'Level up' transdisciplinary skills

In the IB Primary years program, 'Transdisciplinary skills' play a critical role in planning, teaching, and assessing student learning. However, they are not often explicitly taught and when they are, it is usually in an isolated manner. For example, one might teach a mini lesson about 'gather data' as part of a unit of inquiry.

To reinforce the transdisciplinary nature of the skills and provide more opportunities for students to reflect and discuss them together, I designed a slightly gamified system.

Each skill is posted on the wall with an eight by one square grid underneath.

'I forgot my pencil.'

A child in my class forgot their pencil. I was informed of this only because of the nature of the solution to the problem: Fashion a makeshift fountain pen out of a disposable chopstick, tissue paper, and marker ink.

A written math assessment was perfectly legibly completed with this implement.

I'm sure many teachers would have simply demanded that it be cleaned up and provide the child with a pencil. It's clearly a giant mess hanging from a wobbly precipice and not a remarkably responsible way to accept one's mistake.

However, my respect for creativity, ingenuity, and other Maker values endowed me with the patience to request clean up after the quiz was finished. I think that the leeway the student was allowed not only helped them to feel empowered, but also encouraged voluntary cooperation with more orthodox classroom procedures.

International artifacts

In anticipation of World Cultures Day at KIST, Grade 4 students were assigned the task of selecting a cultural artifact in their home, taking a photo with it, and completing a short reflection about its significance.

Many chose items from their home countries, although a few shared souvenirs from places they had visited.

We displayed their photos and reflections with a flag from the artifact's country of origin in the corridor to highlight the international character of our school.