What Inquiry is and the differnt types of Inquiry.

'Simply put, inquiry is the personal path of questioning, investigating, and reasoning that takes us from not knowing to knowing' (Ferlazzo & Boss, 2015).

We began with a simple discussion of what Inquiry was, and what was the prior knowledge they had in terms of this word called"Inquiry". Here is a glimpse into the presentation which we used to peep into our understandings.

Inquiry is....

Post the discussion and brainstorming we moved into experiencing when and how we can use the diffferent types of Inquiry in our classrooms.

                        

                                                         

Post the action was the time to relfect on our learning and what we had taken back form the session. We used the 3-2-1 strategy to doument our take aways.

Here are a few peeks into what the teachers felt post the session 

Things you still want to know(or found interesting 

My Virtual Evaluation Journey ....

 As a fresh coordinator, it was overwhelming to grapple with my new schedule. Planning for PDs, weekly meetings, going through the documents, attending SMT (senior management team) meetings, providing support to my team members, planning events, conflict resolution amongst team members...….. along with all of this I had to understand and work on the second IB evaluation of our school. 

It was a great learning opportunity nevertheless the journey did get nerve wrecking. I had a great support from my team and senior leadership team. With their support, I was able to not only get though online schooling but also a virtual evaluation. 

This is how my evaluation  journey enfolded....

The Self Study Process

Phase 1:

We began the journey into self reflection as a school nearly 18 months before the evaluation visit. We started by going through the Standards and Practices as a staff, understanding what each practice meant. What were the different expectations of IB. 

Once we got a fair understanding, we came together and brainstormed the benchmarks we would use to rank ourselves. We looked at the four rankings that IB expects the schools to mark themselves post the self reflections. This is what we came up with.

Our agreed upon rubric as a team

Phase 2:

Based on the criteria we collaboratively came up with we set out in our teams to look at Standard A. Each team of subject teachers or homeroom teachers sat together and assessed how we were doing as a school on each Standard and Practice of A. The teachers also started linking evidences to justify the ranking they were giving. Once each team had done their assessment we came back together as a whole school and compared our markings and came up with a ranking we all agreed to as a team. 

We repeated the process for Standard B1, B2,  C1, C2, C3 and finally C4. 

While we were reflecting on each practice we also discussed how we can further improve on it. What steps would we take and added the same into our action plan. 

This process was long and deliberately given a long time in order to get an authentic reflection from all the team members. Through this process the teams understanding of the Standards and Practices grew and helped the team deepen their understanding of the IB requirements and where we as a team can still grow in.

Relooking at the Policies 

As we moved forward in our preparation for the IB visit, another area we relooked at as a team were our policies. Before we presented the policies to the team, all SMT members sat and reviewed the policies. Do they represent our philosophy ? Our practices at school? Changes in the IB requirements?

Post that we reviewed the same with our team of teachers. Our principal lead this session. She divided us in different groups and each one was given a policy to study, read, understand and then present the same to the other teams. Each team was also asked to come up with a headlines for each policy that they were assigned to. These are some headlines the teams came up with - 

Image credit: https://rb.gy/7obghq

  Admission policy group  - The key to a brighter future

Assessment policy group  - To begin with an end in mind

Inclusion Policy group - Sharing similarities, celebrating differences

Language policy group - Read, Write and Inspire

Academic honesty policy group - The best way is                                                                                        the honest way

Image credit: http://surl.li/cokwu

             Once the teams had some time to read and go through                   the policies, each team presented the same to the other                  groups. Moving ahead using the Jigsaw strategy, we                      took one member from each team and the "expert" of                    each policy  then shared their learning and                                    understanding. They asked each other questions and                      relooked at the policies to know which answers they                     didn't know.

              This process helped the teachers have that "Ahaa"                        moment, that they are actually following and                                conducting their daily affairs as mentioned in the                          school polices. This gave them the feeling of                                                                                               ownership.

Gathering the evidences 

Phase 3:

Now that as a team we knew where we stood, we began with the humongous task of gathering the relevant evidences and data to showcase why we gave ourselves the rating we did. As we gathered the required documents, videos, pictures etc. we began organizing the same under relevant practices as seen below 👇

Links to Standard A3 evidences


As seen above we made folders for each standards and made sub folders for each practice where we put in all the evidences as PDF documents for the evaluation team to find easily.

Alongside working on the evidences we also worked on an action plan based on our reflections. as a team we reflected on how we can improvise and gain a better rating in the practices we had rated ourselves poor in. Thus started our journey of the Action plan till 2025.

Phase 4:
We began uploading our Policies, Transdisciplinary document, Programme of Inquiry, Unit planners, Self study documents and other mandatory documents to be uploaded on IB concierge.

Phase 5:

Covid had made all of us helpless, but as true IB learners and educators we faced the situation with grit and resilience. As the evaluation team could not come visit our school physically we had to put together a video to showcase our classrooms, our labs, our learning resource center and other areas of learning for the team to get a glimpse into our premises.

Phase 6:

Once we were done with collating our documents, we started work on conducting surveys with our parents and students. We sent out a survey to invite them to participate in the meeting with the evaluation team. We didn't want to choose who would speak to the team, so we asked the parents and students to volunteer for the same. 

Here is the Google form we shared with our parents and students to collect evidence. 

Phase 7:

As the time for the visit grew closer we met the Team visiting members along with our IB School manager to fix up the schedule for the requirements of the visiting team. Post a discussion we worked on the agenda for the two days of the visit.

                                      Here is a glimpse into the agenda we made. 

The D days.....

Phase 8: 

The days we had all been working for as a team finally arrived. We were all excited and confident in ourselves. As a team we were looking forward to get into a discussion and identify the areas that we as a team can do even better as, how can we improve our practices to serve our students even better.

The two days with the team members was an insightful and a reflecting process. The questions they asked helped us to further think and identify our areas of improvement at the same time gave us moments to be proud of what we are doing well.

                             The Final Destination …..

In January, we received our report from the IB. I am proud to say that we did not get any MTBA's, 20 Commendations and 6 recommendations. The hard work of the team truly paid off!!! 

Keeping track...... The PYP Bulletin

When googled, collaboration is defined as the action of working with someone to produce something. In PYP collaboration means so much more than just that. Often with our busy schedules we lose track of what is happening in the other grades or the lovely ideas/strategies being used in other classrooms. There are so many documents to refer to and so many deadlines, events to plan and of course the meetings we need to be present for. 

Now with the extensive use of Google apps, Toddle, Managebac, Seesaw and the list is endless. With so many links, systems and documents to keep tab of, for a person still getting used to using technology for their benefit, it can get quite overwhelming. 

As a teacher it was always a struggle for me to keep tab of everything. There was always something that I missed or overlooked. As a coordinator. I knew this was an area I definitely did not want my teachers to struggle with.

At the beginning of the year I put together a document I call the PYP Bulletin. It is organized in a way that will help teachers navigate through all the things they would need every week. Meetings list, events list, timings, links, links to documents we use everyday for planning, shout outs for the whole teams mentioning special events in each classroom etc. 

You can find a sample of the document here. 

This is something I send to my team on a weekly basis with a short email about the happenings of the week. It also has the updates of teacher absentees, important announcements of the week, events or special activities of the week, holiday list, upcoming events etc. 

It was like out go to document as a team to know what is happening in the PYP and in each other classrooms.

Feel free to email me if you want to know ore about this collaboration tool we use as a team.

 

 

PD time

As the ways of teaching and learning are changing with changing times, the words inquiry and inquiry learning are part of most teacher conferences. Inquiry is understood as a use of a variety of different strategies. The strateies can be useful if used at the right time and the right place. 

But I wonder - Are these all Inquiry?

Use of interactive hands on activities is an integral part of inquiry teaching. Meaningful leaning can take place through a lot of  different hands on activities, however it does not necassirily mean that inquiry is taking place. This was the notion that was in the minds of most of my teachers.

This lead to the designing of this PD session of comparing three different styles of instructions.

Learning goal of this PD was for teachers to understand and get a feel of how different hands on methods can lead to different learning paths. 

The teachers were rotated throught three stations, each with a differently designed task. Each station has similar materials like powder detergent, liquid detergent, egg beaters, scales, plates etc.

Station 1:  Guided station 

The teachers on this station were provided with a worksheet and specific instructions on how to make foam and specific questions comparing the two foams.

Station 2: Challenge 

Here the teacehrs were presented with a challenge to build a free standing 12 inch tower on the plate.

Station 3: Exploration and discovery

Here the teachers were asked to experiment making foam and observe. They were asked to observe, device questions and plan experiments with the foam.

(This station was provided with extra materials as shaving cream, electric beater, soda etc)

                           

After working on the different stations, the teachers gathered to discuss their success stories. We reflected on the experieince and shared our feelings. We compared the experiences at the three stations and reflected on the hands on learning experience.  

An experience that lead to a more in depth understanding of inquiry and how ew can as teachers provide opportunities of different kinds as per the needs of the students, as there is a place for all three types of Inquiry - Guided, Structured and Open inquiry at dfferent points of learning. 

Technology and passion

Accidents can happen at the times when one just does not want things to go wrong. My partner and our PYP coordinator, met with an unfortunate accident and fractured her leg. This at the time. when we were looking at refurbishing our report cards.  

In this time of disteress came into play the passion and commitment of my partner in making sure

things go on as planned. I kept thinking of how to go on normally as well as not make my coordinator feel out of sync.

That's when we had technology come to our help and rescue.  We used Google hangouts/Skype to conduct our PD sessions and conduct our weekly palnning meetings.

Technology if used intellectually can be used to sort a lot of problems!

Enroute a new journey....

This academic year began with me taking up a new role of a PYP coordinator. Thought of recording my new journey as I step out of my comfort zone to take on this new challenge.

As I am trying to figure out how I can help my team to become the best version of themselves, I wondered what could I as leader and mentor of the team bring to the table to enhance my team performance. 

This takes me back to when I was a teacher at Edubridge International school, my principal - Mick Purcell motivated and encouraged me to start blogging. I remember how absurd that idea seemed to me when he suggested that, nevertheless I decided to give it a try and there has been no looking back since then.
This made me wonder if I could motivate my teachers to embark on their blogging journey!

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Teachers at D Y Patil International School.........trying heir hand at blogging!!
PD session on blogging 👇

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Proud of my team at DYPIS who so willingly plunged into this. Way to go RISKTAKERS!!

Stay tuned to read my teams blogs soon!!!

Sharing the Planet

The second week brought with it a journey into the water world. We began our inquiry to learn about the precious resource - WATER

Tuning In

Day 1: We started our tuning in by using a pictorial provocation. Each table had a different picture and question to trigger the thinking of the students.

Day 2: Each group was given a newspaper article related to the monsoon season.

We read the newspaper and discussed - *What is the newspaper reporter trying to tell us?

* How far do you think this article is true?

* Do you agree with what the person is trying to say - Why or why not?

* Write down one fact that you gathered from the article?

Provoation

To tune in to the theme of our unit - 'Sharing the Planet' and central idea - 'Water is one of the main natural resources and we must preserve it ', we took the water bottles of students away for the day. They were provided limited amount of water in a water dispenser. The water in the dispenser was the only water they had access to for the day.

Some of their reactions and thoughts.......

Mystery Text Quotes

Technology is most certainly the future, so it would be best to introduce it to elementary children and get the familiar with programs and skills they will need in their near future. Using technology in the classroom also sparks interests withing the students, it's different than the teacher writing everything on the white board.

Day 3: We looked at the video  - Nature talking. Post the video we discusses what message was nature trying to give us. We then unfolded our central idea and the key concepts of our unit. 

Post the discussion we began wondering what were the things that we wanted to learn more about under this unit.

Finding out 

We were given QR codes and we went on different sites to find out the different forms of water.

To find out more about how the water  is distributed on Earth we first found out what are the different forms of water on Earth.

Sharing our ideas using the Think link share strategy.

Sorting Out 

To assess the prior knowledge of capacity we began by estimating the amount of water the different containers can hold. 


We measured to see if our estimations were accurate.

We took up measuring water to understand the connection between liter and milliliter.

We took on the task of exploring how was the fresh water distributed on the Earth. 

We stated - If all the water on the Earth was equal to one liter, how much of fresh water is available to humans for use?

We realized that of all the water present on the Earth, there is only 3% of fresh water that can be really used by humans.

Do we really have all of the 3% of fresh water to use??????

We used our understanding of  milliliter and liter to measure and experiment the different amounts of each form of water found on the Earth.

Our findings

We were posed with another essential question - How does this 3% of fresh water get distributed over the Earth.

Before we dwelled further into this we did some experiments to understand the terms -
Evaporation

Condensation

Precipitation






Water cycle Stimulation game 
The students became water molecules and rotated between different station depending on the instructions on each station. This game made us realize that  the same water molecule moves from one state to another.

Post this we used the picture priority strategy to see what we had understood through the water cycle stimulation game.

Take a peek at how we figured out the water cycle -

Once we were familiar with these terms we were given a project to work on to understand the water cycle i.e. - How does water move ?

Take a peek at our task here.

Working hard to get the projects complete

Using QR codes to gain access to sites

Stay tuned for our presentations next week........

Literacy

In language, we are learning to write reviews.

Math

We our working our way around the concept of Place value. 

To activate our previous understanding of place value we played the silent game. 

We are working with different manipulative and strategies to understand the connection of the value and place of the digit. 

B.U.I.L.D. time

We created our accounts on Khan Academy. We will be using this to learn and make our understanding of  math concepts stronger.