Inquiring with a novel: Kensuke's Kingdom

No school year should go by without a class spending quality time with a novel. It could be in the form of a read aloud, literature circles, or independent reading and reflection. I like to use a blend of several approaches.

The first challenge is to select a great book. As an inquiry-based classroom, I thought it's critical that the novel we read together be directly related to our current theme and preferably to our central idea. We had been inquiring into children's opportunities and challenges. After discussions with colleagues, I thought Kensuke's Kingdom would be a perfect fit.

Undokai - Demonstrating the Importance of PE

One unique feature the international school in which I teach is our relationship with the Japanese public school whose campus we share. The students regularly engage in exchange activities and we are currently preparing for the annual sports festival, Undokai (運動会).

Learning Creative Learning - Summative Reflection

At the close of the MIT Media Lab 'Learning Creative Learning' Course, I've been enjoying organizing my thoughts to write this summative reflection. I took the course as an elementary school teacher looking to expand my approaches to teaching and learning, so most of what I took from it is what I can apply to my profession, although my experiences were not limited to the classroom-related.

Introduction to MOOCs
This was my first Massive Open Online Course. I was most impressed by the lack of deadlines. I could complete reading and watch class session videos at my own pace, yet the imminence of the live sessions helped me to maintain a reasonable schedule. Despite not being required, I sincerely looked forward to watching each session video each week, diligently read assignments, and felt odd pangs of guilt when I fell behind.

Super-curricular activity - 日本舞踊 - Traditional Japanese Dance

Yesterday afternoon, my wife and I took an excursion to the National Theater of Japan to see one of my fourth grade students participate in a Nihon Buyo recital. I was impressed by the quality of the production and enjoyed it very much.

Not my student. There was no photography allowed in the theater.

I was reminded how much there is to learn and do outside of school and inspired to motivate my students (as well as myself) to get more involved in extra-curricular activities.

Or, instead of 'extra-curricular', how about 'super-curricular'?

Global Collaboration - Friends in Distant Lands

Our current Unit of Inquiry, on the theme of "Sharing the Planet", focuses on children's rights, risks, opportunities, and challenges. To make the unit action-oriented, we are taking a project-based approach with the goal of helping children.
To broaden our perspective and practice effective digital communication, we are collaborating with other classes in India, Canada, and Hong Kong. Because we are following our own inquiries, the key to collaboration thus far has been sharing reflections and student work.

Posters about the importance of not wasting food.

I think it's important for the collaboration to be uncontrived. Each class should be at liberty to pursue their inquiries independently, utilizing each others' ideas, artifacts, and resources to achieve the service goals determined by the students.

Earth Day Composting

In observance of Earth Day, my class started a compost bin. They were not too keen on tearing up lunch leftovers, but very excited to hold worms.

Yes, that's a blackened banana peel in the foreground.

Independent Inquiry: Nature Drawing

Student made ten attempts at drawing this! Has a student ever tried a worksheet ten times to make it 'perfect'?

Independent Inquiry: Fashion Design

This was one of the first independent inquiry successes. With minimal guidance, no assistance, materials from school, and time at home, a student created this little model outfit!

 かわいい！

I especially like how there are slight changes from the paper to fabric versions! Many teachers are rethinking homework; many teachers are experimenting with 'genius hour'. I'm trying to combine the two ideas, blurring the boundaries between learning at school and learning at home and harnessing the students' interests to construct their own learning.

Water Resources Inquiry

To inquire into the effects of access to water around the world, we gained perspective by graphically representing water resources per capita in various countries. The bars at the bottom represent the data.

The lowest bar for Iceland stretched over three meters!

It was supposed to integrate mathematics (division & ratio) into a mainly 'social studies' unit, and worked brilliantly except for the fact that the numbers we used were extremely large and not exactly appropriate for early in fourth grade.

Is my classroom mastery-oriented?

Having spent the past year trying to understand and utilize the International Baccalaureate Organization Primary-Years-Program for the first time, I've applied a great deal of planning and instructional time to inquiry. I strongly believe in the model and its apparent intention to emphasize much more than academic performance in the education of children. It compliments my previous experiences perfectly and my students and I have enjoyed our journey thus far.

Last week, however, I received my class' results from the International Schools Assessment. Results in Mathematics were impressive, Reading were acceptable, but the Writing results were disappointing, especially non-fiction.

What happened?

This guy is clearly master-oriented.

Student-created rubrics

I'm fanatical about rubrics. Bridging the divide between specific learning outcomes (standards) and constructionist inquiry would be difficult for me without them.

In the photo, students work in pairs to develop a rubric for assessing an acting performance. They already participated in our school musical in December, so this is a chance for them to develop their understandings of the vocabulary of the theater. We've used rubrics for dozens of assessments throughout the year, so this is a chance to authentically apply what they have learned.

After the pairs completed their rubrics, they switched partners a few times to compare and contrast. Finally, we projected the empty chart on the wall and filled it in based on what they created while collaborating.

Mystery class in any time zone?

Skype, Google+ Hangout, and other live connections are an excellent way to motivate and personalize collaboration across town or across oceans. The mystery class game is an awesome way to authentically practice geography inquiry, develop communication and research skills, and cultivate international friendships! However, they are limited by time zone. For example, I would like to connect with schools in the Americas, but when it's 9am here in Japan, it's 5pm in California and 8pm in New York!

photo via gfpeck

My solution was to create this Google Document and share it with the other class' teacher. Feel free to make a copy and use it. We're just trying it out, but the plan is to add questions and answers each day until both classes solve the mystery. It's also a good way to introduce collaborative document editing to your class.

There is also the appealing notion of having an all-night, sleepover at school, worldwide Skype-a-thon... just sayin'...

PYP Superheroes

Caring Girl & Principled-Thinker Man

For Literacy Week, we had a Superhero theme and tried to inegrate the IB Learner Profile.

The real problem with Common Core

I like content standards and Common Core in particular.

Now, after dodging hurled tomatoes and enduring understandable jeers and hisses from a very vocal majority of people who work with children, I'll explain why.

Content standards like Common Core are written curriculum. Written curriculum is always a work in progress and always up for debate and revision. Any written curriculum has flaws, because what is important to 'know' is always subjective and constantly changing. Most importantly, content standards don't prescribe how to teach and learn, only what should be learned.

In my ideal teaching dream world, the written curriculum is agreed upon, discussed, debated, and revised; the taught and assessed curricula are entirely up to the communities engaged in learning to construct. Typically, that would be students, parents, and teachers. Simple, relevant. 'How we learn' and 'how we show what we have learned' should be the province of the learners, after all.

Los Perros Magicos de los Volcanes

Back in the Fall, we read one of my favorite books.

Our PYP Unit of Inquiry was entitled “We are what we believe”. We surveyed folk stories from around the world to draw inferences about various cultures’ beliefs and values from their literature. We read Aladdin from Syria, Momotaro from Japan, and Magic Dogs of the Volcanoes from El Salvador. It was a great chance to practice using Venn diagrams to compare and contrast.

The artwork is beautiful and the story is charming and unique. It also has English and Spanish on every page, which everyone always seems to enjoy. I highly recommend the book as well as the International Children’s Digital Library.