I have found that completed rubrics or long checklists can be overwhelming when presented to students to use as a guide or an assessment for learning. Also it removes much of the learner agency opportunity. I would rather support voice, choice and ownership to construct understanding by using their surface learning to co-create success criteria. To ensure we started with the learner, I thought I would use their familiar terminology by posing two consecutive questions:
We began with remembering the first feature and asking, 'What does a good procedural text title look like?' Students quickly recalled that it needed to begin with How To... Then we asked, 'What would make a How To title better?' We thought for while and decided on punctuation which drew in their prior knowledge from other texts. We ruled up a table in our learning journals to copy our agreed success criteria down and then moved through each feature repeating this process. Each time students build on the ideas of their classmates and continued to draw on their prior knowledge such as types of sentences, parts of speech and so on. To continue deep learning we then used our completed Good-Better Checklist to assess our earlier written procedure from surface learning. We gave each Good-Better success criteria a point or score. We used the columns like a continuum to indicate our level of achievement. We circled the criteria we missed to indicate our targets for growth.
Students were now ready to transfer their learning by applying what they had learned and by using their co-created Good-Better Checklist to write procedures during our unit of inquiry.
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Today Math was LOUD and a load of fun. Why wouldn’t it be when you mix the Cartesian Plane and chocolate eggs. I’m not usually one for sweets in class but if my students are bringing them in to share with each other (as predicted by me at this time of year) then I may as well plan to make it into Math.
All details are from www.visiblethinkingpz.org and incorporate their basic outline of their routine and the purpose for that routine (with further details such as application and launch can be found on their website). There are five categories to explore and begin incorporating in your daily practice: CORE UNDERSTANDING TRUTH CREATIVITY FAIRNESS Once you are using these regularly, you may be inspired to modify or create a routine to suit your teaching or learning needs. 
Our unit of inquiry for Where We Are In Place And Time required a lot of reading about Australia in the 1800's. And this is where we feared our students would get stuck, remaining in a sea of a sequenced facts.
Although I am fortunate to have two walls of windows to create a bright and airy classroom, I am limited will available wall space. I usually staple a set of A4 paper pockets dedicated to each PYP element for students to access at anytime for their learning.
In this post I explain our collaborative planning experience as we revisit an established unit of inquiry, as well as, how that leads to teaching oneself and creating practical resources for our students in an attempt to make sense of it all. Planning and resources are shared.
Inspired by Leigh Ann's blog post, Math In A Unit Of Inquiry, I thought I'd also share my struggles to find an authentic way to bring Math front and centre to a unit of inquiry.
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Hi, I am Natasha Hutchins an international teacher collaborating, exploring and sharing ideas with others, like myself from around the world, for our collective professional development and enjoyment of learning and teaching.
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