To share or not to share the central idea…

… that is the question!

I’ve just completed a dance unit with my Grade 1 students. I intentionally did not share the central idea with them throughout the unit. I’ve heard of other PYP teachers doing this, so I wanted to try it and see what happened!

Having just completed the summative assessment for the unit, I then asked the students to try to write what they thought the central idea was. I explained that they needed to write, in one sentence, what they thought our whole unit was about. Here are my top two amazing attempts (my original central idea in the middle):

So close!

I decided to write a small reflection on here as I haven’t posted much lately!

What I discovered (generally) across the five Grade 1 classes:

1. Most students were able to identify the three related concepts of the unit (shape, movement, sequence).

2. Most students found it incredibly difficult to condense their understanding of the unit into one sentence.

3. Some students did not specifically know what a central idea was.

4. Some students took the easy way out and wrote sentences such as “It’s about dancing”.

5. Very few students produced anything like the two examples above!

As I am going back into the homeroom next year (yipppeeee!), this is certainly something I would try again, most likely towards the end of the year. So, looking forward, here’s what I hope to do with my class from the beginning of the year to ensure they have enough knowledge and understanding of central ideas to be able to complete a task such as the one above.

1. Explicitly, and constantly, use the vocabulary of the PYP with my students. Central idea, concepts, attributes, attitudes, skills, etc, etc, etc.

2. Explicitly unpack the central idea and constantly refer back to it. Discuss links between central idea and concepts with my students. They can handle it!

I’m sure there are many more ideas that I will come across over the next few months. Please feel free to leave your ideas as a comment below! 

#grade1 #PYP