Inquiry – Digi Coach: Embracing Change

This week our school has just celebrated the learning and achievements of our Year 6 students during their PYP Exhibition. Exploring how people express themselves, the students conducted an in-depth inquiry over six weeks into a Central Idea they helped to create based on their interests and passions.

CENTRAL IDEA

The Arts are a creative language that we use to express ourselves and to inspire others to change the way they think and act.

Facilitated by their teacher and mentor, each student developed their own line of inquiry to investigate. After weeks of asking questions, conducting research, collaborating with peers and exploring different concepts, the students presented their learning to their parents, teachers and other students across the school.

Throughout the Exhibition, students, teachers and mentors used a Google Site (with the added sparkle of Padlet) to communicate and organise resources. See my post Collaborating Online – The PYP Exhibition.

Being able to join Year 6 on their inquiry journey as a Digital Coach was an absolute joy! It was wonderful to see the creative ideas from students and mentors for using technology in their Exhibition. When students wanted ideas for presentation inspiration, we worked together to find ways for technology to engage and captivate their audience. Below are some examples of how we used tech in different ways across the Exhibition groups. Click on the circles to view images and captions.

Using Chrome Music Lab, visitors created melodies that played in the Silent Disco.

Another student demonstrated how different coloured filters can be used in photography to elicit different emotions.

Student made photography filters.

After viewing artwork, visitors shared their feelings through a word cloud poll.

Using Prezi, this student shared his research about different Jazz, Blues and Gospel musicians.

One student created a stop motion to demonstrate his understanding of how people express themselves through Science Fiction films.

A student used the Puppet Palls app to create a video of traditional and modern day interpretations of Shakespeare plays.

Visitors were encouraged to share their impression of London by submitting their response to an online poll.

Word cloud of London Photography poll.

Google Certified Innovator, Uncategorized

Action in the PYP

May 7, 2018 nicrehman

As a London 2017 Google Certified Innovator I wanted to find a way to encourage students to collaborate and take Action in the IB PYP inquiry cycle. PYP Action – Making Connections is a site which encourages students to:

SHARE the Action they want to take

EXPLORE the Action others are taking

CONNECT to take Action

Over the past 12 months I have collected data, created prototypes and trialled this site in my own school. Whilst we are in the early stages of implementation, already we can see a boost in student initiated Action.

Good Practice

Migration Stories with Tour Builder

March 10, 2016March 18, 2017 nicrehman

Human migration and the associated risks, challenges and opportunities has been the Unit of Inquiry for our Year 5s this half term. With great empathy and concern they have reflected on the current refugee crisis and have also explored their own family migration stories.

At the beginning of the unit we tuned students in by sharing migration stories of teachers across the school. In order to give children an understanding of the journey length and settings of each destination, we asked willing staff to create a Tour Builder to share their migration story. See Figure 1 for a screenshot of my migration story.

Tour Builder is an online tool that allows you to create interactive journeys that enrich student understanding. With the use of Maps; locations and travel routes can be plotted across the world with the opportunity for the viewer to zoom in and explore each of those locations. To weave the story together; photos, videos and text can be added giving detailed descriptions of the destinations. An introduction video on how to use this tool can be found here.

Once students had a taste of Tour Builder, they were very keen to create there own. Very quickly they picked up the skills and were adding details to each of their migration locations. Some students were absolutely captivated by the power of Street View and expertly used this element to gain an understanding of unknown locations or to revisit fond childhood memories. One particular student was recording the migration of his Grandfather and noted that towns in which he had lived in Ukraine had changed name and were no longer on the modern map. The sharing of these connections sparked great enthusiasm within the class and led to further action with Tour Builder at home.