It’s Time to Make Connections…

What makes a “Good Math planner?” is a debatable question that tickles the minds of PYP teachers. We all agree that a ‘good’ Math planning can be as varied in scope, structure, content, and delivery as the degree of difference between teachers’ competencies, students’ abilities, and classrooms’ environments. However, there is certainly no such approach that “fits all” and what works well for you at your school may not work well at mine – and vice versa. Although PYP schools are “lucky” for having an IB common scope and sequence document, we cannot ignore how challenging it is to put this document into practice.
In 2011, I attended an IB regional workshop in Dubai titled “The role of Mathematics in the PYP”. It was a great experience that deepened my thinking in planning and teaching Mathematics. Many approaches related to the written, taught, and assessed curriculum were presented. One of the discussion that took place was how to write a Math planner by using the conceptual understandings as central ideas and the learning outcomes as lines of inquiry, and that what we have tried to implement with some exceptions when we choose to write a generalization and use the conceptual understandings as lines of inquiry.
Few years later, and while reflecting on the written curriculum, I noticed that the Math strands appear like separate “chunks”! This drove me to reconsider the way we map the curriculum. Wondering where I have to start from, my first challenge was how to engage teachers in this reflection to reach a deeper thinking. Obviously, teachers always need to put in the “students’ shoes”. Therefore, I generated a graphic organizer titled “Making Connections” (PDF file) and prepared the following activity.

The following are samples of the teachers’ thoughts and answers.

 

 

The outcome was amazing and teachers were highly engaged. However, and again, this connection has not been evident in our planners. In 2016, the school hosted a two-day workshop by the expert Jennifer Wathall (www.jenniferwathall.com @JenniferWathall) who inspired the team toward a deep understanding of Concept-Based Mathematics. On the personal level, I believe that reading a book provides you with the knowledge, but meeting the author makes you reach the understanding. This what exactly I gained when meeting Jennifer. One of this workshop acquired knowledge was the use of a unit web. As defined by Jennifer in her book Concept-Based Mathematics, a unit web is an essential tool for planning a concept- based unit of work; it contains critical content topics and concepts and gives an overview of the depth and breadth of the unit on instruction.
At this stage, I went back to my strategy, “Making Connections”, and applied it again with teachers. This time, I can say that we are on the right track. This year, planners were reshaped by considering the unit web as a starting point, and the results are remarkable.

In one of my future posts, I will share a complete planner, including a unit web.

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