So I have been checking out the whole PYP/IB curriculum.
To be honest it seems rather daunting.....and I feel sort of stressed just thinking about it.
I have this image where instead of writing these simple lesson plans, I have to write a Unit of Enquiry
that is at least 6 pages long for each theme that I want to teach.
I can't even begin to imagine what the report card looks like.
SO my questions are for those of you who have transitioned to a PYP school:
How long did it take you to get adjusted to the PYP curriculum ?
Is it really difficult and complicated to write a Unit of Enquiry ?
What do you like about the PYP ?
What do you hate about the PYP ?
Am I being a drama queen about this ?
Just wondering.....
Fear of the PYP/Am I being a drama queen ?
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wrldtrvlr123
- Posts: 1173
- Joined: Sat Feb 06, 2010 10:59 am
- Location: Japan
Re: Fear of the PYP/Am I being a drama queen ?
Have you gotten a job with a PYP school? Don't say theme. That's about all the PYP advice I have.
Actually my wife taught Pre-K at a PYP school and there was a lot of less than useful paperwork, forced collaboration and a ridiculously long report card for 4-5 year olds. Once you get the routine established it's apparently not that bad. And. much of it will depend on how the specific school implements it.
I'm sure some experts will chime in with more helpful info.
Actually my wife taught Pre-K at a PYP school and there was a lot of less than useful paperwork, forced collaboration and a ridiculously long report card for 4-5 year olds. Once you get the routine established it's apparently not that bad. And. much of it will depend on how the specific school implements it.
I'm sure some experts will chime in with more helpful info.
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buffalofan
- Posts: 350
- Joined: Wed Jan 06, 2010 11:08 pm
Re: Fear of the PYP/Am I being a drama queen ?
If you are at a school with an established PYP curriculum in place, the units of inquiry will be all ready to go and you won't need to write your own. You will also have the benefit of learning from experienced PYP teachers. Yes, there is forced collaboration (this is often a double edged sword) and yes, report cards are wicked. Again though, if you are going to a school with an established PYP program, I wouldn't stress.
If you are going to a school that is just getting started with the PYP, good luck...you will need it.
If you are going to a school that is just getting started with the PYP, good luck...you will need it.
Response
Yes PYP can be exhausting, frustrating, and you will ask yourself and other "why" a lot. Its not misplaced concern, but as @buffalofan commented about a great deal of variation will depend on how your IS implements PYP, how much work is already done, what you will be left with (resources, guidance, etc), and how much collaboration is expected.
1) You dont get a choice of what themes you will "want to teach, you will do all 6 themes and UIs in grades 1-6. The IS has a choice on their sequence and scope (how much time they spend on them) but the vast majority of ISs do them in order starting with who we are, etc. but you will do them all.
2) Yes, the lesson plans can easily be 6 pages or more, a bubble planner can easily be 3 pages and add the UI planer, and then the lesson guide (the script) and 6 pages isnt uncommon. Again, though much of this depends on what you are walking into. If you have a solid, stable PYP program the bubble planer may only require some very slight modifications and changing the date. The lesson guide may also be very workable requiring you only to assemble materials and review the procedures. If however you have to design and create all these yourself and your new, you are going to spend a lot of late nights at your IS.
3) A number of PYP ITs never really 'get' PYP they take their current lessons, format them to like the bubble planer and then sort of 'shotgun' the planer with IB vocabulary such as LP, concepts, etc.
4) It can be difficult to come from a stranded meds/peds where you essentially have literacy, numeracy and arts lessons that are discreet to the UI/Theme that sometimes try to squeeze subjects that are difficult to conceptualize. Adding math to a UI such as who we are can leave an IT dumbfounded in how to do that.
5) You still have to plan multiple lessons, your UI will not (very unlikely) include all subjects so you will have to prepare a UI that and then lessons for the stranded subjects that arent in the UI. The who we are UI might only include language and social studies, leaving you with creating lessons for maths, science and maybe arts.
6) Yes the report card can be a nightmare, but Ive seen ISs with a simple report card that works with PYP, Ive also seen report cards with competencies that are not developmentally appropriate or assess trivial SKAs, or over assess some areas.
The IB report card should be longer as it needs to report assessment for all subject areas, unlike in DE where the emphasis is again on literacy (comprehension, fluency, vocabulary) and numeracy (counting, relationships) and very brief descriptors for arts/PHE. There is social studies component, a science component, a technology component, so yes the report card is generally longer.
7) It takes about a year to internalize PYP, your first year is a training year. You will make plenty of mistakes.
Your first UI will probably be a mess, if your IS has decent leadership that has a background in PYP they will know this. Take pictures, and video and laugh at yourself later.
Your second UI you will probably learn to focus on the lesson, the classroom actions and make the planers secondary, you can always come back during the UI or at the end and reflect on what worked, what didnt, what was left out, and what needs more emphasis (if anyone ask, say your practicing reflection in the LP).
Your third UI will look something like what an IB practitioner would expect to see, at least if they are standing in your room for 15 minutes etc. This is because how we express ourselves is basically art, and if your IS has specialist ITs (technology, fine arts, PHE) then this UI will fall mostly on their shoulders, you might not even be responsible for any of the UI. This will come right around the end of the first term, and is the UI the specialist ITs use to base their assessment on, since most of the other UIs are very heavy ont he core areas of language, social studies, maths, science which HRTs do. Even if you are entirely responsible for it, creativity and expression is whatever you want it to be.
By your fourth UI you can breath a little easier because your UIs become more science/maths focused. Who we are and where we are tend to be more language and social studies focused, how we express ourselves is art, how the world works and sharing the planet tend to be science (Environmental) and how we organize ourselves tends to be the best choice for maths. If your organized how the world works and sharing the planet can be one continuation of a larger project, and usually are a significant part of exhibition/portfolio. It should look pretty good by UI four as your students start to take responsibility for doing more and guiding their own learning, because they are starting to do things they want and like to do (who we are and where we are, are really just long treks of book work).
UI five (how we organize ourselves) is probably the hardest depending on where you are and how maths intensive it is. Some ISs focus on social studies in this UI some maths and some make it a civics UI. Its the UI thats often the least focused. Some ISs never figured out what they really want it to be, make it short (2 weeks) and try to make it their maths UI using either elementary statistics or graphing data, or they do some kind of civics/national history unit.
The last, UI six is largely focused on putting the portfolio/exhibition together and sharing the planet is some kind of project or exploration of cultural awareness.
8) Depends what you planed before, A lot of the PYP that requires adaptation is the structure, the lexicon, and the integration. Those sound scary, but really its nothing more than format, new terminology, and always asking yourself how can I have students do more and the IT do less. Best practices are still best practices, your just combining lesson objectives into one daily mini project and then growing that project day by day, and then documenting it using the appropriate buzz/code words. Is planing it hard no, as long as you ignore the planer to start with, figure out what you want to do, how to do it, and what the objective is, then you can work backwards and fill in the planer fleshing out the technical aspects as you go, adding little 'post its time' for touching on IB LP and concepts along the way.
9) What do i like about PYP; Its whole student learning its integrated, and it allows for applied learning. We turn kids off to math so young, because most of how we teach it from very young ages involves little more than proofs and problems through rote learning, its no wonder why JHS kids either love math because they discover an affinity for doing proofs or they hate it because proofs are boring and they suck at it. Having kids learn by interaction and doing is so much easier when it comes to achieving objectives, yes it takes more resources, organization and planing but the benefits are real, its hands on education that many teachers dreamed about when they were in Uni. Its what it means to be "inquiry" based education.
10) What dont I like about it; its resource heavy, and time is the biggest resource hog. Literally you can feed PYP all your time and it will still want more. You can spend 5, 10, 20 times the amount of time on a UI portion of the lesson, and do the non-UI stranded subject in minutes compared to the UI.
PYP is also "expensive", project work takes resource outside of books and paper.
Collaboration, many ITs simply dont and wont work together, you can force them into a room and they will talk maybe even right something down, but as soon as they leave they will begin formulating excuses for why the collaboration wont work. Leadership that comes down hard on this will just force ITs to exchange some emails to get on the same page (have the same story) and keep rolling with what they are doing in their classroom.
1) You dont get a choice of what themes you will "want to teach, you will do all 6 themes and UIs in grades 1-6. The IS has a choice on their sequence and scope (how much time they spend on them) but the vast majority of ISs do them in order starting with who we are, etc. but you will do them all.
2) Yes, the lesson plans can easily be 6 pages or more, a bubble planner can easily be 3 pages and add the UI planer, and then the lesson guide (the script) and 6 pages isnt uncommon. Again, though much of this depends on what you are walking into. If you have a solid, stable PYP program the bubble planer may only require some very slight modifications and changing the date. The lesson guide may also be very workable requiring you only to assemble materials and review the procedures. If however you have to design and create all these yourself and your new, you are going to spend a lot of late nights at your IS.
3) A number of PYP ITs never really 'get' PYP they take their current lessons, format them to like the bubble planer and then sort of 'shotgun' the planer with IB vocabulary such as LP, concepts, etc.
4) It can be difficult to come from a stranded meds/peds where you essentially have literacy, numeracy and arts lessons that are discreet to the UI/Theme that sometimes try to squeeze subjects that are difficult to conceptualize. Adding math to a UI such as who we are can leave an IT dumbfounded in how to do that.
5) You still have to plan multiple lessons, your UI will not (very unlikely) include all subjects so you will have to prepare a UI that and then lessons for the stranded subjects that arent in the UI. The who we are UI might only include language and social studies, leaving you with creating lessons for maths, science and maybe arts.
6) Yes the report card can be a nightmare, but Ive seen ISs with a simple report card that works with PYP, Ive also seen report cards with competencies that are not developmentally appropriate or assess trivial SKAs, or over assess some areas.
The IB report card should be longer as it needs to report assessment for all subject areas, unlike in DE where the emphasis is again on literacy (comprehension, fluency, vocabulary) and numeracy (counting, relationships) and very brief descriptors for arts/PHE. There is social studies component, a science component, a technology component, so yes the report card is generally longer.
7) It takes about a year to internalize PYP, your first year is a training year. You will make plenty of mistakes.
Your first UI will probably be a mess, if your IS has decent leadership that has a background in PYP they will know this. Take pictures, and video and laugh at yourself later.
Your second UI you will probably learn to focus on the lesson, the classroom actions and make the planers secondary, you can always come back during the UI or at the end and reflect on what worked, what didnt, what was left out, and what needs more emphasis (if anyone ask, say your practicing reflection in the LP).
Your third UI will look something like what an IB practitioner would expect to see, at least if they are standing in your room for 15 minutes etc. This is because how we express ourselves is basically art, and if your IS has specialist ITs (technology, fine arts, PHE) then this UI will fall mostly on their shoulders, you might not even be responsible for any of the UI. This will come right around the end of the first term, and is the UI the specialist ITs use to base their assessment on, since most of the other UIs are very heavy ont he core areas of language, social studies, maths, science which HRTs do. Even if you are entirely responsible for it, creativity and expression is whatever you want it to be.
By your fourth UI you can breath a little easier because your UIs become more science/maths focused. Who we are and where we are tend to be more language and social studies focused, how we express ourselves is art, how the world works and sharing the planet tend to be science (Environmental) and how we organize ourselves tends to be the best choice for maths. If your organized how the world works and sharing the planet can be one continuation of a larger project, and usually are a significant part of exhibition/portfolio. It should look pretty good by UI four as your students start to take responsibility for doing more and guiding their own learning, because they are starting to do things they want and like to do (who we are and where we are, are really just long treks of book work).
UI five (how we organize ourselves) is probably the hardest depending on where you are and how maths intensive it is. Some ISs focus on social studies in this UI some maths and some make it a civics UI. Its the UI thats often the least focused. Some ISs never figured out what they really want it to be, make it short (2 weeks) and try to make it their maths UI using either elementary statistics or graphing data, or they do some kind of civics/national history unit.
The last, UI six is largely focused on putting the portfolio/exhibition together and sharing the planet is some kind of project or exploration of cultural awareness.
8) Depends what you planed before, A lot of the PYP that requires adaptation is the structure, the lexicon, and the integration. Those sound scary, but really its nothing more than format, new terminology, and always asking yourself how can I have students do more and the IT do less. Best practices are still best practices, your just combining lesson objectives into one daily mini project and then growing that project day by day, and then documenting it using the appropriate buzz/code words. Is planing it hard no, as long as you ignore the planer to start with, figure out what you want to do, how to do it, and what the objective is, then you can work backwards and fill in the planer fleshing out the technical aspects as you go, adding little 'post its time' for touching on IB LP and concepts along the way.
9) What do i like about PYP; Its whole student learning its integrated, and it allows for applied learning. We turn kids off to math so young, because most of how we teach it from very young ages involves little more than proofs and problems through rote learning, its no wonder why JHS kids either love math because they discover an affinity for doing proofs or they hate it because proofs are boring and they suck at it. Having kids learn by interaction and doing is so much easier when it comes to achieving objectives, yes it takes more resources, organization and planing but the benefits are real, its hands on education that many teachers dreamed about when they were in Uni. Its what it means to be "inquiry" based education.
10) What dont I like about it; its resource heavy, and time is the biggest resource hog. Literally you can feed PYP all your time and it will still want more. You can spend 5, 10, 20 times the amount of time on a UI portion of the lesson, and do the non-UI stranded subject in minutes compared to the UI.
PYP is also "expensive", project work takes resource outside of books and paper.
Collaboration, many ITs simply dont and wont work together, you can force them into a room and they will talk maybe even right something down, but as soon as they leave they will begin formulating excuses for why the collaboration wont work. Leadership that comes down hard on this will just force ITs to exchange some emails to get on the same page (have the same story) and keep rolling with what they are doing in their classroom.