Summary of Week 1 Primary Years Programme Coordinator Meetings for  2011-2012:

Grade 1: Text/Literature-based program that covers all strands of teaching Language through a text i.e. Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking, Viewing, Presenting
Each teacher could take responsibility for finding a book and associated learning engagements
Consider using one text per week.
Reflection: Consider piloting Liberature-based Language programme and THRAS spelling program in Grade 1

Grade 2: No meeting
Reflection: Gather data about how Grade 2 approaches Spelling.

Grade 3: Gather data about what Grade 3 is doing for spelling.  They follow the Collins books.  Two options for summative assessment task assessing student understanding of Who We Are through communication, relationships and perpective. Create a checklist for assessing the student understanding.
Reflection: Find out what Collins book level the Grade 3 begins and ends with for Spelling.

Grade 4: Discuss the benefits of THRAS for Spelling Program across the school.  Gather data about how each grade level is approaching spelling.   

Grade 5: Discuss the benefits of THRAS for Spelling Program across the school.  Gather data bout how each grade level is approaching spelling.
Organize Math strands by Unit of Inquiry beginning with Where We Are in Place and Time and by dividing the textbook resource "PYP Integrated Math Year 5" into halves.  Try to accommodate strands addressed in the first half of the book (up to page 84) into Units if Inquiry 1-3 i.e. Who We Are (Unit 2) and Sharing the Planet (Unit 3).  Accomplished accommodating Measurement of time and distance, Data Handling of bar graphs, picture graphs and tally charts, Number sense of place value, addition/subtraction and multiplication.
Reflection: Consider piloting arranging Math by Unit of Inquiry using the textbook resource in Grade 5.

Specialists:
PE, Music, Mandarin and IT have shared their integration with the current unit of inquiry.
Arabic, Art and French have yet to meet with me.
Reflections: Librarians need to publish their library plans for each unit of inquiry in the Specialist integration document.

Quick recipe for pasta meal follows.  I dont know what its called but I learned it from a French friend who learned it from an Italian friend after a late night out.  Spaghetti cooked in olive oil with garlic and parmesan cheese.  Done.  A grip of spaghetti is thrown into boiling water on medium-high heat for 20 minutes.  Drain the water.  Generously add olive oil to a pan and throw in some sliced garlic cloves.  I use 3 garlic cloves for a grip of spaghetti.  Toss the spaghetti in and stir it around with some salt and pepper on top.  Sprinkle parmesan cheese.  I love parmesan on my pasta.  So, I don't sprinkle, I pile it on.  Over the past two years I've added my own ingredients: crushed chili pepper, basil and thyme.  Enjoy!

Where do we begin with curriculum mapping?  We understand the benefits of the completed process and the challenges of going through the process of mapping the curriculum.  As a curriculum coordinator, for an entire summer, I asked myself where to begin.  Do I read a book about it? Do I recommend purchasing mapping software?  After clicking through a presentation online and reading a few articles it is evident that we should avoid skipping steps.  The first step is to create a mapping committee.  Considering that teaching staff will be the ones recording the assessment, curriculum and instructional strategies, it hardly makes sense to have administrators dictating the tools to be used without the teachers' input.

Lesson #1 of Curriculum Mapping 101 is to create a Mapping Committee.

The Mapping Committee will determine:

Do you want to undertake this? Why?
To what extent?
What are the goals?
What are the costs?
Investigate mapping tools - select one.
Who will do this: The design, the decisions, the
data entry.
What is a reasonable timeline?
What professional development is needed?

Here's an article from the IBO...

PYP and MYP student performance measured

The Australian Council for Educational Research, a leading educational research organization, recently released the findings of an IB-commissioned study examining the performance of IB students and non-IB students on the International Schools Assessment (ISA).
On the whole, the results indicate that Primary Years Programme (PYP) and Middle Years Programme (MYP) students performed as well as or better than their non-IB peers across all four ISA assessment domains (math literacy, reading, narrative writing, and expository writing) in a majority of grade levels, with particularly strong differences in grade ten (15-16 years of age) math and expository writing. In addition, IB students’ ISA scores in grades nine (14-15 years of age) and ten compare favorably to PISA benchmarks in math and reading. The study also reviewed MYP moderation results from IB schools participating in the ISA and found that the MYP moderation results align strongly with ISA assessment areas and measure common skills. This finding provides evidence for the validity of the MYP moderation process.
The ISA is designed specifically for students in international schools worldwide and assesses student performance in Grades 3 to 10 (2 – 16 years of age). The math and reading components of the assessment are based on the reading and mathematical literacy frameworks of the OECD’s (Organisation for International Co-operation and Development) Programme for International Student Assessment. Last year, more than 49,000 students from 260 schools participated in the ISA.
The study sample included 23,575 IB students and 14,317 non-IB students across Asia and Oceania, Europe, Africa and the Americas, who participated in ISA administrations from 2007-2009. It is the first study of this scale to demonstrate that student performance in the PYP and MYP meets or exceeds the performance of non-IB peers.
A full summary of the results can be found on the IB website.
For further information about this study, contact the IB Research Department at ibru@ibo.org

Here is a scrambled mosaic of the photos we took.
It is just as busy as we were.

We had a full house for Reporting to Parents.
What a wonderful community building experience.
Thank you to everyone who came.

We applied the ancient art of Origami to make floating boats and thank our camp photographer.

Risk-taker? I think so!

We worked with others to prepare the museum for reporting to parents.

On Thursday, June 24th as a celebration of our year, Grade 3 is taking a trip to Children's City. The trip will cost 10 AED per child to cover the cost of transportation to and from school.  We look forward to exploring the city and doing the natural history workshop about fossils!

This is how we're going to get there.