Taking Action

My previous school is an International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme School.  (To read more, click HERE.)  One of my favorite components of PYP is the action piece.  Through each of the six inquiry-based units, students were challenged to take action based on what they learned.

Action based on what they learned.

That was a tricky concept for the kids, and a hard thing for me, too, because I didn't want to "give" them the action ideas.  That wouldn't have been organic learning.  Now, granted, these were 8-9-10 year olds, but just because they're young doesn't mean they can't do great things in the world.  It's just a bit challenging, at times, to get them to see that, and more specifically, see how to connect their learning to taking action.

Three boxes of Rice Chex = 15 LOCAL meals!

I so think that everyone is capable of making a difference, of taking action, small or large, no matter their age.  And while this doesn't necessarily connect to a specific learning, it certainly could.  General Mills has teamed up with Feeding America to Outnumber Hunger.  All of April and May 2015, boxes of GM cereal were printed with a special code on the box.  If you take that code and enter it on the Outnumber Hunger site, five meals are secured for a local food bank.  Five meals, just by entering the code on a box of cereal that you buy anyway.  Yet, that box, that small action, can provide five meals to your community's needy.

My FAV poster from FreeSpirit, based
on 26 BIG Things Small Hands Can Do

That's where I struggle keeping my mouth shut.  There are SO many little opportunities like this, from FreeRice, where each correct answer on the quiz donates grains of rice, to the "click to save" sites like The Rainforest Site, where literally, visiting and clicking each day, helps raise money and awareness to save the rainforest from destruction.  The balance between giving kids the action ideas, and showing them where they can find action ideas, not an easy one.  The connection part, while easy for me as a teacher to connect just about anything to our learning, not an easy one either.

But while challenging, it's worth it.

Taking action, no matter how big or small, is a fulfilling, empowering part of life, one that we can't instill in children early enough....

International Day of Trade

Every year, the fourth graders get to experience being business owners.  The culmination of their Unit of Study on Economics (which falls under the Transdisciplinary Theme of How We Organize Ourselves) has them opening a business for their peers.

I may not be in fourth grade this year, but it's still one of my favorite summative assessment experiences ever.  Most nine and ten year olds aren't terribly versed in finances.  At all.  And where I teach, most nine and ten year olds live a rather indulgent life.  But for a good six weeks or so, they become more aware, more careful, and more involved in the way the world works when it comes to money.

Aside from the awesome summative, there are two reasons that I really like sharing this unit's learning experiences with the kids.

First, it's very heavily supported by literature.  Good literature.  Mostly picture books, too, though there are novels used for book clubs as well.  I love reading aloud to my students.  I love being able to pause and leave them hanging (literally filling the room with "c'mon Ms. Diem, don't stop there!" cries.)  I also love watching the lightbulbs go off, almost like those little pop caps that explode when you throw them on the cement.  With this unit being in the theme of organization, those lightbulbs often relate to the fact that connections are everywhere.  EVERY.  WHERE.  The choice you make when picking out what you want for lunch does indeed connect to what the farmer grows, and so on and so on.

Second, it's one of the most real-worldly connected units we've got.  Yeah, sure, money always lends itself to real world, but this unit?  It leads the real world into the classroom, and not the other way around.  From watching T. Rowe Price commercials to determine how things are connected to each other, to simulations to experience market, command, and traditional economies, this unit brings the real experiences right into the room.  We all know that real world experiences make the most meaningful learning, right?  Right.

Anyway, this year's International Day of Trade (formerly, by the way, known as Market Day,) was another high energy experience.  It seems that every year, the classes get more and more creative with their products and services.  Third grade leads nicely into this unit, as they create a business plan for their summative assessment, and I love seeing how it all comes together in this fourth grade learning adventure!

Taking Action

A huge component of the IB PYP (International Baccalurate Primary Years Programme) is guiding students to take action. Even better when it is student initiated action. With fourth graders, that was a bit easier, as they have a larger picture already building in their brains. In third grade, it requires a bit more modeling before brilliant brainstorms begin!

For Halloween, my class decided to raise money for Gleaners. This actually came about because a few of them were caught kicking an apple around the hallway one afternoon. That led to a spontaneous conversation about hunger and the fact that so many children right here in our own neighborhoods, don't have enough to eat. After showing a few videos from NoKidHungry as a class, we decided to make things right by raising money when they went Trick-or-Treating.

Then December rolled around. And the BHEA (our teacher's union) put out a call for food for our district food pantry.

Yep. That's what I was thinking, too.

This time, the class collected over 60 boxes of food to donate to kids in need right in our own district. I couldn't help but double dip, either, as we used the boxes collected for our perimeter and area lesson that day.

At any rate, I love seeing how much of an impact even the smallest action projects can make on these third graders. That's why each week in their planner, they have to reflect on one kind thing they did that week. Gotta start somewhere, right?!

Share-a-Story

The past few weeks we've been focusing on the key concepts of change and perspective.  Key concepts are a big part of the IB PYP program, and this year, I've worked hard to weave them into everything we do instead of isolating them in our units of study.

Key Concept Tags - image found HERE

For example, though we're studying ways cultures from the past have influenced culture today (change and perspective!) we've also found examples of change in math as we look for differences in quantities and change numbers into different forms.  Read aloud always offers a great opportunity for perspective, as does class conversations in general.

However.  It's what we've been playing with in writing that was the most exciting connection to our key concepts, at least for me.  We've been working on parts of speech, subjects and predicates, and sentence types as a part building *excellent* sentences.

So.  For this task, the kids were given the prompt: "I opened my closet door and I was shocked when I saw........"  Everyone was given about five minutes to finish the sentence and start building a paragraph.  Once that time was up, pieces were read to the class, who was surprised to hear so many different ways to finish it!  Hello, perspective!  Welcome to writing!

From there, I collected all their papers, and redistributed them so that no one got their own.  They were then given three minutes to continue writing where the original author left off.  After three minutes, the papers were passed again, and the process was repeated until everyone had added to four different papers.  Then, papers were returned to their original author.

Talk about change!  As students re-read their original stories with everyone else's perspective plugged in, they were shocked to see how much the story changed from inception to completion!  Not only that, when we talked about how the original author started the story, and where they would have taken it.... the perspectives of their classmates was completely different than what the authors saw in their heads!  All in all, it was a fun activity for the Thinkers, and a great way to exemplify two key concepts in our everyday curriculum adventures!

Love Letters

A HUGE component of the PYP is the action piece - the one where kids take action because of something they learned.  This really comes into play during Exhibition, the culmination of the PYP, which in our school, is at the end of fourth grade.

And it's one of my favorite parts of the whole year.

To model different ways to take action, I try to involve the class in as many service projects as possible.  We've done a lot of different ones over the years, and it is always an uplifting experience.

However.

The project we participated in this year, Love Letters, was by far one of my favorites. 

I found it through the website DoSomething.org (check it out if you don't know what it is!) and loved it as soon as I read it.  The project involved making Valentines and sending them to designated Meals on Wheels locations, where said Valentines would be distributed with meals to seniors on Valentine's Day.  Many of these seniors don't have family, and are quite alone, which always feels worse on Valentine's Day.

Anyway, I sent an email to my colleagues, and many of them jumped on board, too!  We sent nearly 200 Valentines, made by kindergarteners through fourth graders, all hand made, all personal and festive.  I liked this project because it was relatable for all the kids - even the little kinders understood that they were making cards to send to people who don't get happy stuff very often.  It was an eye-opening experience for all!

Biographies

As part of our PYP unit in How the World Works, the Thinkers read biographies of inventors.  I'm very specific in that they must be an inventor or innovator, and if I am organized enough (which happens more and more!) I go to the public library ahead of time and pull specific biographies for the kids to pick from.

From there, after the biographies are read, the class writes a report on the inventor/innovator they read about.  If you ask me, it gets kind of dull, so every year, I try to find something to spice it up a bit.  This year?  This year we hit the jackpot!

After the kids finished typing their report, we headed to the computer lab.  Their first task was to find a clear picture of the inventor/innovator they studied.  Once that was done, they headed to the Tagxedo site and converted their report into a picture of their inventor/innovator!  It was way cool and added an element of fun to an otherwise "eh" assignment.  The class was so proud of their work!