To wrap up my COETAIL course requirements, I'm very excited to present to you my final project video! The video summarizes a six-week unit of inquiry that I go into greater depth in the posts found here. I hope you enjoy the evidence of student learning, student engagement in the learning process and how I've redefined the use of technology in this unit. Moreover, I also hope it is clearly evident how both my learners and I have grown through conscious embedding of the ISTE Standards.
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These are precarious and turbulent times. In a normal world, educators can go into their respective working spaces, collaborate with colleagues in person, share stories, visit some neighboring schools in their area, and even attend a conference face-to-face. However, many of these ideas seem foreign at present. Social media can be pervasive and detrimental if left unchecked. However, with discipline and focus, pandemic or not, it allows us to connect with other educators around the globe, imbibe in our niche passions, learn alongside each other, enhance our perspectives and more. These connections pay dividends in our professional and personal growth, allow us to feel more connected to a community, and can help us in times of need for feedback, mentoring, ideas, resources, student mentor experiences, future employment and more. In sum, I think the pandemic has highlighted how important it is to stay globally connected when more local and face-to-face connections become impossible at times. Below, I aim to illuminate how I stay professionally connected to my COETAIL colleagues and beyond. COETAIL Connections One of the easiest ways that I stay connected to my COETAIL colleagues is through Twitter. Sharing my posts/reflections of my learning through the #COETAIL and #COETAIL13 hashtags has helped me connect with not only my fellow Online 13 tribe further, but also past and future cohort members. Being part of the COETAIL Online 13 Twitter list makes it easy to see what others in my "13" tribe are posting, too! Another way that I've stayed connected and collaborated with my COETAIL crew beyond our respective blogs, is through backchanneling on WhatsApp. In courses two and three, I had the privilege to work on collaborative group projects with three other awesome educators in this cohort (Check them out on Twitter: Megan, Danielle and David). To read more about what we collaborated on, check out this blog post on our course two project, and this one for our course three project. WhatsApp allowed us to determine times to video conference together, quickly check in with each other for feedback and more. This casual backchannel platform carried on beyond this project, further strengthening our bonds. We would check in on each other during heated times through the pandemic, share educational resources, and even reach out for support other group members with regards to the unfolding war in the Ukraine. Presenting at Conferences Global conference presentations are yet another way that I stay connected and collaborate with others. Not only is this a nice way to give back to the community, but, as an added plus, presenters often get free all access passes to these events. This, "give a little, receive a lot in return", strategy fills my bucket tenfold as I can learn from and connect with so many wonderful educators across the globe. CogCon 2021 My school is owned by a bigger organization that owns many schools around the world. Each year, they host a united professional learning event called "CogCon". This year, I put my hand up to present in the educational technology strand. This collaborative opportunity allowed me to build closer connections within two other great educators in my organizational professional network (Check them out on Twitter: Tim and Adam), as well as empower many other educators attending the conference globally who attended our session. Click here to see the reach our presentation had! I also documented some of the journey of how Tim and I collaborated on this presentation, here. My relationships with Tim and Adam continued to grow throughout the year as we collaborated further on other projects such as guest speakers for inquiry projects with students and action team inquiries on developing and strengthening aspects of our digital citizenship curriculum. 21CLHK & Toddle TIES Two other international conferences that I presented at this year that allowed me to share my knowledge on various topics, as well as learn from other great educators around the globe, were 21CLHK (21st Century Learning Hong Kong) and, more recently, Toddle's "The Inquiry Educator's Summit" (TIES). Both of these experiences gave me further opportunities to stretch my perspective, develop my professional growth and grow my professional learning network (PLN). Here are two Twitter feeds for both, showing the greater extent of my interactions: #21CLHK & #ToddleTIES. Attached below are some images from these events that I participated in: #PYPchat As an International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) educator, #PYPchat on Twitter gives me the opportunity to learn from and share with others innovative ideas regularly. When I have the time, I do like to participate in the synchronous chats, too. This hashtag has helped forge many of great professional friendships and collaborations over the years. One way I gave back through this community recently was being asked to be a guest speaker for a "Making the PYP Happen Workshop" in the region, offering a mini-workshop of what agency could look like. If interested, here is a link to show my Twitter engagement through this hashtag. I've attached a couple of photos below as well: #PubPdAsia & #AppleEDUchat
Two other hashtags and communities that run regular chats on education and that I've grown tremendously from are #PubPdAsia and #AppleEDUchat. Being honest, I haven't participated in either as much as I'd normally like to, but it's been a busy and trying year. For balance, I couldn't juggle them all and something needed to give a little. I'm particularly looking forward to when we can move to more face-to-face gatherings, which is one of the things I really like about #PubPdAsia. You get to network and meet up with educators in your area having chats on various educational topics over liquid refreshments in a pub in your area! How about you? How do you stay connected? What experiences have helped you grow your PLN over the past year that stretch your perspective, get you collaborating with others and add value to growth as an educator? I'm not sure about you, but I'm really looking forward to a day when face-to-face professional learning conferences are more of the norm again! This post wraps up a series of posts that describe a "Sharing the planet" unit of inquiry. You can view the entire thread of posts here. This unit was also the focus for injecting over a year of COETAIL course learning, which is the gist of what COETAIL course five's final project is all about. "Expert" Explanation Texts To communicate their research of their personally meaningful climate change inquiry projects, students created explanation texts. The texts would serve as catalysts to sharing this knowledge with their peers, giving them an authentic audience (more on that below). After co-constructing success criteria, looking at and modelling countless exemplars, and matching the writing to the lines of inquiry for the unit, the majority of our students drafted or published their research. In sum, the summative text pieces offered a rich demonstration of the learning and knowledge that children inquired into, offered them a choice in what they were interested in learning about, and students were given a lot of flexibility in terms of medium and style in which they were to present their work. Here are a few examples of the texts created: Learning from Others - Part One COETAIL courses focus deeply about how to embed technology authentically and with purpose. In addition, several COETAIL courses concentrate heavily on the power of collaboration. Given that our grade four context was still online, we wanted to provide children with a way to publish their work across all classrooms. We also wanted children to imbibe in the experience of learning from their peers in jigsaw style, but also provide opportunities for tons of choice in what they wanted to learn about. Since the previous Padlet we used for purposes of curation of resources and modelling research was met with great success, my team and I concluded that, "If it is not broken, then why fix it?"! Being the more tech savvy individual on my team, I created another Padlet where each student in each class could publish their research, which they could then use to learn off each other. I showed the Padlet to the team, added them as collaborators and we demonstrated how it would work to the students. Below is a visual of the results of our "Published Research" Padlet: Learning from Others - Part Two To make the jigsaw learning experience more powerful, we decided to construct a graphic organizer with some carefully crafted reflection questions to guide and document student learning. The rules were simple - students had to choose two topics other than their own and each student's research that they learnt from had to be from a different classroom. Below are two completed graphic organizers from this experience: Final Reflections If all of the above didn't best capture the depth of knowledge that unfolded for the students, we also wanted to provide another opportunity for students to reflect on the key aspects of this unit to give it some sense of closure. Note that no unit officially ends - in fact, we're always looking for those opportunities to make connections, show ACTION and make meaningful transfer of knowledge. Put simply, we do focus our time on other inquiries, but it's not like we close this chapter of learning and put it away under lock and key. Since COETAIL provided opportunities to look at protocols and visual thinking routines to unleash deep learning, I suggested we use a visual thinking routine or two in our reflection questions. You can see what my team and I collaboratively decided on in the example below. We also wanted to bring back the initial unit provocation infographic that we introduced to the students to capture their prior knowledge. It was great to come back to this and see what kind of detail the children could now provide. Below is an excellent visual example of one student's growth as a result of this unit of inquiry: Thank You - Dear Reader!
If you've been following this whole series of posts on this unit, I just want to take the time to thank you for your commitment. I hope that there was something that sparked your thinking or perhaps there was one takeaway that ignited a spark to try something new or differently in your context. Please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions, comments or wonderings. Lastly, I just also want to express my thanks for the rich learning experiences that COETAIL provided. The learning that has transpired and transferred has benefitted myself, those who I teach, and likely many colleagues whom I collaborate with regularly. This post follows a series of posts that relate to a COETAIL Course 5 final project. It follows the journey of a "Sharing the planet" unit of inquiry and how COETAIL course learning has been injected into it. You can read the other posts related to this journey here. Getting into Personally Meaningful Inquiries Up until now, students have been discovering what climate change is about and some of its causes. The connection with the Grade 12 CAS students, described in my last blog post, really helped with that. The older students even touched briefly on what humans are doing to show action or take responsibility, which was the deeper portion of the second line of inquiry. Now that students has some lead in and exposure to content knowledge relating to our lines of inquiry, it was time for them to dive deeper into an area of climate change that they could further hone their research and thinking skills (i.e. the Approaches to learning). COETAIL course three had a big focus on visual communication and collaboration; it really helped me further craft my design and visual communication skills. Since a premise of COETAIL Course Five is about embedding learning authentically into your context, it got my thinking about how to improve the visual access and communication for teachers, students and parents. An area from last year's unit that needed some love in particular was simplifying and synthesizing the media that students would use for their research. To start my pitch to the grade four teaching team, I created this visual (which we would also use with the students), as to the next direction for the unit. Essentially, students would choose and become mini-experts within one of these five areas. Teachers would take the lead in one area, then collate or synthesizing some kid friendly research media. In addition, the teacher facilitators for each domain would model research skills and create exemplars to help scaffold the skills needed in order for the students to create the explanation text brochures that was part of the summative task of this unit. The team liked the idea and we got students to choose their area of interest. As teachers, we carved out several collaborative blocks during a two week time period where kids went to their "topic" teacher. In these sessions, teachers modeled research of a mini-topic within that domain (e.g. concrete for materials) to serve as exemplars. Simultaneously throughout this unit, our literacy classes complimented this inquiry by looking at text and language features of explanation texts, skimming and scanning skills, note-taking, co-creating success criteria and more. A big change from last year, and something COETAIL further helped hone in on this craft, was thinking of more effective ways to embed technology into teaching and learning. The context in which this unit was taught last year was different - it was taught face-to-face. However, this unit was taught in an online context. As a team, we decided that we would add all of our "expert" media housed into one Padlet. Regardless of teaching context, this offered several advantages from last year. First, other teachers could benchmark from one another and be inspired more transparently about what other expert groups were doing. Secondly, students could access the information asynchronously and also access it during homeroom time. Third, homeroom teachers could better support all of their homeroom students working on various topics because all the information was in one place. In sum, all of this allowed for greater visibility, improved support, access to modeling notes, and more kid-friendly research resources from last year. Connecting further with experts COETAIL does a fantastic job of integrating the ISTE standards into course content knowledge. Being an ISTE certified educator already coming into the course, I loved how COETAIL gave me further opportunities to refine my application and understanding of the standards. One of my passions as an educator is connecting kids with experts beyond their four walls. This aligns nicely with the ISTE Standards for Educators 2.4c. I knew there was so much potential to reach out to "expert" members in our community on this topic, so I started reaching out to several contacts that I knew had a great fit. Sadly, timing wasn't our friend, and, after exhausting those resources, I knew I had to draw on my other connections. Yet another key learning experience in COETAIL is teaching us the power of staying "CONNECTED" as an educator. For me, one of my favorite tools for this, particularly in a time where face-to-face learning conferences are almost non-existent, is Twitter. This medium, through use of various educational hashtags like #COETAIL and #PYPchat, is such an amazing resource to learn and connect with others around the globe. Undoubtedly, within a few hours of a carefully crafted Tweet, one member of my professional learning network (PLN), a former colleague and mentor, was able to connect me with an expert suited to our needs! After reaching out to the contact provided, we were able to connect and align a time for all of our students to learn from an expert local food company. It was a great fit because the vertical organic farming model touched on almost all of the five "expert" areas that the students were inquiring into. The experience led to so many great wonderings and it really opened their eyes to meaningful change that was happening in their host nation around sustainable farming and more. Stay tuned!
In my next post I'll discuss how the unit draws to a close. More specifically, how we, as teachers, inspired the student "experts" to share and learn from one another, along with providing a place to publish their explanation brochures! My course five final project for COETAIL follows a "Sharing the planet" unit of inquiry in my context. I describe the initial planning stages in a previous post here. In this post, I'll elaborate mostly on how I incorporated COETAIL learning from course 2, specifically the importance of collaboration into mix of our planning. Grade 12 CAS Students A goal from working with the Community Action Service (CAS) final project students and coordinators from last year was to look for more opportunities for cross-campus connections between primary and secondary for this year. Luckily, a group of grade 12 students did email us early in the year and I did connect with them telling them that I would love for them to work with us for this unit. After developing a new unit provocation, the grade four student responses revealed that they new very little about the concept of climate change or its causes. Most levels of understanding were very surface level at best. Below is one of the engagements we used for the provocation. After modelling how to fill in a "non-example" infographic, we asked students to fill in as much as they could in the boxes of this infographic. Now we were ready to collaborate With the beginning direction of the unit in place and the first line of inquiry or two sorted, we had a great starting point to begin the collaborative conversation with the Grade 12 group who wanted to connect with us. COETAIL course two really impacted me on the village approach to learning, so the grade four team I lead was very happy with this idea. We could embark in a cross-campus student learning experience where we could help grade 12s with a CAS project of theirs and they could help us by teaching grade four students about climate change, some causes and more! First Meeting and Planning Teaching Times Finding a common meeting and possible teaching times for this kind of collaboration proved a bit tricky with all the different schedules across two campuses and learning online, but we did it. After bringing the grade 12s in to one of our initial unit planning meetings as teachers, we were able to make the stars align. Collectively, we decided that the CAS students would lead and run one lesson towards the end of each week and the grade four teachers would support during the lessons, but also run additional supporting lessons afterwards or at the beginning of the following week to help scaffold the knowledge introduced in the grade 12 led lesson. Off to the Races - Initiating the Plan! All of the initial legwork of making the stars align went off without a hitch. After sharing our unit planning, the CAS students shared their proposal. Our grade four team mentioned that we would definitely honour three connection times with the CAS students, one happening each week. After each lesson, we would all touch base and reflect on how things went week-by-week in order to be responsive to the learning needs of each classroom. As a grade four team, we would also help guide the direction of the next week's content. In addition, the CAS students created some of their initial teaching slides and our grade four teaching team gave them some feedback and a few more ideas so the collaborative teaching days would run smoothly. Hard work pays off
All of the work to kick off this collaborative teaching effort truly paid off in these first few weeks. The Gr12s nailed exactly what we were looking for and it also matched the aims of their passions for this project. Speaking specifically to my class, I felt that the student who led it, did it so professionally and was a natural in the art of teaching. The lessons were very meaningful and had lots of interactive content. In return, the learners benefitted from learning from someone different, and were super engaged and energized to be learning from a high school student. Stay tuned Tune into the next post for this COETAIL course 5 project where the unit takes a "Going Further" approach with research. We dive deeper into even more varied collaboration approaches and get students to narrow in on a personally meaningful inquiry within the unit! Course five offers us COETAIL-ers an opportunity to apply and reflect upon our learning throughout the previous four courses. Whilst the course does ask us to redesign a unit from the ground up, I must first state that this kind of agency is not that simple in my given context. I lead and teach a large grade four team in an International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) curriculum school. All of our units are collaboratively constructed and designed, and, as best as possible, incorporate the voices of our learners as well. Therefore, I will try as best as possible to inject as much COETAIL learning into this project as possible, given these collaborative constraints. Specifics on the project At the end of course four, we were asked to describe our proposal for our final project for this course. Since "Sharing the Planet" was our next big unit of inquiry that was approaching, focusing on this made the most sense for my final COETAIL project. Getting Started There are several key differences of this year, compared to last, in my context. The two most notable are almost an entirely new team and learning is online due to the current conditions of the pandemic in Ho Chi Minh City. As highlighted in our learning in an earlier COETAIL course, and in the ISTE standards, collaboration with other educators is a key element to the design of this unit. Units of inquiry are always evolving, sometimes rebuilt anew, sometimes refining. With a new team and a new PYP coordinator, and reflecting upon last year's reflections, listed below are things that I brought to the collaborative discussion of ways we could improve the unit, particularly in regards to injecting some of my key COETAIL learning. Simplifying the essential elements of the inquiry Every PYP inquiry has five essential elements, but, simply put, the focus is on concept driven inquiry around an essential idea that can lead to personally meaningful inquiries for every learner. Here are some things that I wanted to suggest changing:
I'll discuss more about how the central idea and lines of inquiry came to be in a future post, but hopefully the contrast between the two unit overviews is clear, particularly from design and accessibility perspectives. Essentially, the new and simplified key wording met more of our learners where they were currently at based on initial diagnostic assessments. Part one and part two vs. One unit Last year, I was brand new to this team, coming from grade five. This unit, for a variety of reasons was split throughout the year in parts one and part two. There was probably sound and just reasons for this, but I wasn't a fan and I don't think my learners were either. Therefore, with so many new team members this year, it was a time for reflection and the potential of change. Units of inquiry generally run for six weeks and ideally scaffold or build upon each other promoting future action and transfer of learning. My preference is usually for that concentrated focus to be done consecutively. After collaboratively discussing this with my team, they also tended to agree with this preference. More community connection One of my big passions as an educator, that definitely grew with more intensity throughout COETAIL, is the power of connection, particularly thinking about how it takes a community to raise a village. These "connections" could be parents in our school community working in a field authentic to the unit, older students, video chatting with global experts and more. Last year, I helped out with the Community Action Service (CAS) final interviews with our more senior high school students and worked closely with the CAS staff coordinator. Knowing the importance of a thriving professional learning network highlighted in COETAIL learning, I did mention to the CAS coordinator that I would love more opportunities for these CAS students to work more closely with students in primary and to think of us whenever there was an opportunity for a possible connection. That wish came true early this year when a group of grade 12 students reached out and mentioned that they were doing their CAS project on educating various communities on climate change. After speaking with the PYP coordinator, I did mention that we should meet with the group and try our best to make it work for some learning experiences for this particular "Sharing the planet" unit since it had such an authentic fit. After initial conversations with the group, it seemed like all would work out with some finer planning to be done later. When this idea was proposed to the grade four team, they were happily on board as well. Provocation A provocation is an appetizer to salivate curiosities for the unit. It's not a teaching moment, it's a chance to get learners excited for the up and coming unit, spark wonder, but also to provide some diagnostic insights as to what our learners know already and any misconceptions. Here's a great post on provocations from inquiry guru, Kath Murdoch, should you wish to inquire further. Last year, the provocation was an "Evil-o-meter" in which children worked in small groups ranking images in terms of which things were more or less evil for the environment. I've attached a few images below for a visual. While the activity was great in theory, upon reflection, we found that children had almost no contextual knowledge of causes of climate change. It was a great activity to keep revisiting throughout learning experiences in the unit, but it didn't really provide us with much data for planning the beginning of the unit. Therefore, being reflective practitioners, and also listening to what our learners were telling us in conversations even before the unit, we felt that a better provocation would be to see what learners could tell us about climate change first and see if they could make any connections to some potential causes. I'll be sure post some examples of the new provocation in a future post. A few examples of last year's provocation: What's next
Stay tuned to the next post where I discuss in detail about how the first couple of weeks of the unit transpired! In particular, the collaboration with the CAS students and how the essential elements of the unit came to be after the provocation. |
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