Recent Changes

how
we teach.”
best practices?
http://occ.ibo.org/ibis/documents/general/specific_interest/special_needs/d_x_senxx_csn_1008_1_e.pdf
http://occ.ibo.org/ibis/documents/general/specific_interest/special_needs/d_x_senxx_csn_0408_1_e%20.pdf
In modifying units of inquiry for students, the core teacher should be able to answer, "If you had one week to teach your unit/course, what would be the most important aspects of what you want to teach?" If we narrow that down specifically, then we can possibly focus on those areas to guarantee our students that need more structure, time and support will be able to walk away knowing those aspects.
I have recently started and worked my way through what I would consider my first iquiry with my students. It has been a challenge to me and fun to engage in. My students have been enthusiastic and motivated to learn and I enjoy watching them be passionate about learning. Then I think of their IEP's and progress reports where once again I have to focus specifically on skills and progress percentages. Will the time away from traditional special ed skill focus be beneficial when being measured with this system of measurement? I know the engagement level has increased. I know the students have extended their learning. I know the students can look at what they have done and be proud of their hard work. THe dichotomy of these two worlds colliding with one another is one with which I continue to struggle and hope that I am not the one that is a limiting factor in my students' success.
Math inquiry: area and perimeter. We have done the traditional teaching with area and perimeter and are now going to go the route of inquiry. I found these web sites:
http://mathteachingstrategies.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/area-and-perimeter-2/,
http://alex.state.al.us/lesson_view.php?id=7238
I want to have the kids explore the relationships between area and perimeter. We will use the idea of picture frames. My provocation would be to bring in a bunch of picture frames and have them make a prediction as to which would have a larger area and perimeter. They would then make picture frames for the perimeter and mosaics on grid paper. for the area

3-6-12 {Math Advantage.docx} 3-15-12 I'm working on a math continuum to help me guide my instruction in the most meaningful way possible for my small groups. This is my extremely rough draft.
3-6-12 Reflections: Earlier numbers work.
Current
Current Actions: After number problems.
Future
Future Action Plans: students' needs.
Hey Krista,
I stumbled upon this website that has a great example of collabration and how the students used strategies in counting. You can check it out and see if it is helpful! :)

Mediated constructivism involves a thoughtful choreography between student and teacher. The teacher must constantly study the student's evolving understanding, assess what path it is on, and help the child to have and to take advantage of opportunities that enable the child to construct new and more sophisticated understandings. The teacher must guide while taking care not to be directive such that it undermines the child's incentive to explore the question. It doesn't mean that teacher can't arrange certain experiences for children. It does mean that the teacher needs to pay attention to how students are making sense of the experiences and whether the experience helps them to answer a question that they care about.
Reflection and Understanding:
learned knowledge.
After reading this article, I have realized that the IB program is directly related to constructivist and inquiry learning (I knew that, but I don't think I truly understood it). At the beginning of the year, I was basically just following my mentor teacher- hoping to grasp any kind of information that would lead to become a better inquiry teacher. Now, I am really thinking about the students learning and taking that to the next level. My mentor and I are starting to collaborate rather then just me following in her footsteps. I am now making the connections between the students learning and how they are learning. I may have hands-on learning but the students are not actively exploring and discovering the concepts. I now know that the hands-on inquiries have to be student lead and teacher guided. I also have learned that the students need to foster a understanding of the concept by exploring their interests. Students are going to instruct their knowledge based on their experiences and their understandings, therefore planners are always going to be changing and I am also going to have to adapt my instruction to the students current needs.
my classroom.
Updated: 3-8-12
Updated: 3-13-12

In this article, scientist were talking about how we need to learn from one's experience, which is based on the constructivism philosophy.
I have really taken an interest in learning more about this philosophy since Jamie Quirk is currently helping us learn and grow from our past experiences and lessons.
the article.
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/ECT/Inquiry/inquiry1.html
Knowledge as Constructed
Learning from one's experience and through one's questions is based on a philosophy called "constructivism," put forth by Piaget and others. According to constructivism, we don't just absorb understanding, instead we build it. Learners need opportunities to figure out for themselves how new learning fits with old so that they can attach it to what they already know, making it part of their existing knowledge structures or "assimilating it." When they figure out that new learning doesn't with old learning, they need to restructure their current understandings to fit with the new knowledge or to "accommodate it." These processes, assimilating and accommodating, are part of learners' theory building as they make sense of the world.
They must dosomethingdo something with it.
Research shows that unless children actively seek connections in their learning, they are not likely to remember what they've supposedly learned. Not only this, they often cannot apply concepts. The learning is inert or has a ritualized nature. It is also unlikely that children will discover areas of misunderstanding if they don't actively grapple with the ideas. Educational Researcher, David Perkins writes about the problems of each of these types of "fragile knowledge." Fragile knowledge hurts learners and does not empower them to understand or deal with their world.
While most teachers find the central concepts of constructivism appealing, the concepts also tend to raise a lot of questions. The translation from theory to practice contains many possible stumbling blocks. The largest stumbling block has to do with helping students to build understandings that will serve them well in today's world. Constructivism and inquiry-based learning can lead to many dead-ends in that children find out what doesn't work instead of what does; or they find out that they asked the wrong question; or that what they did won't help them to answer the question that they want to answer. These are valuable understandings. They help students learn a lot about the process of science and what one must think about when trying to answer certain kinds of questions. However, they don't necessarily help children construct present-day understandings of how the world works.
Mediated constructivism involves a thoughtful choreography between student and teacher. The teacher must constantly study the student's evolving understanding, assess what path it is on, and help the child to have and to take advantage of opportunities that enable the child to construct new and more sophisticated understandings. The teacher must guide while taking care not to be directive such that it undermines the child's incentive to explore the question. It doesn't mean that teacher can't arrange certain experiences for children. It does mean that the teacher needs to pay attention to how students are making sense of the experiences and whether the experience helps them to answer a question that they care about.
Reflection and Understanding:
The quote, "We don't absorb information, we build on it" explains what I have been trying to accomplish in my classroom. By using the LOI, students should be able to build on their previous knowledge to further their understanding on the concept. Over the past couple months, I have really seen a flow from how the students are benefitting and building on top of their previously learned knowledge.
After reading this article, I have realized that the IB program is directly related to constructivist and inquiry learning (I knew that, but I don't think I truly understood it). At the beginning of the year, I was basically just following my mentor teacher- hoping to grasp any kind of information that would lead to become a better inquiry teacher. Now, I am really thinking about the students learning and taking that to the next level. My mentor and I are starting to collaborate rather then just me following in her footsteps. I am now making the connections between the students learning and how they are learning. I may have hands-on learning but the students are not actively exploring and discovering the concepts. I now know that the hands-on inquiries have to be student lead and teacher guided. I also have learned that the students need to foster a understanding of the concept by exploring their interests. Students are going to instruct their knowledge based on their experiences and their understandings, therefore planners are always going to be changing and I am also going to have to adapt my instruction to the students current needs.
This article really helped me understand the theories that I have been trying to implement into my classroom.
Updated: 3-8-12

in mathmaticaly.
After I found myself focusing on increasing skills and developing student processes with no inquiry for the students. I tried improving this by creating more inquiry by asking students to solve meaningful problems and doing lots of conferring with students as they tried to solve these problems. I felt that only presenting students with number problems was still not giving students much opportunity to explore how numbers work.
Current Actions: After collaborating with teachers and reflecting on my practices, I have decided to re-assess my students and split them into two groups. Now each group is able to explore a concept that meets their needs through a hands on game/problem solving activity. This has allowed Mrs. J and I to observe students and see how they approach problems and allows students to investigate numbers more openly instead of only solving number problems.
Future Action Plans: After reading some Lara (http://inquiryblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/counting-large-numbers-a-kindergarten-counting-inquiry/) and thinking about how to make our teaching/exploring time even better, I feel that we need to open our minds to more conceptual understandings that our students might be interested in exploring. I plan to investigate this and develop/discover a list of concepts worth exploring to expand our math workshop and meet more students' needs.
Hey Krista,
I stumbled upon this website that has a great example of collabration and how the students used strategies in counting. You can check it out and see if it is helpful! :)

In this article, scientist were talking about how we need to learn from one's experience, which is based on the constructivism philosophy.
I have really taken an interest in learning more about this philosophy since Jamie Quirk is currently helping us learn and grow from our past experiences and lessons.
From the Article:Article:My notes are highlighted... I will comment on them at the end of the article.
http://hea-www.harvard.edu/ECT/Inquiry/inquiry1.html
Knowledge as Constructed
What does this mean for the classroom? In part, it means that children cannot just sit like sponges and absorb information. They must dosomething with it. They need to be engaged in activities that help them build understanding. Beyond this, it means that often the child is the best judge of what questions he or she needs to explore to make sense of the information before him or her. For instance, if a class is engaged in an activity on weights and measurement and a child is trying to figure out if you could use pebbles as weights to measure with, introducing a particular standard for measuring weight eclipses that child's opportunity to construct an understanding of whether we need standards of measure and what purpose they serve.
Research shows that unless children actively seek connections in their learning, they are not likely to remember what they've supposedly learned. Not only this, they often cannot apply concepts. The learning is inert or has a ritualized nature. It is also unlikely that children will discover areas of misunderstanding if they don't actively grapple with the ideas. Educational Researcher, David Perkins writes about the problems of each of these types of "fragile knowledge." Fragile knowledge hurts learners and does not empower them to understand or deal with their world.
answer. These arevaluableare valuable understandings. They
After all, while individual scientists might spend an entire life time developing an understanding of an isolated phenomenon, we have an accumulated wealth of scientific information that no learner could entirely reconstruct in the course of one lifetime. It has been argued that this is children's rightful inheritance.
The "Discovery-Learning" Movement and "Mediated Constructivism"
From the joint work of Vygotsky and Piaget, arises a concept that can be called mediated constructivism. Children construct understanding by learning through their experiences and their own questions but the process is mediated by adults who hold scientific understandings of how the world works. It allows for building understanding as part of a society or community of learners. Children engage in Socratic discussion of ideas, guided by the teacher, to help them build new understandings.
Mediated constructivism involves a thoughtful choreography between student and teacher. The teacher must constantly study the student's evolving understanding, assess what path it is on, and help the child to have and to take advantage of opportunities that enable the child to construct new and more sophisticated understandings. The teacher must guide while taking care not to be directive such that it undermines the child's incentive to explore the question. It doesn't mean that teacher can't arrange certain experiences for children. It does mean that the teacher needs to pay attention to how students are making sense of the experiences and whether the experience helps them to answer a question that they care about.
Reflection and Understanding:
Updated: 3-8-12

In looking back through the book from PYP Level 3 training, there is a rubric for independent reading that references Lucy Calkins from The Art of Teaching Reading
{independent reading rubric.pdf}
Plan of Action: I am going to use this rubric with my class as a way for them to reflect on/assess their own independent reading time and as a way for me to assess
them. I am hoping that this will be an effective tool for the students as they reflect in order to become more independent readers.

Anne Vize
http://www.brighthub.com/education/special/articles/17827.aspx
using inquiry:
Students using an inquiry based learning approach take responsibility for their learning tasks
Students are actively involved in the planning and preparation phase, and so develop skills in these areas
http://www.ibo.org/programmes/pd/special/
http://www.ibo.org/programmes/pd/special/documents/dpspecialassessment.pdf
There is a shift from specialist teachers solving issues to collaborative planning by all
teachers who are part of a student’s education anywhere along the learning continuum.
Teaching generic learning strategies separately from teaching academic content tends to result in students’
failure to apply these strategies when it really counts, which is in learning academic content as well as in
daily living. Teachers new to IB programmes may require factual and procedural knowledge when teaching
SEN students, such as:
• information about factors that affect a student’s learning, particularly with regard to inquiry-based
learning
• how best to respond to the student’s needs
Special educational needs in IB programmes
Special educational needs within the International Baccalaureate programmes 3
• how to differentiate and match teaching approaches to the student need, as indicated in the school’s
SEN policy
• knowledge of technology that has assisted in alleviating and removing barriers to learning.
If all these aspects are addressed in some way then it is possible for transformational learning to take
place, enabling the majority of students to express their deep understanding and critical thinking in a
variety of ways.
There should be a variety of activities and resources that match the goals
and methods of the learner and are relevant to their skills and knowledge. It is essential that all students
have an understanding of themselves as learners so that they will be able to self-advocate independent
learning skills within any of the IB programmes.
Tomlinson and Eidson (2003) state: “If, as teachers, we increase our understanding of
who we teach and
what
we teach, we are more likely to be flexible in
how
we teach.”
If inclusion is our goal in IB, how do we bridge the gap between sped and finding the minutes to be able to fit that into the day? Can we increase the time for students? Can we manage our caseloads and number of teachers differently than other schools so that we can fit into the IB best practices?
http://occ.ibo.org/ibis/documents/general/specific_interest/special_needs/d_x_senxx_csn_1008_1_e.pdf
http://occ.ibo.org/ibis/documents/general/specific_interest/special_needs/d_x_senxx_csn_0408_1_e%20.pdf

Welcome to the page for inquiry in reading and writing instruction!
http://www.readwritethink.org/resources/resource-print.html?id=187 This looks like a great source for ideas to incorporate research and inquiry. The first example will tie in perferctly as first grade teaches the UOI on animals. There are other examples on here as well.
I am reading the book Study Driven by Katie Wood Ray. Some of the main points she makes:
focus on the process, not the product, and give the students little nudges for how they could use what they are learning in their own work (reaffirming to what I am doing) This is showing the students how to carry on with their learning without needing a teacher.
the importance of having lots of mentor texts (not only picture books, but a variety of newspaper and magazine articles, collections, excerpts from longer texts, etc.)
In looking back through the book from PYP Level 3 training, there is a rubric for independent reading that references Lucy Calkins from The Art of Teaching Reading
{independent reading rubric.pdf}