Artifact 4: IB learner profile teaching

Standards: 2,4, 5

Goals: 1, 2

In this work of the course TE 842, Advanced Methods of Elementary

School Reading I was discussing about how to improve the comprehension in

teaching IB-PYP learner profiles. My school is a PYP candidate school; all

the teachers are dedicated to teach social studies based on the PYP

curriculum, which includes teaching and sharing the information about the

learner profiles, educating students to develop their personal characteristics

which will build them to be competitive and qualified international citizens.

The introduction of IB- PYP will be mentioned in the first part of the work.

In this work, I firstly explained why I am interested in this topic, and then I

collected some resources that help me to address the question, which

included the website of IB-PYP where I can get more information of what we

are going to teach and what the expectations are; the Chinese textbooks that I

can relate the language teaching to the social studies teaching, an observation

of the IB coordinator in my school; and an interview to another Chinese

teacher in my school who also teaches in Chinese immersion and are learning

to teach IB learner profiles.

The reason I choose this work as an article is because it closely related

my field work teaching to my study in the course of Advanced Methods of

Elementary School Reading. I questioned to myself why it is important to

input reading to social study teaching, why my reading could not attract

students, and how to help students understand and learn the concept of social

studies through reading. This project helped me to get a clearer idea and

made my teaching later smoother and easier.

Name：Han Han

Focus project question:

How can I improve the comprehension in teaching IB-PYP learner profiles?

IB-PYP is International Baccalaureate- Primary Years Program, for

students aged from 3 to 12, focuses on the development of the whole child as

an inquirer, both in the classroom and in the world outside. The learner

profile describes a list of attributes that promote academic rigor and the

establishing of a personal value system leading to international-mindedness.

It is expected that PYP teachers will assess and report on individual student

development regarding each of these attributes. The list of learner profiles

includes: Inquirers, knowledgeable, Thinkers, Communicators, Principled,

Open-minded, Caring, Risk-takers, Balanced, and Reflective. - Resource

from ibo.org.

I am a 3rd grade elementary teacher teaching in Lansing, Michigan. My

school is a PYP candidate school; all the teachers are dedicated to teach

social studies based on the PYP curriculum, which includes teaching and

sharing the information about the learner profiles, educating students to

develop their personal characteristics which will build them to be competitive

and qualified international citizens.

In my Chinese classroom, I tried very hard to share my thoughts with

my students. I read grade based Chinese books to inspire their thinking on

how to improve their own personal value. We did projects as summative

assessments, to make sure all the students can understand all the profile

attributes and have further thinking on how to practice them in their lives.

But the problem I find is, (1). Language: the books I read were hard for

them to understand, and they would be bored and distracted soon; (2).Their

understanding on the profile attributes is superficial: though the books were

hard, the thoughts inspired were simple and seemed hard to dig deeper for 3 rd

graders.

I believe it is me who should reflect what’s going on and how to develop

the teaching. I want to know whether those problems occurred due to the

books, the design of the teaching, or anything else. That’s why I choose this

topic to study.

Resources I used to address the question:

(1) The first resource I used is the website of IB-PYP

http://www.ibo.org/pyp/ to find out what the expectations are for teachers and

for students in terms of the learner profile teaching. Following this website, I

find another important website which is an online curriculum center

http://occ.ibo.org/ibis/occ/guest/home.cfm where I can get IB publications

(curriculum guides, coordinator notes, and teacher support materials), and

teacher-generated resources, and I can get into the discussion forums for IB

teachers to communicate freely. From these two websites and the

communication with other IB teachers, I realized that the learner profiles are

not expected to be taught separated with the PYP social study curriculums.

Instead, teachers need to think how to imbed the profile attribute teaching

into the 6 social study planners (Who we are, Where we are in place and

time, How we express ourselves, How the world works, How we organize

ourselves, and Sharing the planet)

(2) The second resource is the observation of one lesson taught by Mrs.

Jones, the IB-PYP coordinator in my school. Each learner profile will be

discussed and illustrated every month guided by Mrs. Jones. She comes to

each classroom with books, pictures, music and posters etc to inspire

children’s thoughts on each learner profile. I wanted to observe her teaching

and try to find out how she explains the abstract concepts to children, and

what I can do to combine her teaching to mine.

The lesson she taught was the learner profile attribute of Reflective.

Here is a part of the memo of how she led students think in the class:

Mrs. Jones came to the classroom with a big smile. She invited students

to sit around on the carpet and wait for her to take all the teaching materials

out of her bag. Students kept quietly looking at her. Then Mrs. Jones wrote

“ACTION” on the blackboard, draw a circle out of the word and asked,

“Who still remember what it is?” Some students rose up hands and one of

them was picked up to answer, “Action circle”. “Good job! So who can tell

me what an ‘Action’ is?” More students rose up hands and shared their

understanding of action, for example, we need to practice what we have

learned by doing it, and we should not just say “we need to take care of the

senior citizens”, instead, we need to take real care of them by helping them

clean the leaves or something else. Then more and more students

remembered the action circle includes three elements – Doing, Giving, and

Sharing. With a big smile face, Mrs. Jones said, “I am so proud of you! You

can remember all the 2nd grade learning. ”

Then Mrs. Jones put three cards on the carpets, which said “Give”,

“Do” and “Share”, and asked “Do you remember what each element

means? ” Student became more active, and willing to answer. After listening

to all students’ answers, Mrs. Jones took out a book named ”What Can I Do

Today To Make This World A Happier Place”. “Now Mrs. Jones wants my

3rd graders to listen to the story and think, what action people have taken in

the story.” Then she read the book. All the students were listening to her

quietly and attached.

After the reading, Mrs. Jones gave students 1 minute to think about the

story and the question she gave them before the reading. Then Mrs. Jones

gave each student a piece of picture which are all different parts of the story.

“Mrs. Jones invites all of you to tell us what action it is on your picture, and

for sure you can share a little bit about this little part in the story.”

Students took turns to share the parts of story in their hands and put

them under the 3 action cards. In Austin’s picture, there are several girls put

pop cans to the recycle box, and Austin said, “They are taking actions by

Doing!” Then Austin put his picture under the card of “Doing”. In Emma’s

picture, there are two girls reading one book together, and Emma said,

“They are taking actions by Sharing”. Then Emma put her picture under the

card of “Sharing”…

In the whole teaching process, Mrs. Jones didn’t even mention the

purpose of this class, which is Reflective (I thought she would start the lesson

by “Today we are going to learn something about Reflective…”) until after

the classification activity. She asked students to look at the big picture with

the 3 action cards and all the pictures they had put by themselves, and think,

what part they have done well and what part still needs development.

Students were encouraged to share their realization and learning. Ah! They

are reflecting! Another thing surprised me a lot is the pace of this lesson. This

is a 30 minute lesson, but included several activities- warm up questions,

reading, reflecting of the reading with student participation… Even so, Mrs.

Jones kept talking slowly and patiently, which made sure all the students

were following her and could understand her. She designed each activity

close and scaffolding to another, which also helped students to listen and

think logically.

(3)The third resource is a textbook which I am using for daily Chinese

language teaching, named Chinese Snowball. The reason I choose the

language teaching book is because I realized social studies can be taught

together with language teaching, which actually can make both of the two

better and more productive. Connecting the two subjects can not only make

the lessons integrated, and also can make one subject supportive to another,

which will help students learn and make connections.

I read carefully all the texts in the book and marked the ones that can

have even slight connections with the 10 learner profile attributes, in terms of

the contents of those texts, the key words, or the hidden educational

information that can be referred to the profiles attributes. And then I make a

list combining the 10 attributes with all the marked texts that can be used.

The following is the sample list for the volume 4 of the textbook.

Principled Lesson 1 Don’t be Late for School!

Communicator Lesson 2: Welcome Our New Classmate!

Lesson 4: Goodbye Teacher! See You Tomorrow!

Lesson 8 A Letter from My Grandpa

Balanced Lesson 3: My New Classmate Runs Fast.

Knowledgeable Lesson 5: The Song of the Four Seasons.

Lesson 10: The Story of the Moon Day

Caring Lesson6: Happy Chinese New Year!

Lesson 11: How is your parent?

Open-minded Lesson 7: The Spring.

Lesson 12; Merry Christmas!

Reflective Lesson 9: My Journey in Beijing

(4) The last resource I used before the design of my teaching plan is an

interview of another Chinese teacher, Ms. An, who teaches 2nd grade Chinese

immersion in my school. The reason I chose her to interview is because I

want to know what 2nd grade students are learning and going to learn in social

studies, how she teaches learner profile attributes and what resources she is

using.

The following is an episode of the interview (Han is the author of the

paper, An is the teacher under interview):

Han: Hello Ms. An. Thanks for your time for the interview. Which learner

profile attribute are you teaching, or just finish teaching?

An: I just finish teaching the attribute of Reflective. The mode I taught was

quite similar as how Mrs. Jones has taught.

Han: Oh, so you also used the activity of “classification” with printed

pictures etc.?

An: Yes I did. The only difference is, I used Chinese in the whole lesson.

Han: Ah! How do you think of the students? Could they understand you well?

An: Yes I think so. And I think they were actually very interested in the

lesson. We first of all watched a video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?

v=SmaxUmRH3DU&NR=1) which talks about the dry weather threats the

farmer in China. In the video students noticed a sad face with tears, and saw

how dry the land is without any plants. Then I asked students what happened.

It sounds silly but what I want is students can describe the video and share

their feelings in their own words.

Han: How did they respond?

An: Many of my students appeared very sad and sorry for the people in

China. And I was happy to hear some of them said, “well I guess we need to

save the water, although we don’t have to worry about the water usage”.

Han: Ah ha! They are reflecting!

An: Absolutely! Then more and more students were eager to share. But I

stopped there, and took out a Chinese book named An Orange Lantern,

which described a girl from a poor family, but still willing to offer help to

others. When she found there were no any light on the street, she collected

orange peels and make them into many lanterns to lighten up the street.

Han: Why did you choose that book?

An: I believe kids will listen and think, a girl live in such a poor condition

can do favor to other, how about we live in a good one?

Han: Then what’s next?

An: Then like Mrs. Jones, I gave each of them a piece of picture and asked

them to put into the right spot of Doing, Giving or Sharing. Because they

already did this activity in Mrs. Jones’s class, so using only Chinese

instructions was not that difficult. … …

(5) After doing all the resource collecting and analysis work, I designed

my own lesson plan for the profile attribute of Caring. For the month of

November, the whole school is learning what Caring is and how to be. Before

the lesson, I already told my 3rd grade students that I would invite some of the

students to do some presentation on caring- How do I take care of my little

sibling? How do I take care of my pets? And how do I take care of the senior

citizens in my family? The following is the plan I designed for my lesson for

40 minutes.

SequenceActivities Materials

Needed

1 Presentation: How do I take care of my little sister by

Terry

PowerPoint

2 Presentation Reflection: Teacher will take out a big

paper tree, call it Caring Tree and put this on the floor.

Then teacher will take out some Green paper leaves.

Teacher asks students, “What do you learn from

Terry’s presentation about how he takes care of his

Paper Tree

Ged paper

leaves

sister?” Students answer, and teacher write them down

and glue the leaves on to the paper tree

(Read to her, play with her, teach her math, milk her

when she is little, share toys… )

One Marker

Glues

3 Group discussion: Teacher will invite students to do

further thinking. Students will be divided into 3

groups. They will discuss on their question and make

the answer on the Yellow paper leaves.

Group 1: How do take care of my parents?

Group 2: How do I take care of the classmates?

Group 3: How do I take care of my pets

Yellow paper

leaves

3 Markers

4 Group short presentation: Each group will come to the

front and present what their leaves say. And glue them

onto the caring tress.

Glue

5 Reading: The giving Tree. Teacher will ask students to

think while listen: What else we can do to show we

are caring to others?

One Book

6 Reading reflection: Teacher will ask students to share

what they have learned from the story. Then teacher

will give each student a final Red paper leave and

Red paper

leaves

write down what we can do to show we are caring

learned from the story. (Be patient to others, wait if

need, give when others need, enjoy the happy time

being together…)

18 Markers

7 Make the Caring tree together: Teacher will invite

students to show what they have written on their red

leaves and glue them onto the Caring tree. In the end,

teacher and students can go through all the leaves on

the tree and make a decision that we are going to be

like the Caring tree. Then we can post the big Caring

tree onto the 3rd grade hall way.

Glues.

Big tapes for

posting the tree

on to the wall

(6) On the day of the Caring lesson, I videotaped my teaching. Later in

the Chinese teacher meeting, I showed this to my colleagues. They gave me

several comments and suggestions. There is one 1st grade teacher saying that

she feel amazed by the reading part. She found students were fascinated by

the story and their facial expressions changed with the story. But she also

mentioned that the activities seemed too much. The 2nd grade teacher said

maybe we can invite students to write down some reflections as an

assessment, or, students can show other classes our Caring tree and make

everyone pay attention to the caring 3rd graders. The kindergarten teacher

said, the different segments in the lesson seemed too tight and might be

stressful to students.

I like sharing this to teachers from different grades. Learning is like

cooking, in kindergarten you put vegetable oils, and then put tomatoes in first

grade, and then salt in 2nd grade… At least we need to know what the

previous and next grade is doing. However, I think we don’t do it very well

in this kind of communication. We are more like making our own machines

ignoring others. So probably we all put salt in the same dish.

To this problem I decide to write a letter or email to my principal and

propose some more meetings or co-plans for Chinese teachers from each

grade. The letter will be presented later.

What I have found:

(1) When designing the lesson, it is better to combine the learner profile

teaching with social studies and Chinese language teaching. So

students will make a connection among different subjects for further

thinking and studies.

(2) Warm up activities are important for scaffoldings. It can be watching a

video, thinking about the previous knowledge, playing a game, or

classifying pictures. Students need time to think and inquire by

themselves for a while. Teacher does not need to tell students the topic

or the purpose of the lesson, which can be realized and summarized by

students themselves.

(3) When reading the books, try to be slow down. I don’t have to finish the

book quickly. Give students enough time to listen, to feel and to digest

the story is better than finish it quickly and feed them again. Some

reading techniques I have learned from Mrs. Jones- Slow down, with a

smile face, quiet but with emotion, change facial expressions with the

development of the story, eye contact with students, show them the

pictures in the book, and if possible, music background can make the

reading more fascinating.

(4) After the reading, students need some time to reflect. So I don’t need

to transfer to the next activity soon. I can invite them to describe the

story, or share what they have learned, or what their feelings are in

their own languages.

(5) The form of learning can be variable. Big group learning, small group

discussion, individual reflecting, and peer sharing etc. In one word,

students need their own time to learn and to think, and to obtain the

thoughts from others.

(6) Though the readings and activities finish, the learning has not done yet.

We can ask students to think how to bring the learning home and to

share with families and friends, how to practice what we have learned

in the class, and how to assess each other and encourage each other in

the same classroom.

(7) After teaching, peer sharing and reflection is important. Teachers can

obtain ideas and support from the colleagues and fresh our own mind.

(8) Parents and administrators can also be involved in the learning and

after the learning. For example, teacher can invite each family to make

their own Caring tree, assess each other and then write down on the

leaves what I already got. And we will see how big the tree is after one

year. Parent involvement will greatly encourage students in learning

and further inquiry.

Appendix 1

A letter to my principal

Dear Mrs. Diaz,

I am writing to share some of my feelings of the communication among the

Chinese teachers in our school. As you know, we are a small special group in

the building and we try very hard to support each other. Although language is

different, we believe we still can educate students to be good citizens. As a

teacher in the IB-PYP candidate school, I am trying to make my teaching best

and qualified for the PYP expectation.

These days I am working on how to improve the comprehension in teaching

the PYP learner profiles as a part of my study in MSU. In the data collection

and analysis, I find a problem: I find all of the Chinese teachers are dedicated

to teach the best, but some of our teaching overlaps, some of the teaching is

suitable for 1st grade instead of the 2nd grade, and the materials we use are

random without any plan or design.

As a part of the study, last week I showed all the Chinese teachers my video

of one lesson, and we learned a lot through the discussion and we realized it

is a good form of corporation and learning opportunity.

As a result, I propose to have one day a month for Chinese teachers to do co-

plan for language teaching and social study. On this day, we can have 2 parts

of discussion: present the coming study unit and standards, and co-planning.

In the study unit and standards presentation, each grade teacher can briefly

introduce what they are going to do for the next unit (For example, 3rd grade

teacher can tell others that they are going to talk about “how do we express

ourselves” as a social study unit, and in language part will teach one poem

from Tang dynasty in China and another modern poem.) Then other grade

teachers can share their thoughts on how to teach it and brainstorm to make it

only for 3rd graders. In the co-plan section, teachers can systematically write

down what they are going to do for their grade, and then everyone can copy

their own plan and send them to other grade teachers, so all the Chinese

teachers will know what each grade is going to teach, to avoid overlaps and

blank.

In the co-plan meeting, we can also share the books we are using, websites or

other information we feel interesting and helpful for teaching. I guess all of

us will benefit a lot from this.

Please feel free to tell me if you have any concerns. We can try to make it the

best for everyone.

Our child matters.

Best,

-Han Han

Appendix 2

Pictures of the lessons related to the learner profile attribute teaching