Encouraging Student Led Action & Goal Setting

My co-teacher and I really focus on taking action in our classroom and encouraging our little monkeys to take action too. To help our students recognize action and understand what it means, we use the terms Personal Action, Local Action and Global Action.

Personal Action - What can I do for me to better myself?
Local Action - What can I do for my community?
Global Action - What can I do for the world?

Action is one of the five essential elements of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Progamme, and in my opinion, it's the most important. 

Action taken from learning can often be hard to see and assess because action taken may happen at home and on the playground and is unseen by the teachers. 

In the last few years I've come to discover that the best way to encourage student action is to provide my students with the knowledge to first be able to identify appropriate action, reflect on it, and then provide them with opportunities to share their action with others. In the past I've focused on encouraging student action separately, and student goal setting separately. This year I've found a way to combine Action and Student Goal Setting that allows me to see connections that students are making, and see action that they have taken from their learning in the context of each Unit of Inquiry (UOI) with the focus on developing the Skills, Learner Profile attributes and Attitudes of the PYP.

10 Learner Profile Attributes  

12 Attitudes

5 Approaches to Learning/Skill Sets

So just how do I encourage student action and goal setting ???

At the beginning of each Unit of Inquiry, I give my students 6 goals that as a class we will be focusing on during the course of the UOI.  These goals come from the Learner Profile, Attitudes and Skills (Approaches to Learning) of the PYP.  Ariel and I have developed our Progamme of Inquiry to focus on 2 to 3 Learner Profiles, Attitudes, and Skill sets during each of our 6 Units of Inquiry. We tried to pick attributes, skills and attitudes that we felt were needed most in each UOI and that opportunities for developing these attributes, skills and attitudes were most abundant. There are of course still learning engagements that help to develop all other learner profiles, attitudes and skills, however at the first grade level, sometimes less is more and by focusing on only 2 Learner Profiles, Attitudes and Skill sets per UOI, our students are able to develop a deeper understanding of each.

Attitude - Empathy Student Action & Goal Setting
UOI 3 Sharing the Planet

At the start of each UOI we lay out our 6 goals and then together we brainstorm a definition for each one, and what action we can take to help us achieve each of the 6 goals. 




I like to keep things simple with the little ones so we choose either 1 or 2 definitions and then post it up on Our Goals board. Students then reflect on the chosen Learner Profiles, Attitudes and Skills and self-evaluate. 

Thinking Skills - Goal Setting & Action UOI 3 Sharing the Planet

They then choose 2 goals from the 6 that they will focus on during our UOI. I usually encourage them to choose 1 goal that they will take Personal Action for to achieve, and 1 goal in which they can take Local or Global Action for to achieve. They then write their goals down on a reflection sheet that they will complete later at the end of the Unit of Inquiry. Students  also write their name and their 2 goals on a star that is put up on our Action board.

Learner Profile - Reflective Goal Setting & Action
UOI 3 Sharing the Planet

I then write their names on a yellow star next to their goals so that their goals are visible to them and we refer to Our Goals board every morning during our Morning Meeting time.

Learner Profile - Caring   Goal Setting & Action
 UOI 3 Sharing the Planet

Action Star Board

Every morning I ask the students to share how they took action to work on their goals. When they share action that they've taken, I place a colour coded sticker on their Action star. 

Learner Profile goals get a yellow sticker, Skill goals a red sticker, and Attitudes get a green sticker. The stickers act as visual reminders and they can see which goal they need to work on and it helps me to see which students are making connections and able to talk about their learning and action taken from learning. 

This also allows us to always be going through the Action Cycle (Choose, Act, Reflect). If students have not shared for a few days, then we encourage them to choose 1 of their goals for that day and really try to work on it, by the next day, they usually have something to share and reflect on. 

My little monkeys are very eager to share the action that they have taken. Every morning I'm amazed at some of the ways my students have made connections and the examples they give me of how they have taken action at home or at school. I have so many students eager to share their action every morning that I've had to make a schedule for Action sharing so that all students are getting equal opportunities to share their action. Red stars share on Mondays, Blue on Tuesdays, Green stars on Wednesdays, Orange stars Thursdays, Yellow stars on Fridays. Once all the students who's day it is have shared I then open up the floor to everyone. 

Ariel and I also keep a watch out for the students that struggle with being able to identify action that they've taken. Sometimes we will share an example of action taken that we've seen from these students if they are having trouble identifying it on their own. This is by far the most success I've had with student goal setting and action taking. If students are not reminded daily of their goals and given a chance to reflect and see their progress, they easily forget about their goals.

UOI 3 Sharing the Planet - Student Goal Setting
Learner Profiles - Caring, Knowledgable & Reflective
Approaches to Learning - Communication Skill & Thinking Skills
Attitude - Empathy & Cooperation

At the end of the Unit of Inquiry we count all the stickers and decide if they reached their goals or if they still need to work on their goals, there's that Action Cycle again! If the student was able to share at least 5 ways in which they took action to work on their goal, then they earn their "banana" for that goal. The bananas again act as a visual reminder and show off their progress and growth throughout the year. My students are very proud to show off their success to their parents and are able to explain WHY and HOW they earned each banana wether it be a Learner Profile banana, Attitude banana, or Skill banana. Their ability to speak about their goals and action makes me so INCREDIBLE HAPPY!

Students earn a "banana" with their goal printed on it
when they have taken action to achieve their goal.

At the end of the UOI we go back to the reflection sheet and the students fill it out and either draw pictures or write about the action that they took to earn their banana. If they didn't earn both of their banana goals we then ask them to identify what further action they can take to achieve it. I only have a few students that constantly struggle with self-improvement and achieving their goals. If they haven't achieved their goals yet by the end of the UOI, we do have them choose new goals, but we then continue to verbally remind them of their previous goals. When we think that child has shown significant progress and has achieved their learning goals, their efforts are then acknowledged and their progress (in the form of a banana) is added to their "Monkey."

I'm curious to know, how do other PYP teachers encourage Action and Student Goal Setting in your classrooms ? How do you focus on developing the attributes of the Learner Profile, Attitudes and Skills? Leave me a comment and I'll share my action goal setting reflection sheets with you.

So last week we asked our students to bring in plastic containers, tin cans, buttons, ribbons, and anything else that they found in their recycling or trash that inspired them. We then gave them a challenge..... Make something new and useful! We told them that they couldn't make a toy or a sculpture but had to make something that served a useful purpose. Ariel and I plugged in the glue guns and gave them some books and websites to look at and then let their little minds explore and create! 
I took a "before" picture of their items and then an "after" picture of their creation. I made a powerpoint with the photos and had each student record their voice over their picture saying our version of Eric Carle & Bill Martin's book "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?" We changed the poem to include each student's name and then what they created. We used the audio recording app on powerpoint because in the new term we will be creating e-portfolios so that we can keep easier records of student's speaking abilities. I will add each individual student's part in our "Grade One, Grade One, What Do You See?" powerpoint to their own individual e-portfolios once we get them started. This is not my original idea, I found this idea on Pinterest and the original blog post can be found here.

                                "Finn, Finn, what do you see?"

                               "I see a drum looking at me!"

"James, James, what do you see?"

"I see a pencil holder, looking at me!"

"Raymond, Raymond, what do you see?"

"I see a piggy bank looking at me!"

My little monkeys absolutely LOVED this inquiry and they made some really creative things! In English we have been learning how to re-tell stories and we still wanted to make and create so we made some re-telling rope using old ribbons and recycled paper! This idea again came from Pinterest. Find the original blog post here. Every time one of my students brings a birthday cake to school all tied up with ribbon we add the ribbon to our craft box, we had just enough to make 24 re-telling ropes. We also re-used all the leftover divider paper from their progress folders to cut out the circles. The kids really enjoyed making these as well and they got to personalize them and add their own creative flare. 

Story Re-telling Rope - Made with old ribbons and reused paper. 

Our New Year Resolutions for the Earth! Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Replace!

As our current Unit of Inquiry is Conservation, we decided to make some resolutions to be more Earth friendly. We have been learning about the 3 R's, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle and we've been discussing as to wether or not the 3 R's are enough. As a class we brainstormed other ways to help the Earth and to live a more sustainable lifestyle. We looked through some books and checked out some websites about conservation and we came up with a few extra R's to add to the list. Our favourites are Refuse and Replace. We decided that Refuse should be the first R to live by. We made a list of things we can Refuse because we now have better and cleaner options. Styrofoam was the number one choice of what we can Refuse, I can't believe as a society that we still accept that stuff!! REFUSE STYROFOAM! We also talked about what actions we should be Refusing to accept, such as littering. Some of my little monkeys suggested that we should be Refusing to hurt animals. A few of them made New Year Resolutions to Refuse to squish bugs, this just melted my little eco-heart. Have you read "Hey Little Ant" by Phillip M. Hoose??? It's a cute little book that shows the perspective of an ant, it's a great read to spark a conversation about empathy and/or perspective.

Our second R, Replace, came from several of the books we were reading. Many books about conservation recommend planting trees and flowers to Replace the ones that we use in our daily lives. We all really liked this idea and talked about other natural resources that we can help by Replacing them, such as collecting rain water. We also figured out that we can help the Earth by Replacing older energy consuming products with cleaner energy saving options such as CFL lightbulbs. 


REFUSE, REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE & REPLACE FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE!

Unit of Inquiry - Conservation

Unit of Inquiry - Conservation

Unit of Inquiry - Conservation

Unit of Inquiry - Conservation

Our garden is still growing! For 6 wonderful weeks we went out every morning to water and measure the growth of the plants in our garden. Our Math Investigation into measurement is over, but we still go out at the end of everyday to water our garden and check on it's progress. 

Measuring Our Garden - It was fun to watch the beans sprout from their seeds! 

Measuring Our Garden - We used links to measure the length of the cucumber and squash vines.

Measuring Our Garden - We used linking cubes to measure the height of the peas and beans.

It's 2014 already, when did that happen??

Where did the last 6 weeks go???? December is always a crazy busy month for EVERYONE but I think it's especially crazy for teachers! AND I'M STILL NOT ON HOLIDAYS! Say what? Yup that's right, no Christmas holidays for us hard working teachers in Taiwan :( Thankfully I have a nice 3 week long holiday soon for Chinese New Year. 2 more weeks to go, I can do it!

Alright due to the Grade 1 led assembly, December assessments, Christmas celebrations (I took the day off from work),  and just general business, I'm a little behind with blogging, so get ready for a month of blog posts all together!

Juicing with 7 Year Olds - Action in the Kitchen

Last Friday we had a field trip day to put into action what we have been learning in our inquiry into health. We hiked up one of the surrounding mountains in the morning, I think it's called Fongshen Mountain? We had perfect hiking weather, overcast and cool!

Hiking Field Trip - UOI 2 Health

Hiking Field Trip - UOI 2 Health

We told the students that we would be making healthy juice by juicing fruits and vegetables. We asked them to think of a fruit and a vegetable that they would like to drink the juice from, or a fruit and vegetable that they have NEVER tried the juice from and to bring it to school. We had all sorts of different fruits and vegetables to try! Dragon-fruit, BROCCOLI, guava, bok choy, cabbage, melon, so much variety! 

Juicing with 7 year olds - Action in the kitchen UOI 2 Health

While Ariel and I were preparing the fruit and veggies, we had the students draw a picture of themselves and describe the changes to their body that they noticed while hiking. We talked about strengthening our heart, lungs and muscles while hiking and what happens to our body when we exercise so this activity acted as a quick assessment of their learning and allowed us the time we needed to get everything ready to juice.

What happened to your body while hiking? 

What happened to your body while hiking? 

We made HOT PINK healthy juice!! It was delicious! We combined carrots, dragon-fruit (the pink fruit), guava, cucumbers, and some wax apples. Everybody loved this juice and all my little monkeys were sporting hot pink juice moustaches, so adorable. They loved watching the juice come out of the juicer, the mixing of the colours and touching, smelling, eating the pulp as well.  We made 4 different kinds of mixed fruit and veggie juices and then juiced cucumbers by themselves and juiced broccoli by itself as we had some curious students and RISK-TAKERS that wanted to try just cucumber juice and STRAIGHT BROCCOLI JUICE! It was such a blast and all the students seemed pleasantly surprised at how good the juice was without adding any sugar!

Hot Pink Juice! Juicing with 7 year olds - Action in the kitchen

We had the students record their observations and rate each juice and juice mixes. We got a little carried away with our juicing experiments and didn't end up recording all of our data, but hey, it happens :)

UOI 2 Health - Action in the Kitchen!

After our heathy juice experiments we learned how to make Ants on a Log! I wrote the procedure for "How to Make Ants on a Log" on the whiteboard (yes I managed to review our text type during a field trip day!) and then we passed out the celery, raisins, peanut butter and knives and they went to town making their healthy snacks. They all loved the Ants on a Log snack as well and couldn't believe it was a "healthy" snack! Celery is not a very common vegetable in Taiwan and majority of the students had never eaten it, and none of them had ever eaten celery raw, but they all really liked it. Ariel had never had this snack before either until last year when I introduced it to her, she's also a big fan now of celery and peanut butter! I love sharing new things! I was so busy filling up juice cups and cutting more celery that I forgot to take a picture of our Ants on a Log snack. Luckily my amazing co-teacher Ariel was snapping pictures like crazy so I will be able to snag one from her and post it soon. That's all for now. 

Taking Action & Planting a Garden

Our current Math Investigation is all about MEASUREMENT! We try and integrate our Math Investigations with our current Unit of Inquiry and plan fun engaging investigations in which students can take action and apply their math skills in the real world. 

We posed the questions, "what does a vegetable garden look like and what does it need?" and had students draw a picture of a garden in their inquiry journals. Almost all the students drew pictures of nice straight lines of plants and identified that a garden needs water and sun. As our last Unit of Inquiry was all about how we organize ourselves, students also identified that a garden is organized in rows and some gardens have labels to identify the type of plant. 

We then had students expand their thinking further and asked them to think what Math skills would be needed to plant a garden. Students engaged in a Think Pair Share (think big, pair with a partner and share your thoughts) and then each pair shared with the class and together we made a list of possible Math skills we could use. We will be using lots of different Math throughout this investigation but our main focus is on developing our estimation skills and measuring length and height. 

The students then organized themselves into groups and we discussed what kinds of vegetables we will be growing in our garden and how to plant each vegetable. We are growing cucumbers and squash so that we can measure how long their vines will grow, and we are growing peas, beans, and onions to measure how tall they grow. We then decided to also plant carrots, radishes, and lettuce because we know these vegetables are healthy for us. 

Each group of students were given pink yarn as their measuring tool and together as a team they needed to measure out equal rows in their garden. Once they all agreed on where their rows should be they used a shovel and made a row by estimating how deep the row should be. Students then planted their seeds and estimated how far apart they should be and had to make sure that they had enough seeds to fill their rows. We will see how good their estimating skills were when the seeds start to sprout! We are hoping for nice even rows :) 

Working up the soil in the garden plots.

Working up the soil in the garden plots.

Rows have been measured and seeds planted!

UOI 2: Who We Are - Tuning In Stations

It's already week 2 of our second Unit of Inquiry!!  Our UOI 2 is Health, and before giving the students any information about the UOI we had them explore some tuning in stations to help draw on their prior knowledge and make some connections. Students had 6 minutes in each station, 4 minutes to explore and 2 minutes to write their thoughts on what was in each station. We asked them to think what each topic the station was about and record it in their Learning Journals. 

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Food

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - External Body Parts

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Good & Bad Choices

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Internal Body Parts

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Exercise 

UOI 2: Health - Tuning In Station - Good & Bad Choices

After the students had explored each station we had them share what they thought each station was about. As a class we then came up with a title for each station and students recorded this title in their Learning Journals using a different colour. We had them use a different colour so we could see their original thoughts on each station to see who was able to make the connections and identify what each station was about. Our last UOI was Organized Community and we practiced our sorting skills lots, so many students thought the topic of each station was sorting or puzzles. After we discussed each station we then asked the students to think what each station had in common and to think what our next UOI could be. It didn't take them long to figure out that our UOI 2 was about health! All station materials except the inner body model and the Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head are from Lakeshore Learning. Our first line of inquiry is about the human body and our concept is Form so the Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head and the human body model station will be out all week for the students to explore. 

Global Read Aloud!

Have you heard about the Global Read Aloud? It's like the coolest idea! And such a GREAT way to help my little monkeys make connections and develop their global minds! The GRA is just what it says, books being read at the same time around the world. Check out the website to learn more and the wikispace to help get you started. The wikispace should help lead you to the Edmodo group for your age group and then before you know it you will be making connections with classes all over the world just like us!! Ok, so far we have only been talking to different Grade 1 classes in the U.S but our global trackers tell us that a class in India has also checked out our class blog. Oh right, I started ANOTHER BLOG, which is why I have been neglecting this blog. Still working on that time management thing ;)

So the Global Read Aloud is from September 30th to November 8th and this year's books are all Eric Carle books! Last week we read "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and today we read "Have You Seen My Cat?" We have been recording our thoughts and questions on our class blog through kidblog. Check it out kidblog.org/teacherjackiesclassblog

I've been setting a timer at the start of class and using 10 minutes a day for GRA activities and to read the comments on our blog and respond. The students are LOVING it so far and have so many questions for our American friends. I can't wait to see how many connections we make in the next 5 weeks! Tomorrow we are going to start mapping our connections!

This week I introduced 2 more puppets to my class, Capital Cam and Punctuation Patty.

Capital Cam and Punctuation Patty generally come out together and give out double cheek kisses during writing if students remember to use a capital letter to start their sentences and punctuation to end their sentences. Both puppets came in a set of 8, buy yours here.

Capital Cam - On Thursday Capital Cam came to our English class (a 50 minute period, once a day), and taught my students all about CAPITAL LETTERS and when to use them. After the students met Capital Cam, they practiced using capital letters in the 4 main ways that Capital Cam introduced to them. While the students are writing, Capital Cam loves to circulate and give out high 5's and kisses to all the students that are using capital letters properly. Capital Cam arrived last year in Grade 1 and has made his permanent home here. I absolutely love using him to reinforce the proper use of capital letters during writing time. I would have had liked to make a new anchor chart for him this year, but our large flip chart paper is an extremely precious resource as it is ordered from Lakeshore Learning and shipping costs are high. So in the name of conservation I just went over everything again with markers as the hot Taiwan sun had faded it pretty bad.

Teaching with Puppets - Capital Cam reinforces the proper use of capital letters during writing. Just noticed that one of my students photo bombed my pic haha. 

Punctuation Patty - On Friday, Capital Cam's girlfriend, Punctuation Patty, moved into our classroom and taught the students all about punctuation! The students then practiced writing sentences and questions using periods, question marks and exclamation marks. Punctuation Patty then made her rounds and gave out kisses and high 5's to everyone that used punctuation properly. Capital Cam and Punctuation Patty generally come out together and give out double cheek kisses during writing if students remember to use a capital letter to start their sentences and a period to end their sentences. Using puppets to reinforce punctuation and capital letters is one of my favourite tools that I use in my classroom. Students begin to immediately self-correct their writing as soon as they see my little puppet friends come out! I might use another precious piece of imported flip chart paper to make her a new anchor chart as I would like to add '"commas" to the list of punctuation. Or I might make a 2nd anchor chart to introduce further punctuation for my students that are ready to use more in their writing. As of now, periods, question marks and exclamation marks are enough to learn to use properly for my little EAL monkeys!

Teaching with Puppets - Punctuation Patty reinforces the use of proper punctuation during writing. 

Math Stations!

Ariel and I try to integrate Math as much as possible with our current Unit of Inquiry. We create Math Investigation booklets as well as bilingual work booklets. As our UOI is all about organization, we have been tuning into how numbers help keep us organized. We spent the first few weeks pre-assessing and reviewing and have now started some of our Math Stations. The Primary Department just purchased buckets of coloured manipulatives and I was lucky enough to be the first to snag them (they haven't even been officially checked into the library, shhhh!), and created some quick math stations to reinforce skip counting and sorting.  My little monkeys are LOVING the stations and the manipulatives are just so cute! Manipulatives are hard to find in Taiwan (despite the fact that EVERYTHING seems to be made here), so I'm super happy that our Director found these! We usually have to order everything from North America and due to budget and shipping costs, we have limited math resources.

Counting Station - Counting by 2's, 5's or 10's. Students choose a way to count and then draw how they counted their objects.  

Sorting Station - Students choose a way to sort and then draw how they sorted their sea creatures. This student sorted by topic. 

Sorting Station - Students choose a way to sort and then draw how they sorted their sea creatures. This student sorted by colour.  Aren't these manipulatives adorable!

How We Organize Ourselves - UOI Organized Community

Our first Unit of Inquiry is Organized Community. I love starting the year with this UOI because it gives us lots of time to set up classroom routines and procedures. We are already in week 4 and we have done tons of great things to explore the lines of inquiry and concepts, but I thought I would post my favourite activity so far.

 Tuning In & Sorting Out - We posed the question, "how is our classroom organized?" and the students walked around and used their observation skills to identify different ways. The students noticed that labels and baskets were used the most, and that everything was sorted in one way or another. We decided that "sorting" was a major way in which we organize ourselves, and that we also use a lot of "tools" to keep us organized such as baskets, name stickers and schedules. As the students identified each tool and method of sorting, I took a picture of it. We then took all of our photos and decided to make a large concept map to organize our thinking and learning. My little monkeys are still developing their writing skills in both English and Chinese so Ariel and I wrote the titles and had the students use sticky tack to put up pictures of our classroom under the correct titles. We are still tuning into other ways in which we organize Grade 1, and will be adding to our concept map soon.

Last year I was given permission (which is extremely hard to get at my school) to use chalk on one of the walls outside the classroom to save on paper. I use this chalkboard wall as a visual thinking tool for the students to reference and add to throughout the UOI's. I usually try to introduce one "thinking tool" per UOI and I picked a concept map for Organized Community.  As you can see, some curious student wiped away some of the Chinese already, but usually the students are pretty respectful of our chalkboard wall. And no this is not chalkboard paint, just a concrete wall with regular paint. Chalk washes off easily, except red chalk stains.

Going Further - After we finished the first parts of our concept map, the students were given their own concepts map and we went to the library and to the cafeteria to see if we could find evidence of sorting and identify organization tools used in the library and cafeteria. I was quiet impressed with how quickly they learned how to use a concept map and they were able to find so many different tools in the library that we don't use in the classroom! It was a great formative assessment of their learning thus far!

Did you celebrate International Dot Day??? We sure did! This was my first year taking part in International Dot Day and we had a blast showing off our creativity and making our mark! The students were first read the book "The Dot" by Peter H. Reynolds in Library class. My co-teacher then read the translated Chinese version to them and then we watched a video of it. As a class we discussed the book and linked it to the IB Learner Profile Attributes and Attitudes. My students decided that the book was about being a Risk-Taker and about having Confidence in yourself. We then got started on making our own dots. Some of the students used markers, some used crayons and the rest chose to paint their dots. It was supposed to be a whole school activity but I think only us and Grade 2 ended up doing it. Grade 2's dots are on the left and ours are on the right. Next year I hope to get the whole school involved!

Make Your Mark - International Dot Day September 15th ish

International Dot Day - September 15th ish

Teaching with Puppets

Do you teach with puppets? Last year I introduced puppets into my classroom and my students are absolutely in LOVE with them. They seriously go nuts, nothing has made my students laugh more than my puppets! They are such a great teaching tool. My students listen to EVERY word that they say. I use several puppets in my class and slowly introduce them. The first puppet I introduce is Walt. Walt is also the name of my objective board (We Are Learning To). I use Walt every day to remind the students what we are learning to do in each subject area. He acts as a good review tool and the students are always eager to answer Walt's questions to get a high five or a kiss from him.

Teaching with Puppets - WALT (We Are Learning To...) WALT is used to introduce our focus board and review what we are learning and why. 

Walt comes from a set of 8 puppets purchased through Lakeshore Learning.