Category: Middle Years Programme

  • Standardization Cycle 2.0

    Standardization Cycle 2.0

    How can an updated standardization cycle help avoid the challenges of the ‘moderation event’?

  • AI Feedback with CoPilot

    AI Feedback with CoPilot

    How can the GPT tools be used to give feedback on student writing samples against written descriptors?

  • Personal Project Quick Comment Spreadsheet

    Personal Project Quick Comment Spreadsheet

    UPDATE 2022: Thanks to Terea Marcum for updating this for the new Guide. Please click here to see her version. Thank-you!  Spreadsheet to help with comment generation and moderation of MYP Personal Project. It is a long job, particularly with large class sizes and teachers working across time zones. The comment bank aims to help…

  • The Buoyant Force: L2 Talk & FOEN Workshop

    The Buoyant Force: L2 Talk & FOEN Workshop

    This was a great challenge during the Learning2 Conference last week in Nanjing. It was my first time at the conference and I was looking for an experience that would push me and provide something to think about. I presented this short talk, and an extended session on Global Ignorance, Factfulness and Data-Informed Inquiry. You…

  • Reductive Rubrics, Authenticity & Opportunities for Learning

    A quick post to share an animated gif, made in the new Keynote 9 update. It is a rebuild of a lower-quality animation I made years ago and use often, inspired by a cartoon I saw but cannot track down again (and I’d love to find it). I have used it in the context of…

  • Make It Easier To Do Better Things

    A simple mantra, but one I hold onto as a learning/tech coach, leaned on as PK-12 Director of Learning and will cling to next year as MYP Coordinator. It was the “key concept” of my #HackTheMYP IBAP Conference session in 2017 and over the two years since I’ve been thinking about it a lot. When…

  • This year in #MYPChat

    This was a fun year in the #MYPChat PLN (professional learning community)!  We started the journey way back in 2013 with some seasons of weekly hour-long twitter chats based, going through the Next Chapter phase of MYP. Over the years, a warm and supportive PLN has developed and I’ve found the community a great help…

  • Creating Cultures of Thinking: Summary Cards

    I love Creating Cultures of Thinking by Ron Ritchhart of Project Zero at HGSE so much, and refer to it so often, that I made these aide-mémoire cards and chapter summaries, and I carry them with me for planning, coaching and collaboration meetings. The front side has a visual and chapter line, and the reverse…

  • Making Feedback Visible: Four Levels in Action

    Five years ago I was starting to become concerned with the difference between marking and feedback. What was making a difference to my students’ learning and was the effort I was putting into detailed marking worth it in terms of their improvement? In reading Hattie’s Visible Learning for Teachers, Wiliam’s Embedded Formative Assessment and the pdf…

  • Making Learning Visible in Parent-Student-Teacher Conferences

    “Children grow into the intellectual life around them.”  (Vygotsky, quoted by Ron Ritchhart) I really enjoy parent-student-teacher conferences. (I’d rather do more of these and less report writing, but that’s a different post.) Even with a limited time-slot (my last couple of schools have been 10mins), we have an opportunity to strengthen a home-school connection,…