Summary Module 4

Inquiry questions:

Once we have the SOI, we need to unpack it with the inquiry questions which will
frame the inquiry of our unit, they provide the big picture, they are broad and open
fostering inclusion. They are NOT content specific!

We can do this by starting with the lines of inquiry and from there get to the questions in
the same way that the PYP does and as was explained in the module or we can look at
our unit content/ standards and SOI which has helped us focused on what we want our
students to walk away with and write down the questions we would like to address in the
unit.

“Inquiry questions are drawn from, and inspired by, the statement of inquiry.
Teachers and students develop these questions to explore the statement of inquiry in
greater detail. Students can develop their own questions in ways that satisfy curiosity
and deepen understanding. The strands of subject-specific objectives can also be
helpful in formulating inquiry questions.

Inquiry questions give shape and scope to a unit of study, and they help to scaffold the
objectives that students should strive to achieve. As the unit progresses, both teachers
and students can develop additional questions to explore.”
These inquiry question give us the big picture, they are broad and open fostering
inclusion and will be used during our teaching to guide our content specific questions
that come from the standards/ content/ topics we plan to teach in the Action part of the
unit planner: In this second section of the planner when we develop the ‘ACTION” part
of the inquiry cycle, we need to ensure we are weaving the concepts and exploration we
set out to explore in the learning experiences we use together with the skills and
content.
Subject objectives:
We can either choose the subject specific objectives that we want to address through
the content/ standard and SOI chosen or we can choose the summative task that will
enable our students to show their understanding of the SOI and then choose the subject
objective. Either way is valid.

Each MYP subject-group framework encompasses specific aims and objectives. The
aims of all MYP subject groups state what teachers may expect to teach and what
students may expect to experience and learn. The objectives of any MYP subject state
the specific targets that are set for learning in that subject. They define what the student
will be able to accomplish as a result of studying the subject. Each objective is
elaborated by a number of strands; a strand is an aspect or indicator of the learning
expectation.

The objectives of each subject group represent the use of knowledge, understanding
and skills that must be taught. They encompass the factual, conceptual, procedural and
metacognitive dimensions of knowledge. MYP objectives reflect and offer opportunities
to develop the attributes of the IB learner profile.
The objectives for years 1, 3 and 5 of the programme are provided in MYP subject-
group guides, and their use is mandatory.

Then we choose a ‘contextualized’ performance of understanding as a summative

task that enables students to address the subject specific objectives and show their
understanding of the statement of inquiry (SOI).
IB is strongly recommending GRASPS as it fits the expectations.

Once we identify the objectives and the strands that we will focus on, they will help us
choose the ATL skills that we need to identify later on in the planner..

ATL:
To complete the first part of our planner called the ‘Inquiry’ phase, we identify the ATL
skills that our students will need to develop in order to be successful in meeting the
objectives. These ATL skills are embedded in the objectives chosen and they need to
be identified and developed through explicit learning engagements that will form, shape
the formative and summative assessment.

Every MYP unit identifies ATL skills that students will develop through their inquiry and
demonstrate in the unit’s formative (if applicable) and summative assessments. Many
ATL skills directly support the attainment of subject-group objectives. The most
effective way to develop ATL is through ongoing, process-focused disciplinary and
interdisciplinary teaching and learning. Teachers can use key and related concepts,
along with global contexts, as vehicles for teaching effective learning strategies.
Likewise, ATL skills can be powerful tools for exploring significant content. This dual
focus on content and process promotes student engagement, deep understanding,
transfer of skills and academic success. In the MYP, ATL encompasses both general
and discipline-specific skills. Many ATL skills are applicable to all MYP subject groups;
these general “tools for learning” can be tailored to meet the specific needs of students
and schools. To develop ATL skills that facilitate effective and efficient learning,
students need models, clear expectations, developmental benchmarks (or targets) and
multiple opportunities to practice. While ATL skills are not formally assessed in the
MYP, they contribute to students’ achievement in all subject groups. Teachers should
provide students with regular, specific feedback on the development of ATL skills
through learning engagements and formative assessment. In the MYP unit planner,
teachers identify ATL skills—general as well as subject-specific—that students will need
to develop, through their engagement with the unit’s learning experiences (including
formative assessments), to meet the unit’s objectives. The skills that teachers identify in
this section of the planner are used to develop horizontal and vertical planning of ATL to
meet MYP requirements for the written curriculum. Students and teachers can also work
to identify and develop additional important ATL skills.
These ATL skills are the ones embedded in those objectives chosen and if we do not
develop them, our students will not be able to achieve the objectives chosen. Now as
we all have 4 objectives we can choose 2 and go into depth by addressing the ATL
skills embedded in them or if attempting the 4 objectives be mindful of the time it would
take as you would need to explicitly teach and develop the skills of each objective
strand chosen.

Teaching ATL: explicitly and implicitly

I strongly recommend watching the webinar Making sense of categories and clusters:
How to plan for approaches to learning from the presentation:
https://onlinepd.ibo.org/pluginfile.php/894490/mod_resource/content/1/index.html#/page
/5c3500fe714c574c25ff1ae1

Here we have an example of self management skill but what about when we need to
explicitly teach a critical thinking skill embedded in our objective strand such as the
command term ‘interpretation’? I want to share my thinking process and how I would
explicitly teach it:

I start by going to the subject objective that I chose in my unit planner, in this case from
the Language Acquisition guide :
By choosing objective A strand ii- interpret conventions

I identify that this skill belongs to the thinking category –cluster: critical thinking

First, I bear in mind the IB definition of 'interpretation' from Principles into Practice
appendix 1 page 109:

Interpretation: Use knowledge and understanding to recognize trends and draw

conclusions from given information.

Taking this into account I can start explicitly teaching the lesson by saying the following
taken from the source: https://www.readingrockets.org/strategies/inference

Observations occur when we can see something happening. In contrast, inferences are
what we figure out based on an experience. Helping you understand when information
is implied, or not directly stated, will improve our skill in drawing conclusions and making
inferences. These skills will be needed for all sorts of school assignments, including
reading, science and social studies. Inferential thinking is a complex skill that will
develop over time and with experience.

Then, I can group students and share a visual such as Edward Munch's picture 'The
Scream" and follow this simplified model for teaching inference that includes the
following assumptions:

We need to find clues to get some answers.

We need to add those clues to what we already know or have read.

There can be more than one correct answer.

We need to be able to support inferences.

So lets find the clues and write them down in a group by writing under one circle the
elements/clues that you see, then connect that clue to what you know and make several
arrows to draw inferences
I model the steps and using their input we discuss what trends, inferences based on the
interpretation they made from the elements identified in the picture. After modelling and
involving the whole class ,I then I present them with two stories of Little Red Riding
Hood ,the original and Roald Dahl's version to discuss in groups, identify and compare
common elements and make inferences from both stories

Another model that teachers can use to teach inference is called "It says, I say, and so"

another one that can help is:

These templates can guide and support those learners that may need more guidance

We can present then a language acquisition text that we would like them to work on and
ask them to do it in pairs and provide feedback all these learning opportunities would
ensure that by the time students are faced with the summative task they have learned
how to address the skill embedded in the subject objective strand.

Another way to address this task could be seen through this chart I made for L&L:

First, bear in mind the skills present in our subject objective strands. We need first to
identify the command terms leading the strand and unpack it such as analyse which has
4 subskills embedded in it (see definition). Once we unpack the skills embedded in the
strand we can design different tasks so that the student has the opportunity to practice,
here an example:

ATL Cognitive Skill Cluster

Skill Objective / Command Terms and Activities stemming from command
strand definitions terms
Critical Analysing Analyze:Break down in Learning experiences:
thinking order to bring out the
i-analyse the essential elements or Class watches video by Zephaniah
content, structure. Teacher teaches elements of a
context, (To identifyparts short story and
language, and relationships students IDENTIFY those elements
structure, (connect), in the video.
technique and and interpretinformation
style of text(s) to reach conclusions In groups sts read:Terror Kid by
and the B.Zephaniah and CONNECT it to
the video
 relationships Class COMPARESboth
among texts and INTERPRETATEinformation
to DRAW CONCLUSION
analyse the
effects of the
creator’s
choices on an Formative assessment:
audience
In pairs sts read a short story: they
IDENTIFY literary elements
COMPARE those elements
to Terror kid with a Venn diagram

Then

INTERPRETATE information and

DRAW 3 CONCLUSIONS providing
justifications in a 200 review

Differentiation:

Type: Process:

scaffold interpretation

Break down interpretation even

further and design tasks for sts to
be able to
practice: Interpretation.Include tasks
addressing the
subskillsclarifying, categorizing
information, and determining the
significance of a message

Teachers should teach skills explicitly, and students should have structured
opportunities to practise them. Appendix 1 contains a framework for the ATL skills that
students may develop in the MYP:
https://resources.ibo.org/data/m_0_mypxx_guu_1405_4_e.pdf

In the ATL box we choose the strands from the objectives and follow this suggested
format to identify the ATL skills embedded in each strand:

In order for students to use language to analyze, explain, argue, persuade, inform,
entertain and express feelings, students must use a variety of speaking techniques to
make meaning clear for different audiences and purposes.(category: communication,
skill cluster: communication)
In both cases teachers model the skills through an example so that students can
understand the thinking process, the thinking map that the teacher has followed so that
then he/she can try it out again in a different task.

It would be similar if we were teaching tennis for example, we’d need to teach the six
basic strokes (explicit teaching) : the serve, forehand groundstroke, backhand
groundstroke, forehand volley, backhand volley, and the overhead smash. Then provide
many opportunities for our students to practice it separately first and then incorporate it
in the game (implicit teaching) and even then we could syill provide feedback to perfect
the technique.

Many ATL skills that have been learned and practised during a unit of work can be
integrated in assessment through a variety of tasks and projects involving problem-
solving, hands-on approaches (individually and in groups), as well as traditional testing.
Assessments involving ATL often require students to use information from different
sources critically and to make appropriate use of technology.

(From Principles into Practice,chapter ‘Inquiry,establishing the purpose of the

unit’ pages 56-65)

It is clear that we all now understand the crucial importance of our role in the class, we
must explicitly teach the skills so that students can practice them in order to master
them and be successful when meeting our subject objective strands. We need to model
the inquiry and guide them in the first years so that they can eventually lead their own
enquiry as expected in science for example.

It is to be expected that following a routine and regular practice can help internalize and
reinforce a process. Neuroscience tell us that we all need at least three to four
opportunities to develop a skill, then we can 'internalize' it and keep developing till we
get a mastery level.

I would suggest that we bear in mind the IB definition of the command terms of our
strands, avoid taking for granted that our students know what it means so we need to
include a learning experience that allows them to understand what s expected of them
and how the command term would look like in a good answer so modeling our tasks
would be very beneficial for the students. I have found out as examiner of ID and PP
that many students do not know what is expected of these command terms so they
cannot meet the highest achievement levels.

Inclusion and Differentiation for IB:

We can find in the PRC a whole area devoted to
inclusion:https://resources.ibo.org/ib/topic/Inclusive-education/works/edu_11162-
38434?root=1.6.2.4.7&lang=en
and this other document where we can find some challenges and possible strategies to
deal with them in this great document:
MEETING STUDENT LEARNING DIVERSITY IN THE CLASSROOM

https://resources.ibo.org/ib/topic/Inclusive-education/works/edu_11162-
412405?root=1.6.2.8.5&lang=en

Remember to use the IB document Evaluating unit planners as a rubric to improve their
own planners as this is the document that IB chooses to provide feedback to schools
through the Quality Building Curriculum for authorization and evaluation visits. It can be
found in the Resource library:
https://onlinepd.ibo.org/mod/folder/view.php?id=237011

Hope this helps,

Warmest regards, Pat