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.

*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.

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>

Balancing the POI by Key Concepts

The curriculum of the International Baccalaureate's Primary Years Program (PYP) is a concept-driven curriculum. This means that our main goal is getting students to understand significant ideas, as opposed to being focused on memorizing isolated facts and mastering skills out of context (p. 15 of Making the PYP Happen). In a PYP school, we focus on helping students collaboratively construct an understanding of eight key concepts: form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective, responsibility and reflection.

p. 18-20 of Making the PYP Happen

Our concept-driven curriculum is organized into six transdisciplinary units of inquiry and it is within these meaningful contexts that students construct an understanding of the eight key concepts. Generally two-to-three key concepts are explored during each unit of inquiry. These key concepts help shape each unit, giving the unit direction and purpose.

It is imperative that the school periodically look at the horizontal and vertical balance of their key concepts. The IB publication Developing a Transdisciplinary Program of Inquiry states that "all eight key concepts must be represented on the program of inquiry at each grade/year level" (horizontal balance) and that "there should be a balance of PYP key concepts used throughout each transdisciplinary theme," (vertical balance).

https://thedapperist.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/striping.jpeg

The document goes on to explain that vertical balance, "does not mean that each key concept must be represented under each transdisciplinary theme but rather that schools are mindful of repetition or under-representation of concepts in order to ensure that there are appropriate opportunities for students to revisit and develop their understanding of all concepts,” (pages 5 & 6).

During our last evaluation in 2012, our school learned that our curriculum was too knowledge-based and that we needed to revise our planners to make them more concept-driven. Over the last five years, our teachers have worked hard to revise our units, focusing our curriculum on understanding meaningful ideas (THE CONCEPTS). As coordinator, I wanted teachers to authentically identify the key concepts that would best fit with their units and not to pay attention to horizontally or vertically balancing the key concepts as we revised the units.

That meant that our POI may not be horizontally or vertically balanced by key concept and that the work to bring it into balance may be tricky and messy. Change the concepts to horizontally balance a grade level, and the vertical balance might be off. Change a concept to bring about vertical balance and a grade-level might then get thrown out of wack.

During our last professional development day, our entire staff took on the challenge of balancing our POI by key concepts by gamifying the task. What ended up happening was wonderful!

First, we had to set up the game board. 

Step #1: We created a Key Concept POI; copying the key concepts that were in each of our planners onto the corresponding box on the grid.

Step #2: Teachers identified the key concepts that COULD NOT be changed by typing them in ALL CAPS. If we were going to balance the POI by key concept, most likely something was going to change, but we wanted teachers to let us know the ones that absolutely COULD NOT be changed. In essence, they were "locking them in". During this step, some grade levels made changes to their key concepts when they noticed they were not horizontally balanced. 

Step #3: Next, we wanted teams to identify the key concepts that COULD go into each of their units. Again, as we were balancing the POI by key concepts, it might be possible that a key concept needed to be added somewhere. However, we wanted those additions to be authentic, so teachers needed to tell us which key concepts could possibly go in their units. They recorded those possibilities in light gray on the Key Concept POI. During this step, some teams continued to make changes to their key concepts to bring balance to their grade level key concepts. 

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

With the game board set, we then switched into five vertical teams and the rules of the game were shared:

• Goal: balance the POI vertically and horizontally by key concept with as few moves as possible.
• Parameters:
• Horizontal balance means, "all eight key concepts must be represented (page 5 of Developing a Transdisciplinary Program of Inquiry.
• Vertical balance means, "there should be a balance of PYP key concepts used throughout each transdisciplinary theme, but that does not mean that each key concept must be represented under each transdisciplinary theme," (page 6 of  Developing a Transdisciplinary Program of Inquiry.)
• No concept in CAPS can be moved. It has been "locked in".
• Only concepts in gray can be added. 

The team that would suggest the lease amount of moves while still creating a balanced POI would win a tub full of homemade cookies. Click here for the Bestever Cookie recipe.

Teams had 20 minutes to work. They were engaged and focused, working to see how they could vertically and horizontally balance their POI by key concepts.

At the end of 20 minutes, all five teams submitted their suggestions for changes to the key concepts. Teams suggested anywhere from 1 to 10 changes. The judges looked over the plan made by the team that had suggested one change and declared them the winner! They then had to explain their thinking to the group:

"First, we looked horizontally to make sure that every grade level had all eight key concepts. We found that all grade levels had all eight key concepts represented.

Then, we looked vertically to see if all eight key concepts were addressed under each transdisciplinary theme. We discovered:

• Who we are: no connection 
• How we express ourselves: no change or causation 
• How the world works: no responsibility 
• How we organize ourselves: no form, causation or reflection 

Next, we tabulated how many times each of the key concepts showed up across the whole POI:

• Form - 13 
• Function - 12 
• Causation - 10 
• Connection 14 
• Change - 13 
• Perspective - 12 
• Reflection - 7 
• Responsibility - 12 

Although some transdisciplinary themes didn't have some key concepts (as mentioned above), throughout the entire POI, all eight key concepts seem to be represented in a balanced way; all except reflection.

So, we made the suggestion to add reflection to the Kindergarten unit How we organize ourselves."

Throughout this entire process, teachers were engaged in digging into their units and thinking in an honest and meaningful way about how the key concepts are taught and learned in each of their units of inquiry. As they worked vertically, they were engaged in suggesting authentic changes that would help bring about a more balanced Program of Inquiry, "to ensure that there are appropriate opportunities for students to revisit and develop their understanding of all concepts."

Moving forward, we will look for opportunities to incorporate more reflection into our units of inquiry, which still is under-represented in our POI. Also, any time a key concept needs to change in the future, we will look to see how the horizontal and vertical balance will be affected by such a change.

Balancing our POI in this way proved to be engaging, meaningful and even fun! How have your schools balanced your POI by key concepts?

Creating IB learner profile attribute posters with young children, who have a couple of years experience in the program.

Young children who have been in the Primary Years Program for a couple of years probably are familiar with the attributes of the IB learner profile. However, as teachers of these students create attribute posters with them, it is important to take the opportunity to help the children develop a deeper understanding of these important 10 attributes of an internationally minded person.

One first grade teacher set up a learning opportunity that allowed her students to construct a more robust interpretation of the attributes of the learner profile.

First, the teacher told the students that they were going to be looking at the IB learner profile attributes through the conceptual lens of FORM as they asked themselves, "What does it look like?"

Small groups of two to three students received a book or two and a piece of paper with one learner profile attribute written on it. (For a list of picture books that support different learner profile attributes and attitudes in PYP curriculum, check out the PYPLIBRARY wiki space.)

Students were tasked with having to look through their books and use their background knowledge to develop a working definition of the learner profile attribute that they were assigned.

The teacher checked in with groups to check for understanding, to write down the students' definition, and then to prompt them to draw pictures of their work.

Finally, students shared their working definitions and pictures with their classmates.

These students, who created the poster for Reflective shared:

"Student 1: Being reflecting looks like thinking about the past or thinking about your acts.

Student 2: Being reflecting has three different ways to be reflecting. You can be reflecting about how you help others. And when you’re thinking, you’re being reflecting. Like when Alton was sitting there, he was being reflecting because he was like, “hmmm let me think.” And he was being reflecting.

Student 3: I do that a lot, but I didn’t even know that."

By creating the IB Learner Profile attribute posters in this way, the teacher guaranteed the students were developing an understanding of each attribute as they collaboratively worked.

Have you successfully made PYP posters with young children who have a couple of years experience in the program in a different way than the teacher in this story? Please, share your idea with others by commenting on this post.

Learning about key concepts during guided reading

In the Primary Years Program (PYP), like in all elementary schools, much importance is placed on learning how to read and write. Learning these essential skills, along with other literacy skills of speaking, listening, viewing, presenting, and non-verbally communicating, is absolutely necessary. However, sometimes we forget why students must learn about, with, from, and through literacy.

Preparing our students for high-stakes, mandatory, standardized testing sometimes distracts us from providing students with literacy learning that is engaging, relevant, challenging, and significant. In reality though, the best literacy "test-prep" we can provide our students is meaningful literacy instruction that is learned in the context of life's biggest ideas; in the PYP, we call these big ideas key and related concepts.

Recently, in fifth grade, students were reading the guided reading book "Clean Up City Park!" (a leveled text from Benchmark Literacy).

The text is written as a persuasive letter, written from the perspective of a child to the mayor, urging the mayor to get the city park cleaned up.

The fifth graders read through the text under the guidance of their teacher during guided reading, focusing on the development of particular comprehension and metacognitive reading strategies. Afterward, the teacher encouraged the students to enter into the PYP Action Cycle: reflect-choose-act.

As students reflected on their learning, they were able to make a connection to their own lives: they too had been around green spaces that needed to be cleaned up; in particular, the school grounds. Once they had chosen their action, the students identified key concepts that would help them organize their action plan. The teacher recorded the students' thinking about the key concepts as the students came up with them.

Using their collectively-identified key concepts as a guide, students began to independently plan their action. They used the key concepts of causation, connection, function and change as a framework to think about and plan their action.

 

The students enlisted the help of second graders, telling them about their plan which allowed the fifth graders to develop their literacy skills of presenting. Together the second graders and this small, guided-reading group of fifth graders plan on cleaning up the green space around their school. Most importantly though, working with the key concepts in a meaningful context allowed students to develop a better understanding of these big ideas.

Giving time and space for students to engage in relevant, challenging, and significant learning, is the best way to develop deep thinkers and thus raise reading test scores. Many reading researchers, including Knapp (1995), Taylor, Pearson, Peterson, & Rodriguez (2003; 2005), and Taylor & Peterson (2008) have found that when teachers encourage students to think about texts at a higher level more than other teachers, they see more growth in their students' reading scores (as cited in Peterson & Taylor, 2012, p. 297).

After reading about how 5th graders developed a better conceptual understanding about life's big ideas - the PYP key concepts - during meaningful literacy instruction, how could you or have you incorporated learning about key and related concepts into your literacy instruction?

Works cited: Peterson, D.S. & Taylor, B.M. (2012). Using higher order questioning to accelerate students' growth in reading. The Reading Teacher, 65(5), p. 295-304.

Flow maps

In an earnest attempt to teach more conceptually, teachers must give students tools with which they can make their conceptual thinking visible. For instance, students can use a circle map (a type of Thinking Map®) to investigate the concept of form while when working with the concept of connection, they can use a double bubble concept map (another type of Thinking Map®).

Making students’ conceptual thinking visible is beneficial for a number of reasons. Students benefit from having “a greater awareness of the significant role that thinking plays in cultivating their own understanding,” (Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison in Making Thinking Visible, p. 15). When students are more acutely aware of their own thinking skills and how they use those skills to construct understanding, they gain greater independence in the learning process. Furthermore, making students’ thinking visible is beneficial for the teacher because it “provides us with the information we as teachers need to plan opportunities that will take students’ learning to the next level and enable continued engagement with the ideas being explored,” (the Making Thinking Visible folks again, this time, p. 27).

The flow map (a type of Thinking Map®) is a tool that students can use to make their thinking visible when they’re working with the concept of causation. (Note: although Thinking Maps aren’t from the Making Thinking Visible text, they fit the definition of a thinking routine, as define by one of its authors here.) When teaching a lesson to fifth graders recently about the short- and long-term impacts of decisions, I decided to put that thinking routine to work with them.

I was teaching a lesson I had written for an economics class I took at the University of Minnesota. Our summative project is to write a lesson using children’s literature to teach an MN Economic Benchmark (2011). I selected this fifth grade benchmark to teach: Economic Reasoning Skills (5.2.1.1.1): Apply a decision-making process to identify an alternative choice that could have been made for a historical event; explain the probable impact of that choice. For example: Decision-making processes - a decision tree, PACED decision-making process (Problem, Alternative, Criteria, Evaluation, Decision). Instead of using a decision tree or the PACED decision-making process as the benchmark suggests, I elected to use a flow map, so that students could see the way that decisions caused subsequent impacts.

As I invited students into the inquiry, I asked them what they knew about Nelson Mandela and Apartheid in South Africa. Then, I showed a short video that gave students a (very) brief overview of what Apartheid was. Once students understood (very) generally the situation in South Africa during Nelson Mandela’s life, I read them the picture book Nelson Mandela by Kadir Nelson as a way to investigate the connection between decisions and their impacts. As I read, we worked together to create a flow map, showing how the decisions of his parents, and then later on his own decisions, impacted future decisions Mandela would make, which would ultimately impact South Africa, its history, and its people in dramatic ways.

This is the original flow map we created as a class. Please note that students used the abbreviation "N" for Nelson Mandela. Because we were running short on time, I skipped the part about how Mandela went into hiding and fled to Egypt. That is why that decision did not make the flow map that is shown above. Also, I realized after teaching the lesson that we should have added the ultimate impact to the flow map: that Apartheid ended, although that was a major part of our discussion.

Then, in accordance with the economic benchmark and to further investigate the connection between decisions and subsequent impacts, I instructed students to creatively and critically think of an alternative choice that Mandela could have picked at any point during his life, instead of one of the decisions he did make. Students then needed to use the flow map structure to show the probable impacts of that alternative choice (with a clean sheet of paper laying OVER the original flow map). Below are examples of the students’ thinking.

This student decided to change the third decision made in Mandela's life (according to the text). Notice that with this alternative choice, Mandela never became involved in the anti-Apartheid movement, nor did he marry Winnie as was detailed in the book. This student clearly understands how different Mandela's life would have been had he made a different decision early on in his life. 

This student decided to change the fifth decision made in Mandela's life (according to the text). Notice this student understood the impact his decision to give up protesting Apartheid would have had on that set of laws, the history of South Africa, and its people ("Apartheid continued to go on"). 

This student also decided to change the fifth decision made in Mandela's life (according to the text). It is interesting how this student recognized Mandela as a leader because when he decided to give up the anti-Apartheid protests as an "alternative choice" this student recognizes that others would have given up as well. 

Finally, as a way to give students the chance to demonstrate their conceptual understanding of the connection between decisions and their short- and long-term impacts, I asked the students if they could decide to take a break from reading over their 9-day spring break. Students were given the option of showing their thinking in paragraph form or in a flow map. I was checking to see if they understood that the decisions they make today have impacts that will last long into the future.

This student, who decided to demonstrate her conceptual understanding in paragraph form, was able to identify both a short-term impact ("if you don't read you might not be as fast as you could before") and a long-term impact ("I decide to read because it is good for you and later on in my life I will be a good reader") of a decision. 

This student used a flow map to show her conceptual understanding of decisions and their impacts. She too writes about short-term impacts of her decision to keep reading ("I won't get behind in reading") and long-term impacts of the same decision ("I decide to go to college after high school"). 

After reading about how fifth graders used a "flow map" as a thinking routine to construct conceptual understanding, how could you use or have you used "flow maps" in your instructional practice?

Using Field Trips to Learn About Concepts

Field trips are one of the highlights of many students' school experience. They're remembered for many years afterward. Additionally, these trips to outdoor learning centers, museums, and performance halls provide experiences to children who might not normally have the opportunities to go to such places.

However, field trips can also be remarkable opportunities for learning about life's big ideas. In a Primary Years Program, we call these big ideas concepts: mental constructs that are timeless, abstract, universal, and transferrable to a variety of contexts.

Just like in our classrooms, when we take kids on a field trip, we cannot leave student learning about concepts up to chance. We cannot assume that they'll just learn these abstract concepts by simply going on the trip. Rather, it is imperative that we set up opportunities for students to engage with these complex ideas either before, during, or after the field trip, so that they are able to construct their own conceptual understanding.

Recently, as the sixth grade teachers were preparing to take their students to a history museum, they contemplated the question, "What do we want the students to understand after they've left?" It is important to note here that individual teachers had particular hopes and dreams regarding what their students got out of the experience to the history museum. However, they synthesized all their ideas and collaboratively came up with the following conceptual understanding: The students understand that history is made up of real stories of real people that have many different perspectives.

Next, teachers asked themselves, "How will we know that they understand it?" Teachers thought that by asking their students upon their return, "What is history?" they'd be able to make their students' thinking visible about the concept of history. This type of question asks students to concentrate on the subject's form, a key concept in the PYP.

Once the students returned from the History Center, one teacher grouped the students into small groups of 3-4 students to answer the question. Based on the groups' responses, the class created the following concept map.

Day 1 (green); Day 2 (blue)

After a two-day discussion, students were able to identify that history, in addition to being important events that people will or should remember, facts, and details in the past, involves people and their stories. To further develop the students' conceptual understanding of history, the teacher continued the same process with all the other PYP key concepts (function, causation, connection, change, perspective, reflection, & responsibility).

Based on this story, ask:

• How do you use field trips to expand and deepen your students' conceptual thinking?
• Do you find it is effective?
• Is there a way to change how you use field trips to strengthen students’ conceptual thinking to have a greater impact on their learning?