It's almost time for our next IB Educators Chat event! This is happening Friday 7th May to Sunday 9th May. We have 25+ sessions being led by educators from around the globe! You do not need to register ahead of time - just click the links on the slide deck below, or on the agenda on the 'Upcoming Chats' page of our website.

Some presenters are recording their sessions - after the event I will upload those videos and add them to our recordings page.

I am extra excited about this event as I will be able to attend many of the sessions - when I ran this last time I was also teaching full-time, so often I missed out on the sessions! Hopefully see lots of you there. The next session will likely be after the summer.
Have a look through the slides to see what events we have - lots of great free PD on offer - let your colleagues know too.

I've probably lost my mind - and I blame being a new mum and lack of sleep - BUT I just had an idea for an activity for my students. This can be used for design or it can even be a homeroom/advisory activty. It could also be adapted for science class. This could also be a fun activity to do at the start or end of the year, or even a team buuilding exercise for staff!

The activity: Students will have a selection of different diapers. They have to determine which is the 'best' diaper. First they have to decide what makes a diaper good (how much it absorbs? How well it fits? How easy it is to put on the baby?). Then they create testing methods, gather data and decide which diaper is the best.

If each group picks a different diaper, the class can discuss why (bad testing methods? different factors for success prioritised). Lastly they can also discuss if having more knowledge of the family (their client) would have made them pick different factors for success.

I think students will have a lot of fun with this activity (anything that gets students thinking about poop and wee is normally successful). I put together a short presentation which you can find here.
The last slide is 'teachers notes' with more ideas for how to use this.

I've been keeping busy during my maternity leave! One of the things I have worked on is a guide for the new Personal Project for ManageBac. The guide is aimed at students and can be found here. 

On the page "Introducing the Personal Project" you can find a slide deck which can be used with your teachers, students and parents.

I'm also going to be running some online professional development to support MYP Coordinator and Personal Project Coordinators with understanding the new personal project. This will take place over five 90 minute, interactive sessions. You can get tickets here.

EL Magazine shared this graphic on Twitter. The graphic is from "Disciplinary Literacy: A shift that Makes Sense" by Releah Lent, in the February 2017 issue of ASCD Express. It gave me some food for thought, and I imagined how I could use this in the classroom. As a design teacher, I would obviously use this to have students discuss how designers read, write and think....or could be more specific, using engineers, computer scientists, graphic designers, architects, etc. This could be used to explore reading, writing and thinking in any subject, and can help teachers make the connection that all teachers, no matter their subject, are language teachers.

I put an activity together in this slide deck. Feel free to make your own copy and use this in your schools. I would love to hear what your students come up with.

Other ways to use this activity:

• Have teachers answer the question in relation to the individual discipline. This will help them understand how and why they are all language teachers.
• Give students a text/audio clip and have them re-word it, as if it was being communicated from a different disciplines lens, for example, you could give them a short speech from a politician, and get them to have a poet, activist, journalist or historian re-tell it!
• Another resource which I think related to the above activity is Oxfam's "Planning Research for Influencing Document" - Particularly section two, which shows different audiences and the types of evidence they respond to best!

A while back I posted aKey Concept card game - this is a lot of fun to do with students and has led to some great conversations. This morning I thought of two more games in the shower - so threw them together for you all! I'm currently on maternity leave, so won't have a chance to use these with my students yet - but would love to know if you use them! I would also love to see your students thoughts! 

Key Concepts - FIND-A-PIC
The first game has students find images to represent different key concepts. You could use this activity to introduce your units key concept, or you could use many of the slides, so students explore a range of key concepts. You could do this as a short starter or exit ticket activity or you could make it last longer by having students explain and justify their answers through a class conversation. You can also use a digital space, like a slide deck, jamboard or padlet for students to leave their images - this way would save you time and you could even set it as homework. A nice way to wrap up the activity is have students select one of the images the class has shared, which they best think fits the key concept. You can also have students explain and justify their selection and reflect on how their understanding of the concept has changed after seeing their peers' photographs. I recommend having students find images on Unsplash - as these are free to use and usually pretty beautiful.

Here's a link to the slide deck. Feel free to make your own copy and use. You could also add in the PYP concepts.

Key Concepts - Pick-A-Concept
This is basically the opposite of the first game! Instead of students finding a photograph to match a concept, they will see a photograph and should explain which concept they think goes best. In the slide deck I've added some examples from unsplash, as well as some photographs from the Guardian's 20 Photos of the Week - as this is a great way to bring current global and local issues into the classroom!
Again, this activity can be as short or long as you want. You could add in images which specifically relate to your unit, for example, artworks for an art unit, book covers for a literature unit, inventions for a science unit...
Here's the link to the presentation. Feel free to make your own copy. 

I had the pleasure of delivering one of the two keynotes for the MYP Planning Symposium for Toddle last Saturday. I focused on reflective planning, starting with individual reflection, reflecting with teaching partners, reflective through feedback from other teachers, of other subjects and age ranges, with feedback from students and then through sharing with the wider IB community.

130 people filled in the survey about IB Educator Chats. You can see the responses above.
Summary: People are pretty flexible! There is a preference for workshops and webinars, over discussions. People want sessions to run around 45 minutes, and have a preference for Zoom. Most people want sessions in the evenings and over the weekend (including Fridays). Most of the people who filled in the form are in Asia or North America! There's a preference for MYP sessions, but also an interest in other sessions. Basically, you are all wonderfull and flexible and willing to try lots of things!

Based on the feedback - we will have our first IB Educator Chat session running from Friday 7th of May to Sunday 9th of May! As people are all over the world (in different time zones) I've added the option for people to run a session twice.  Most of the participants are in North America of Asia, but I am in Europe, so I am inbetween the two time zones - this makes it easy for me to run sessions that suit both groups, but I know it is is not easy for others, so there is no pressure for those signing up to run a session!

I've changed the Google Form, where people express an interest in running a session, so that I can just share the form responses! This will make it much easier for me and also means that when someone chooses to run a session, it will be added to the list instantly!

If you are interested in running a session - please fill in this form.
If you want to see what sessions people have already signed up to run - look here!

Reminder: All sessions are unofficial,  informal, peer-to-peer. No one is representing the IB.