Confessions of a PYP Teacher

Confessions of a PYP Teacher


Latest Episodes

C91 (Book Club): What and Why of Personal Inquiry (1.1-1.3)
July 04, 2022

I am excited to co-lead with Aga Chojnacka-Al Atat and Kirti Kale a book club for Kath Murdoch’s latest title, Getting Personal with Inquiry Learning.  I am already several sections into the book and I’ve found a treasure trove of little gems that resonat

C90 (Application): Playing with the ATLs
June 22, 2022

As we look at playing with the ATLs, I’m reminded of my friend Vidhya.  She is a passionate PYP educator from India.  If you are on Twitter in the education community, you have probably run across her many tweets.  Ever since last summer, she has opened m

C89 (Application): Designing an Environment for Play
June 15, 2022

Let’s continue on with this theme about learning space design and how it impacts play.  From an organizational standpoint, what makes your space so special? When you look around your special spot in your home, what are some special things and tools you us

C88 (Application): Shaping Learning through the Environment
June 08, 2022

Welcome to another application series, where we are going to take ideas we have explored before and apply them into a new context.  I absolutely love this part, because it helps to look at old things again…the process of anew (4A’s by Misty Paterson).Sinc

C87: Using Design Thinking with our Learners
June 01, 2022

Learning transfer is our greatest gift.  It helps us to better understand ideas that we are toying with during our learning.  What better way to transfer all of these ideas in our design thinking challenge, but to teach them to our learners?  Agency at it

C86 (Challenge): Evolving our Practice with POWR
May 24, 2022

I’m so excited to record this episode on the 2nd birthday of this podcast!  What a journey.  I never thought I would ever record a podcast, let alone 86 episodes of my meandering thoughts about the PYP.  It has been truly a passion project as I share with

C85 (Overview): How Do We Evolve Our Thinking?
May 24, 2022

The meaning of evolve is to develop gradually.  This captures the heart of our PYP journey.  We are developing gradually into educators that we want to be, so we can help to shape young humans into how they want to be.  When you take a step back and pause

C84 (Challenge):- Creating a Prototype with the CME Model from Pop-Up Studio
May 17, 2022

As I was considering this challenge, I reflected on the CME model from Pop-Up Studio: Responsive Teaching for Today’s Learners by Misty Paterson.  This has been my latest book club read, but more importantly my aha text.  Going through the book club exper

C83 (Overview): How Do We Create a Prototype?
May 17, 2022

A prototype is a model of something that we want to test or try out.  In the PYP, our prototype is our unit of inquiry planner.  We create a planning tool that ties all of the elements together with the singular purpose to connect to the transdisciplinary

C82 (Challenge): Learning to Ideate with the 4A's from Pop-Up Studio
May 09, 2022

In our last episode, we defined what it means to ideate and stretched our thinking with the Question Formulation Technique (QFT).  This lays the foundation of asking a variety of questions to and with our learners, so they are able to generate, revise, pr