This article shares a process of how PYP school administrators and their change team used design thinking to adapt the primary school’s curriculum to stakeholder needs – including students, parents and teachers. The outcome of using this methodology included significant changes to both school culture and curriculum. Driving school change during PYP candidacy is a […]
Activating Parents to Develop Student Agency
Day-to-day life can leave little cognitive space for parents to consider the future-focused and transformational nature of the PYP. As the PYP moves forward in developing agency in the Learners, the potential benefits of bringing our parent communities along with us as informed and active partners cannot be overstated. For those familiar with psychology, the […]
The Art of Collaboration
This article shares how the Arts can spark passion and prepare students for the PYP exhibition when teachers and students collaborate. As a Visual Arts Team, we started the year by reflecting on how to better enable our Grade 5 students for the PYP exhibition in Art classes. We decided to start the year with a […]
The Mathematics routines that cultivate learner agency
This article shares examples of how classroom routines could be one of the effective tools to foster learners’ agency and raise their voice and choice while learning mathematics. During the last months, the concept of “agency” has dominated the discussion between educators since it is one of new terminologies that appeared in PYP: From principles […]
Partnering with parents for positive dispositions in mathematics
This article looks at how a Mathematics PD project at the Istanbul International Community School purposefully engaged parents, and discusses how we can leverage the diversity of our international school communities to help build positive dispositions toward Mathematics in our students. We’ve all had them before, those conversations with parents that are difficult because “My […]
The Way it Takes
This article looks at the way the schools take when looking into PYP authorisation and the main challenges it brings. Today the world is full of international schools offering a variety of curricula combinations, using different approaches to teaching and learning but still having one vision in common: making the world a better place through […]