It's about what you do within the walls, not what you put on them

Every August, two friends from college and I go on our annual back-to-school shopping trip to get needed supplies for the upcoming school year. We visit the local bookstore with free-roaming cats, the office supply store with folders for one cent each, the big-box retailer with their markers marked way down, and of course, the teacher supply store.

When we first started this tradition 10 years ago, we spent considerable time (and money) in that teacher supply store, buying name plates, borders, posters, decorations, and more to make our classrooms look the best they could for when the students arrived on the first day of school. Over the years though, the money that we've spent on these classroom decorations has considerably gone down. And for good reason.

In The First Six Weeks of School, authors Paula Denton and Roxann Kriete suggest that one of the goals for the first week of school is to display children's art, writing, and personal artifacts around the room. They go on to explain that involving students in creating the posters and labels that hang on the walls allows students to grow familiar with and begin to assume ownership of the room.

That would mean though that the walls of our classrooms are empty when students first walk through the door, which doesn't seem to be a very welcoming environment. In her article Consider the Walls, Patricia Tarr points out that teachers feel pressure to not leave their classroom walls bare. However she warns that when classrooms are decorated with commercially produced borders, posters, and informational materials, the important texts and images on them fade from students' consciousness and worse yet, distract from the children's concentration and focus.

As the video below points out though, Primary Years Program (PYP) educators must display numerous important aspects of the program in their classrooms: the essential agreement, the IB learner profile, the classroom schedule, classroom labels in the language of instruction and in the school's language B, the key concepts, the PYP attitudes, the transdisciplinary skills, the action cycle, all six units of inquiry, and the central idea and lines of inquiry currently being studied.

Note that this video is not an official IB publication.

However, it has proved to be helpful to many an IB educator.

In line with what Denton and Kriete opine, the video's narrator states, "As the teachers and students become more comfortable with these terms, they should work towards these displays being student-generated, instead of teacher manufactured."

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Want tips for creating IB learner profile attribute posters with your students?

Click one of the links below.

Making posters with very young children new to the program

Making posters with young children who have a couple of years experience in the program.

Making posters with older students with several years of experience in the program.

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As we create posters with students and decorate our classroom walls with them, we must also heed Parr's warning and acknowledge that even when wall displays are student-created, the important ideas on them are quickly forgotten as students are unable to interact with them. Therefore, in addition to displaying the IB learner profile and the essential elements of the PYP on the walls of our classroom, it is suggested that each student receive a personal copy of the Essential Elements, like the one pictured below. When each student has a copy of the Essential Elements at their fingertips, along with age-appropriate explanations of these complex ideas, they will more readily reference them as they investigate important concepts and reflect on their learning.

Click here for a PDF version of this Essential Elements Mat
(that includes the Transdisciplinary Skills on side 2)

Ultimately, it is our goal as PYP educators to focus on what goes on within the walls of our classroom, not what goes on them. Student-generated classroom wall displays and Essential Elements mats are simply tools that help us reach our ultimate goal: for students to be genuinely and independently using the vocabulary of the PYP in meaningful contexts in such a way that reflects their true and deep understanding of these abstract ideas.

Creating IB learner profile attribute posters with older students with several years of experience in the program

Older elementary-aged students who have been in the Primary Years Program (PYP) for a number of years will be quite familiar with the IB Learner Profile and other essential elements of the program. They should be genuinely and independently using the vocabulary of the PYP in meaningful contexts.

However, students at this level still should be given the opportunity to further explore the meaning of these abstract terms as they create posters for their classroom.

One sixth grade teacher used a Visible Thinking Routine as he invited his students to think more deeply about the IB learner profile.

First, he printed off the descriptors for the 10 attributes of the profile, cut them up, and gave each student one attribute and accompanying descriptor. Students read through the descriptor several times.

Then, students used the Visible Thinking Routine Step Inside (from Making Thinking Visible by Ritchhart, Church, and Morrison) to take on the perspective of someone who exhibited that attribute, as a way to gain a deeper understanding of it. Students were already familiar with this routine, as they had used it at other points during the class (Want to know more about Step Inside? Check out this post.)

Students reflected on the following four questions through the lens of their particular learner profile attribute. They made their thinking visible in their inquiry notebooks.

1. What can this person see, observe, or notice?
2. What might the person know, understand, hold true, or believe?
3. What might the person care deeply about?
4. What might the person wonder about or question?

After, students were given a blank piece of white art paper and created the border of their poster with the perspectives they had just explored. Inside, the students decorated their posters with their first-grade reading buddies, making it a true collaborative project.

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 older elementary-aged children who have several 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.

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.

Creating IB learner profile attribute posters with very young children, new to the program.

Creating PYP posters with students might be one of the goals of the first six weeks of school, but how is a Primary Years Program (PYP) teacher supposed to create such posters with very young children who are new to the program? The IB Learner Profile attributes (and all the other essential elements) are complex ideas. When students aren't familiar with them, how is a teacher supposed to help her students create posters so that they can construct meaning of these big ideas?

One kindergarten teacher created posters with her young students by using pictures to help them construct meaning of the IB Learner Profile attributes.

First, gathered together in a large group, she showed the students a blank poster with one attribute in large letters. In the example below, the students were creating the inquirer poster for their room.

Click here for a PDF version of these posters.

Then, the teacher displayed a series of pictures of children, all who were demonstrating behaviors of an inquirer.

Click here for a PDF version of the slides of pictures for each IB Learner Profile Attribute.

The teacher told her students that all the children in the pictures where inquirers. She then prompted the students to notice what specifically the children were doing. As her students offered responses, the teacher added them to the poster, finishing the phrase, "being an inquirer looks like ..."

After the children had contributed several ideas (being an inquirer looks like wondering, asking questions, being confused, looking closely), the teacher gave each student a small piece of paper, directing them to quickly draw themselves as inquirers. As the students finished, the teacher affixed the small drawings around the edge of the poster, so that every child's work was a part of the classroom display.

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 very young children new to the program in a different way than the teacher in this story? Please, share your idea with others by commenting on this post.