End of Term 3 Reflections.....IPC

At the end of our first IPC term, we held an art exhibition showing all the learning and hard work students and teachers completed over the 9 weeks.  This was the culmination of the children's research and understanding of our active planet - volcanoes, and earthquakes.  Also, the production of visual arts pieces that were integrated or added to the unit.  It was great seeing so many families visit our school-wide exhibition. Here are some pictures of the children's work.

The first reflection would be how it surprised me how engaged and motivated the children were around the big idea and concept of "our active planet."  Being a believer in student agency, choice and inquiry learning I didn't think the structure, the knowledge and research components of IPC would engage the children, but by golly it did! Notably, children who would not necessarily engage with the curriculum otherwise.  It calls to question, do children want and need more structure in our classrooms?  Do they want to learn knowledge?  I think the answer is a balance of this - may be some of our teaching pedagogy has swung too much to independent, self-directed learning?  

I also wonder if the engagement will carry over to a different unit?

The second reflection would be that we now need to think about moving to an integrated curriculum.  IPC should be taught daily throughout the day, not as a one-off, one hour lesson each day.  The problem is resourcing particularly in the area of leveled and suitable reading material.  It takes a lot of time locating and finding IPC resources suitable for our children and their needs, so it is difficult to see everything being taught through IPC.  Writing can be successfully integrated, however, there is little mathematics (some strand) but additional lessons would need to be developed so number could be focused on.  Could the school build reading material up over time?  Do we have the budget for 2019 to buy reading material for all levels across the school?

Thirdly, I have enjoyed planning and assessing collaboratively with my co-teacher and teaching in this way.  The biggest challenge has been having over 50 kids in a single-cell space when delivering IPC through co-teaching.  The noise is challenging even when it is on-task discussions or group work contributing to the noisy environment.

I look forward to making changes that Megan and Mary suggested from their observations and interviews of our children in term 4.