Using the PYP’s 7 Key Concepts to Talk about Race, Injustice and Change

NOTE: PYP Coordinator Melissa Powers and I collaboratively authored this post. In addition to being a PYP Coordinator in Arizona, United States, Melissa is a part of the IB Educator Network (IBEN), leading PYP workshops and participating in site visits. She and I first went through our initial IBEN training together. I am grateful for her partnership, her thoughtful perspective and her voice.

The International Baccalaureate’s (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) posits that “The Learning Community” is inclusive of everyone involved in the life of the school. Together, this community’s goal is to, “live peacefully together, prioritize people and their relationships, and assume shared responsibility for learning, health and well-being,” (A Community of Learners from PYP: From Principles into Practice > The Learning Community).

With the recent murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the hands of police officers, there is a sense of urgency from principled and caring elementary-school teachers to speak with their learning communities — their students — about issues of safety, race, justice, change and action.

As we engage with our immediate learning community, it is important to have a clear objective and structure. Successful teachers use thinking routines and discussion protocols so that conversations that center around seemingly controversial topics do not stray off course. As PYP teachers, we are empowered to take risks and should not be afraid to facilitate these discussions in our classrooms. 

Those who work in PYP schools can leverage the components of the PYP’s international framework to help structure spaces and opportunities for meaningful processing and reflective conversation. The PYP’s key concepts are seven powerful, broad and abstract organizing ideas that can frame conversations and drive learning. When PYP teachers identify topics and investigate them through the key concepts, students learn to be inquirers and think critically about big ideas. It is essential to explicitly teach critical thinking skills so that students learn how to think for themselves and not blindly emote. 

When teachers view the key concepts as a set of open-ended questions, they can more easily direct purposeful and manageable conversations (Concepts from PYP: From Principles into Practice > Learning and Teaching). Below, we have brainstormed key concept questions with the intention of provoking PYP teachers to think about how they will provide safe spaces and opportunities for their students to critically engage in meaningful conversations that lead to authentic and mindful action.

We sorted the questions by primary and intermediate, as the conversations that will take place in these two different settings will inevitably require different approaches, however we encourage teachers to use the questions that best fit the needs of their contexts; you know your students the best!

Think of the questions below as a start. We call to you, dear reader, to contribute questions that you'd want to ask your students. As you put forth ideas, we’ll update the collection below.

Form

• Primary
• What is racism?
• What is antiracism?
• What is a protest?
• Intermediate
• What is racial injustice?
• What is systemic racism?
• What does it mean to be an antiracist?
• What is a protest?
• What is implicit bias?
• What is prejudice?
• What is privilege?

Function

• Primary
• If someone does something wrong, how can they make it right?
• Intermediate
• How important is the study of racial injustice?

Causation

• Primary
• Why do people protest?
• Intermediate
• What effect do dehumanizing and devaluing black and brown people have?

Change

• Primary
• How can something unfair change into something fair?
• Intermediate
• What can young people do to promote change?
• How can you challenge any implicit biases you might have to make a change in your own beliefs and actions?

Connection

• Primary
• How are different people groups connected to each other?
• What sets us apart and makes us unique?
• Intermediate
• How is the US’s history of slavery and Jim Crow connected to current events?
• How are the seemingly separate incidents of violence against black and brown people connected?
• Are racism and prejudice the same thing? How are they different?

Perspective

• Primary
• What are the ways we can appreciate and celebrate others who don’t look like you / are different from you?
• Intermediate
• Why do we say “Black Lives Matter” and not “All Lives Matter”?
• What biases do you have about racial groups different from yours?

Responsibility

• Primary
• How can you show other people you care?
• How can you stand up for other people when wrong is being done to them?
• Intermediate
• What action can you take to fight racial injustice? Use the PYP’s 5 types of action to help frame your thinking: social justice, advocacy, social entrepreneurship, participation, lifestyle choices.
• How can you be a responsible inquirer and critical thinker? Why is it important?
• How can you show other people you care?
• How will you learn about racial groups that are different from yours?
• How can people examine their own privilege and use it to help?

For more information about facilitating challenging or difficult conversations, check out this resource from Common Sense Education: A best-of-the-best collection of resources for social justice- and equity-focused educators.

Lesson Planning in Distance Learning

Distance Learning Begins

On Sunday, March 15, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, closed public schools so that educators could plan for long-term plans for the continuity of education. We had approximately two weeks to completely revolutionize the way we teach and the way students learn.

Collaborative Backwards Planning As Usual

Although the way we "do school" certainly looks different, the philosophies at the core of our teaching and learning remain the same.

One of these approaches to teaching that hasn't changed is the way in which we collaboratively plan for instruction with the end in mind; first starting with the essential learning then planning for how students show successful mastery and then giving feedback framed in terms of those criteria.

Research for Better Teaching, Inc. published the graphic below that does a nice job of visually representing this chain.

retrieved from https://www.rbteach.com/products-resources/downloads/all on April 6, 2020.

Questions To Consider When Collaboratively Planning

1. Communicate Objectives

• What do we want students to understand (concepts), know (knowledge) or be able to do (skills)?
• These essential learnings can come from central ideas, lines of inquiry and state standards.
• These essential learnings can be communicated in many ways (not just as "I Can" statements). In a programme that values inquiry, questions can be an effective way to spark curiosity while communicating to students the learning target.

2. Select Performance or Product

• How will students demonstrate they understand, know or are able to do what we have identified as essential?
• How can we set up loose enough parameters that students' can still exercise their creativity and voice in how they choose to demonstrate proficiency?

3. Develop Criteria

• What does success look like?
• Our team should decide on loose enough criteria so that student responses can be varied, create and unique, yet specific enough to help us frame the feedback we give students.

4. Give Feedback

• Using the previously developed success criteria, communicate to students how they hit the mark or help them to understand what they're missing and how they can improve.

What does this look like in practice?

1. Communicate Objectives

• Conceptual understanding: Based on the current unit of inquiry's central idea, teachers want the students to understand that senses are used for exploring and staying safe.

2. Select Performance or Product

• Performance Assessment: Students will use their senses to explore during a spring nature walk and identify what they see, hear and smell.

3. Develop Criteria

• Does the student's response make sense for what you'd see, hear, and smell outside in Minnesota in springtime?
• Does the student include ideas similar to the ones in the read-aloud that was a part of this learning experience?

4. Give Feedback

• If a particular student's responses do not make sense or are not similar to the ones in the read-aloud, how can we provide corrective feedback that helps students to get closer to a more successful response?

Distance Learning's Unintended Positive Consequences

Although distance learning has some limitations, the format promises to enhance collaboration, personalization and the quality and the specificity of feedback we give to students.

School Visits as Professional Learning

The Primary Years Programme (PYP) of the International Baccalaureate (IB) is a comprehensive and complex program. All those in candidate and authorized schools participate in professional development that assists them in deepening their understanding of this international program. Being able to visit other PYP schools is a rich form of professional learning that all Pedagogical Leadership Teams should consider when building their five-year PYP action plans.

Last spring, I had the great fortune of visiting a couple of different PYP schools. These visits helped me better understand the diverse ways of implementing the PYP and gave me ideas that we potentially could use at my own school.

In March 2019, on a personal trip to Germany, I was able to visit the Berlin Cosmopolitan School. About a month later in April, I visited a couple of PYP schools just up the road from where I live in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota, USA. During these visits, I was able to engage with other PYP professionals and see the PYP in action, giving me ideas of how we could further develop the PYP in my own school. See photos below from both of those visits.

Later in the school year, I took a team with me to visit schools implementing two math curricular resources we were looking to adopt. In addition to learning extensively about the resources on our own and having teachers try out the materials at our school, visiting schools where experienced teachers could demonstrate the resources' full potential was some of the best professional learning we experienced during our curriculum review process.

Whether you're in a PYP school or not, visiting schools both near and far allows you to see how others "do school". School visits must be an essential part of any school's professional learning plan.

The leaders at the Berlin Cosmopolitan School generously hosted us for several hours during a school day to show us around and allowed us to meet with teachers.

Berlin Cosmopolitan School's vision and mission signage stands out with the inclusion of students' artistic interpretations.

Berlin Cosmopolitan School's principal Mark Johnson told us that students walk a couple of blocks to this adventure playground that may seem a little bit more dangerous that a typical playground, but gives its students the opportunity to assess risk for themselves and shows them they can keep themselves safe.

The following photos show flexible seating in one of the classrooms at Stevenson Elementary in Fridley, Minnesota, USA. Students in Andrea Erichsrud's classroom have lots of seating options as they learn during the school day.

Thank you to Orlando Pola-Rivera, PYP Coordinator at the Berlin Cosmopolitan School in Berlin Germany for hosting me and letting me sit in on one of his collaborative team meetings. I also greatly appreciate Veronica Westerman, PYP Coordinator of Stevenson Elementary in Fridley, Minnesota, USA who not only hosted me during the visit but also sent me the pictures above when I neglected to take my own on the visit.

*UPDATED* PYP Placemat

Since the enhanced Primary Years Programme documentation was released in October 2018 (PYP: From principles into practice), I have been updating the PYP placemat I previously created for teachers and students at Kaposia Education Center, an IB World School to support their implementation of the PYP.

Some changes were easy to make. I took out reflection as a key concept. I removed the action cycle and replaced it with the five different forms of action articulated in the new documentation.

However, the back of the placemat proved more difficult to bring up-to-date. I was able to easily replace the new ATL sub-skills, but defining them in student-friendly language seemed like a difficult task to do alone. So, I waited until yesterday when I was able to work with the amazing Kaposia educators to create definitions of all the ATL sub-skills (and sub-sub-skills) that even our youngest learners will be able to understand.

The following is the product of our work together. My hope is that the teachers and students at Kaposia, along with others at authorized or candidate PYP schools, are able to use this PYP Placemat to help them more deeply implement the robust international Primary Years Programme of the International Baccalaureate.

Click the images below to be linked to the PDF version of the placemat that can be printed and copied.

Enhanced PYP Treasure Trove

In January 2019, PYP teachers in South St. Paul, Minnesota, United States read sections of the new digital resource, “PYP: From principles into practice”. 

To share our understanding of the enhancements with others in our local and global PYP communities, we created digital content: infographics, mind maps, presentations, blog posts, videos and a hyperlinked word cloud that summarized the contents of "PYP: From principles into practice".

Our digital creations (THERE ARE OVER 70!) can be found using this link. They are organized in the same way as the enhanced PYP and you can use the table of contents (the third slide of the linked slide deck) to navigate to different sections. In each section, click on the thumbnails to be linked to the original digital content to see it in bigger detail.

Table of Contents

Here are just some of the digital creations creatively made by PYP teachers in South St. Paul, Minnesota. Click on any of them to go to the vast Treasure Trove of digital creations that summarize the new PYP digital resource.

Nothing is a substitute for reading the original content from IB, but we hope our digital creations inform, inspire and provoke you to act and learn more!

Note for PYP Coordinators and other organizers of professional development: If you'd like to replicate or adapt what we did in South St. Paul as a way to help your teachers dive into the new digital resource, "PYP: From principles into practice" here are the steps we took:

• Learning Engagement 1 (teachers had the option of doing this ahead of our January professional development day and then coming in for Learning Engagement 2 halfway through the day)
• Build background (all resources available on the Programme Resource Centre)
• Read The Overview
• Watch:
• The learner
• Learning and teaching
• The learning community
• Getting started
• Read one of the sections from "PYP: From principles into practice"
• Create digital content in response to what you learned. We provided the Success Criteria for the digital content.
• Suggestions:
• Voice-over screencast using Google Slides & Screencastify (≥ 5 minutes)
• Podcast using Anchor.fm (≥ 5 minutes)
• Video blog using Flipgrid (≤ 5 minutes)
• Infographic using Google Draw (minimal white space)
• Mindmap using Google Draw, Mindmeister, Creately (minimal white space)
• Presentation using Google Slides (≥ 5 slides)
• Blog post using Google Doc to draft, to be posted as a guest blog here (≥ 300 words)
• Examples (using the Learner Agency section)
• Learner Agency in 7 different ways
• Digitally submit what you created
• Learning Engagement 2:
• Explore:
• Review others' digital creations and ask:
• What’s important to remember? What comes up again and again?
• What’s new? What’s different? What’s changed?
• Did someone interpret the enhanced content differently than you?
• Reflect:
• First individually, then with a partner and finally with the whole group, reflect on what was learned about the enhanced PYP after looking through your colleagues' digital creations.
• Act:
• Using a Google Form, submit ideas for what our PYP should do now. These ideas will be added to our action plan.

Learner Agency

In January 2018, the elementary teachers in our district's two PYP schools set out to explore the enhanced PYP content that make up the document "PYP: From principles into practice." Many thanks to elementary principal and guest blogger, Mike Fugazzi, for authoring this post on concepts in the PYP.

In an effort to further support PYP schools, the IB released additional resources through the digital, “PYP: From principles into practice”, this past fall. The online resource is designed to help learners (adults and children) foster a deeper understanding of the PYP’s framework and how to implement the program.

The PYP: From principles into practice, organizes the PYP under the concept of Agency, which is directly in support of the self-efficacy of learners. The concept of Agency is not new to the PYP, nor the world of education. It has always existed in the PYP as what we’ve usually referred to as student “voice, choice, and ownership”. Agency and self-efficacy are also at the forefront of Visible Learning research, underpinning Collective Teacher Efficacy and Self-Reported Grades, the top two influences on student learning (Hattie 2017). The strong research backing of the impact of Agency and self-efficacy further reinforces their importance to learning in the PYP.

Agency, as supported by the PYP, “enables people to play a part in their self-development, adaptation, and self-renewal with changing times” (Bandura 2001). Self-efficacy in the PY is described as an individual’s belief in their “capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to produce give attainments” (Bandura 1997). These two are interconnected, as a strong sense of self-efficacy directly influences the agency an individual will engage in.

Students are able to show agency when they:

• are aware of their learning goals
• direct and adjust their individual learning
• express interest
• make decisions about their learning
• are able of voice opinions
• ask questions

Students who use their own initiative and will, and take responsibility and ownership of their learning are demonstrating agency. The impact of doing as such is a strong sense of identity and self-belief. This can fosters a community and awareness of global citizenship.

Teachers are able to support agency when they:

• Build relationships
• Personalize learning based on student interest and need
• Extend student voice
• Provide open ended tasks
• Allow student to be creative and take risks
• Use assessment data to inform teaching and learning
• Reflect on student needs and provide feedback and intervention 
• Help students set high expectations for their learning
• Help students set and monitor goals for their learning

Recommendations for educators:

• All members of the school community should be familiar with agency and self-efficacy.
• Learning leaders should shift to more coaching and less teaching. Teachers can help guide and coach students to take agency over their learning.
• Educators should look for ways to include student voice and choice in the classroom community. This can, and should be, supported in partnership.
• Students should understand their current levels and work with teachers to determine goals and next steps to reach them.

Action that I will take:

• I will help design professional development for staff that promotes adult agency and self-efficacy.
• I will work with teachers to understand assessment data and how that can be used with students to raise self-efficacy and agency.
• I will foster a school culture of agency where staff can be risk-takers, just like the students.
• I will find additional ways to include student voice in decision making for the school.

Concepts in the PYP

In January 2018, the elementary teachers in our district's two PYP schools set out to explore the enhanced PYP content that make up the document "PYP: From principles into practice." Many thanks to fifth grade teacher and guest blogger, Lauren Ryan, for authoring this post on concepts in the PYP.

As an educator in the fast-paced, digital era of the 2000s I feel fortunate to be a teacher at a PYP school where inquiry, curiosity and student-centered learning is celebrated. I remember seeing a meme on the Internet a few years back about how readily information is available to people in today’s world. It depicted a math teacher from decades ago saying to his class of students who were sitting in well defined, compliant rows, “Now you better memorize this because it’s not like you’re going to be carrying a calculator around with you in your pocket every day.” Enter a picture of a pocket-sized smartphone.

People today have access to endless amounts of facts and information at the click of a button, on a device that is regularly not more than a few feet from us at any given point. It makes me wonder what a teacher can provide to her students in today’s world that they can’t receive from a quick Internet search. The answer- a conceptually-based, inquiry driven curriculum.

The Primary Years Program says that “concept-based inquiry is a powerful vehicle for learning that promotes meaning and understanding, and challenges students to engage with significant ideas.” It is a way for learning to be built around big ideas that transfer across subject areas and can be applied to new situations. The seven Key Concepts defined by the PYP are form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective and responsibility. Teaching through these concepts allows me to help students construct mental models of how things work and connect throughout the world. It is a way to connect new, abstract, or complicated learning with things that students already know and to extend their learning to new ideas and topics.

An example of this is when I taught first graders about addition through the concepts of change and balance. While addition can feel complicated and abstract for students, I was able to help students explore the idea that an addition sign will change a number by adding more to it or making it bigger. We also explored the idea of balance when thinking about the function of an equal sign. The equal sign is often thought of by kids as meaning “the answer”, which is a narrow way of thinking and has implications for future learning when it comes to more complex math topics, such as algebra. Additionally, we looked at the concept of balance so that students understood the idea that both sides of an equal sign had to be the same. Looking at addition through the lens of balance helped our students make the connection to the idea of “same as” instead of just “equal to”. For example, we read basic addition as 2 + 2 is the same as 4 rather and just 2 + 2 = 4. Now, as an intermediate teacher I value conceptual teaching even more as I see how much more successful a student can be when he or she is able to make connections to previous learning and transfer past knowledge to new situations.

In general, concepts help guide the way I construct learning experiences in the classroom and they help my students think critically about big ideas. They are a launching point for questions around a topic and help students develop their curiosity and understanding. When key concepts are too broad, related concepts act as way to explore concepts in more detail or to add depth to an area of study. Related concepts are narrower and more focused, often addressing content specific information, or standards that must be addressed on a more local level.

Knowledge is accessible nearly everywhere in today’s world, but true understanding of the world is the heart of what a PYP teacher’s role is in preparing students for success in school and beyond. Key and related concepts allow teachers in today’s age to root essential learning of skills, facts and knowledge in concepts that are deep, transferable, broad, abstract and not locked in place or time, so that students are able keep pace with a fast-moving world, full of complex systems and relationships.

As a PYP teacher I feel I get to address the evolving needs of students in an environment that encourages me to think about the enduring understanding I want my students to walk away with. An area of action for me is to be more intentional about teaching conceptually in stand-alone units or in content areas that do not align directly with a unit of inquiry. This might look like writing concepts on my “Learning Targets” bulletin board, or leading a lesson with questions about a topic that are concept driven. It might also look like backwards planning an ELA or math unit thinking about the long term concepts or deep understanding I want my students to understand and creating lesson content that will drive towards deeper conceptual understanding of a topic.

As a school, PYP buildings have a unique opportunity to provide students with common language that develops the skill of conceptual learning. All teachers, from kindergarten through intermediate grades, can teach students to recognize patterns in learning and talk about content in terms of key concepts. This can be supported through collaborative time for team teachers to plan units and lessons that align with concepts that will provide students with common and rigorous learning experiences and through vertical alignment of content so that conceptual understanding begins at a young age and is carried on through a child’s PYP experience. Furthermore, PYP coordinators can work with their teachers to develop skill as writers of curriculum and help craft lessons and units that are conceptually driven and be provided with support for developing inquiry opportunities that support students’ ability to access curriculum in a way that connects to their natural interest and prior knowledge.

Source:
The PYP Curriculum Framework. International Baccalaureate Organization, 2005-2018, <https://resources.ibo.org/pyp/works/pyp_11162-51681?c=2972d4b6>

Learner agency in physical education

In January 2018, the elementary teachers in our district's two PYP schools set out to explore the enhanced PYP content that make up the document "PYP: From principles into practice." Many thanks to PE teacher and guest blogger, Jen Friedges, for authoring this post on learner agency.



What I learned from this project is that I already do a lot of this that I don’t give myself credit for but it was a good reminder to make sure that I can continue to do this.

• Have a respectful welcoming culture.
• Kids know it is okay to fail, better to try and fail then never try at all!
• I establish routines and all classes K – 5 know and can demonstrate them whether I am present or not.
• I do let students make some of the decisions but need to get more comfortable with going farther with this.
• Continue to let them know expectations and why we are doing what we are doing.
• I also learned I am not very creative or patient and that I should’ve done a presentation instead of a mind map.

How I plan on adding more agency into Physical Education.

• Empower students to select environment they learn in as P.E. is performance based by letting students decide in some sport related units if they want to be at the recreational level or competitive and tailor their experience to what fits them best.
• Consider make some changes to the units that are taught that encompass state standards as well as students interests.
• Be mindful of students comfort level when “performing” in Phy. Ed. particularly in sports (volleyball, basketball, hockey, soccer and football) as well as the dance unit which is scary for most including myself as it is WAY out of my comfort zone.

Resources:

• Will Vreugdenhill, International School of Brussels, Belgium. July 2018. “Student Agency in Middle School Health and Physical Education.”
• Learner Agency, PYP From Principles into Practice

Learner Agency in 7 different ways

At the end of October 2018, the IB's Primary Year's Programme released the much-anticipated new digital resource, "PYP: From principles into practice" (available on My IB's Programme Resource Centre). This digital document helps educators working in PYP schools better understand the PYP's framework for international education, full of the PYP enhancements.

Reading through this new document and exploring the teacher support materials will be an essential first step in deepening PYP teachers' understanding of the enhanced PYP.

When I hear, read or experience something for the first time, if I have the chance to create something, I find I understand the new content better. To better understand the contents of "PYP: From principles into practice", I thought it would be a good idea to create digital content in response to what I read.

To begin, I read the first section of the new digital resource on Learner Agency (IB, 2018). Afterward, I created different forms of digital content, using different digital media to synthesize my understanding of what I read. I ended up created 7 different digital products: a voice-over screencast, a podcast, a vlog, an infographic, a mindmap, a presentation, and a blog post. All the same content, just presented in different ways. Thumbnails and links of each are below, along with notes about what digital tool I used to create each.

Creating these gave me the opportunity to explore ideas about learner agency and in sharing them with you, I hope you're able to grow in your understanding of learner agency, a new term, yet familiar concept to the PYP.

Voice-over screencast

created using Google Slides & Screencastify

Podcast

created using Anchor.fm

Vlog (Video blog)

created using Flipgrid

Infographic

created using Google Draw

Mindmap

created using Creately

Presentation

created using Google Slides

Blog post

created using Blogger

After reading different sections of the new digital resource and exploring the teacher support materials, "PYP: From principles into practice", what will you create?

Learner Agency in the Enhanced PYP

Learner Agency isn't a new concept in the Primary Years Programme (PYP). Those of us who have been teaching in the PYP for some time might not recognize the word "agency" but the idea of centering learning and teaching around learner voice, choice & ownership is one that we should all be familiar with.

from "Learner Agency" a section from "The Learner" in "PYP: From Principles Into Practice"

Learner agency can be remembered as "voice, choice and ownership" which Bandura says "enable[s] people to play a part in their self-development, adaption, and self-renewal with changing times" (in Learner Agency, IB 2018).

The idea of agency is closely connected to self-efficacy, a belief in one's own ability to succeed. When learners believe in themselves and have a strong sense of identity, they are more likely to exercise agency.

When students are agentive, they:

• Take initiative, responsibility & ownership
• Express interest
• Make choices
• Are aware of their own learning goals
• Monitor and adjust their learning
• Voice opinions
• Influence and direct their own learning
• Develop approaches to learning & dispositions

They also work collaboratively with teachers to:

• Make decisions together
• Create shared agreements
• Create shared routines
• Set up learning spaces
• Reflect together

It is important to recognize that teachers cannot give learners agency, but rather they can create opportunities in which learners can exercise agency. They can do this by:

• Working in partnership, building relationship
• Actively listening
• Respecting and responding to learner ideas
• Noticing learners’ capabilities, needs and interests
• Reflecting on when students need help, intervening & giving feedback
• Establishing a welcoming culture
• Modeling desired behavior and language

So what should PYP schools be doing, now that there is an increased emphasis on learner agency in the PYP? If you walked into a PYP that is dedicated and focused on giving students the chance you exercise learner agency, you would see:

• Students and teachers collaboratively creating learning engagements and assessments.
• Students setting learning goals and monitoring progress.
• Students fostering their own belief in themselves and their own ability to succeed.
• Students being active, engaged participants in thinking and learning.

After reading the Learner Agency section of the IB document "PYP: From Principles Into Practice", I'm inspired to take ACTION!

• I will ADVOCATE for learner agency in my school by
• Modeling what learner agency looks like for teachers during PD
• Celebrating agentive learning when I see it by documenting it through pictures and videos on Twitter
• Asking reflective questions in situations when learners are not exercising agency

The question is, now that you know more about what learner agency is, how it is connected with self-efficacy and what teachers can do to provide students opportunities to exercise agency, WHAT DO YOU FEEL INSPIRED TO DO?

Christopher Columbus: Hero or villain?

Around this time of year, the debate over what October 12 should be called comes creeping into conversations online, in the break room, around the dinner table and in the classroom. The central question is: "Should we continue to honor Christopher Columbus or reclaim the day as Indigenous People's Day?"

Currently at our school, in fifth grade, students are studying the transdisciplinary unit of inquiry where we are in place and time as they explore the central idea: expansion causes consequences. During this unit, they inquire into decisions made by European explorers and colonizers, the causes of their actions, the changes that ensued whilst considering the perspectives of indigenous peoples and Africans who were affected by these Europeans.

To meaningfully dig into the ideas presented in the "Columbus Day v. Indigenous People's Day" debate, a fifth grade teacher with whom I work led her students through the AVID strategy Philosophical Chairs.

First, she had students watch the TED-Ed video History vs. Christopher Columbus by Alex Gendler. As they watched, students took notes organized by a hero/villain t-chart.

To prepare for Philosophical Chairs, she had the students practice with low-risk topics (and used this slide deck as support).

  

With each example, she promoted the use of academic language, encouraging students to use the sentence stem below.

To prepare further for philosophical chairs, we had the students watch the video one more time, adding to their notes they had previously taken. First, we had them pick a side: Columbus Day or Indigenous People's Day.

Then, as they watched the video, they were to look for evidence that would back up their opinion. To aid in their comprehension, we used an EdPuzzle version of the video, which periodically stops and suggests important pieces of evidence that they could potentially include in their t-chart.

Finally, after all the preparation, students were ready to begin the routine of philosophical chairs. We had them write their opinion and one supporting piece of evidence on an index card and then separated the students by "Pro Columbus Day" on the west side of the room and "Pro Indigenous People's Day" on the east side.

The teacher facilitated the conversation by asking students to both share their opinions and supporting evidence and listen to the points provided by the alternative side of the argument. Students' attention to each other was evident as they shared their own evidence only after repeating what they had heard their peer say from the other side of the room. As students heard evidence that swayed their opinion, they changed sides of the room. Students remained engaged and civil throughout the conversation and brought up strong reasons for why they felt that either October 12 should be remain Columbus Day or be renamed.

We closed the conversation by praising the students' participation and inviting the students to act on their learning: "Now that you know what you do about Christopher Columbus and the consequences of his actions, what will you do with this information?"

In the elementary classroom, there are certainly lots of ways to thoughtfully examine multiple perspectives of a contentious issue. The AVID strategy Philosophical Chairs is an impactful strategy that provides students an opportunity to develop inquiry, oral language and argumentation skills.