Getting ready for the big day!

Preparing a classroom environment

Tomorrow is the first day of school and I'm so excited. It is going to be a big year with a small class. I've spent the last two weeks getting ready for the big day.

Last year my big experiment was completing the exhibition for the first time.  It was a great process, but I kept note of things that were challenging for some students and this year I am  hoping to improve in a few areas, including student mastery of the key concepts and attitudes.

Our IB tree with the Key concepts, Learner Profiles. Attitudes, and Skill.

I teach at a small IB school, with a highly mobile population. Often families staying 2-3 years and this has the student population changing drastically during the year . For example: I taught the same class for 2 years. I had 9 students for all of fourth grade, but I began fifth grade with 6 new students. During the year I gained a few more students and lost others to new countries. As such, we gain a lot of families that are unfamiliar with the IB.

 

 

Creating an interactive unit board

This summer I have been reflecting on how I can design the classroom to optimize student teamwork and autonomy and how I can better use my board to engage the students in the unit. How can my classroom environment impact students unfamiliar with the IB?
 I want to use my boards interactively and design my space to make student independence explicit.

Here are a few of my experiments. They may not be novel, but they are tweaks on how I have done things in the past. 

Beginning Inquiry Road

 Across one wall, I have marked a space for each part of our unit planner. When I introduce the unit, students will write out the interdisciplinary theme, unit title, and lines of inquiry. On Friday, each student will write what they think the central idea of the unit is. Everyone will share their first draft taking note of their ideas and observations of what we are studying. Each week they will revise their central idea until we complete the summative assessment. We will have a big reveal and compare to see who got the closest. (Last year the class wrote a much clearer Central Idea than I did for one of the units :)

Students will draw example word cards for the learner profile, key concepts, attitudes, and skills to make them explicitly clear to anyone who walks in the room.  I did this the last few years and it really helped with some of the complex skills, like dialectical thought or meta-cognition. As we complete work, we will put it up on the board and tether it to what we are exploring ( a line of inquiry, key concept etc)

Continuing the Inquiry Road

I want to strongly encourage them to take action in the units. So I have created an action focus area with their names in stars. Their actions will be posted on their board with their star.

I also separated each line of inquiry into its own soaring bird, trying to show that they are independent guides of our learning.

Lines of Inquiry

Overall, I want the board to have an adventure game feel to it. It is a visual metaphor of our inquiry journey.

 

 

 

 

Developing our attitudes 

I saw this great post on the PYP Teachers board the other day about using the attitudes to create the essential agreements.  I am going to have them generate 3 descriptors for each attitude. We will then choose 3 or 4 of them create our essential agreement. 

I will use the descriptors they generate to create a morning meeting station where they will choose their attitude for the day later in the month. 

Fostering Independence

My last goal in room design was to foster independence. I have had a challenge in getting students to take control of their learning. The earlier in the year that they begin, the easier it is for them to control their exhibition learning. To set them up to succeed, I have tried to give them a lot of classroom control.

Our Math and LA stations

I have a station for their Math and language arts stations, a student supplies area where they can get whatever they need, a station to pick up and drop off paperwork, and a variety of seating options that can be reconfigured to meet their needs. 

Our room, including reading nooks and work areas

What are you doing to set up your room for the year?