Student Empowerment at WISS

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By WISS Admin | May 26, 2009

This past Monday presented another great opportunity for parents to learn about the Primary Years Program (PYP), which is being vigorously implemented at WISS.

Entitled “Empowering Students in the PYP”, this parent workshop aimed to explore ways in which the PYP empowers students and to share strategies to promote student action at WISS and at home. As in many previous PYP workshops for parents, focus groups were engaged in a variety of interactive tasks and a number of video clips, which allowed the parents to gain a picture of how students are empowered in everyday learning. The participants were first involved in discussing how WISS communicates the goal of empowering students through its Mission Statement. Then followed a video which highlighted the need to stimulate students and to enable them to have an active mind. Parents voiced their concerns such as how to walk the fine line between challenging and over challenging their children. WISS PYP Coordinator Rachel McLeod pointed out that “it’s important to help children embrace a can-do attitude, which would help accelerate the acquisition of new knowledge and skills in a new context as global citizens.”

The second discussion of the morning asked “What does empowering look like and feel like?” on the part of a student, a teacher, a school and a parent. It was reaffirmed that the cozy community feel WISS has been consistently delivering and the solid family-school partnership are crucial in empowering the students, who see their moms or dads at school and feel school and their family are interconnected in a natural way. “An essential component of the PYP is to nurture students to inquire and to involve them in taking ownership of their learning, in a non-threatening way”, said McLeod, “We value and build on student’s prior knowledge. They are always encouraged to bring to class tangible items such as photos and artifacts, something they can touch and feel, so that they can share something personal and then explore new knowledge and skills.”

In the PYP, provocations are “strategies teachers employ to promote student interest, stimulate questions, promote discussion and at times gauge what students already know and can do in relation to a new unit.” An interesting provocation example is the creation of “A Day of chaos” in Nursery class, on which the regular class teacher is replaced by a teacher from another grade who doesn’t know the ‘normal’ class and school routines. Students need to get themselves organized in going through the daily routine and activities such as attendance taking, circle time, story time and so on. In conjunction with that, their Unit of Inquiry would drive the students to further delve into the interconnectedness of human-made systems and communities, and the structure and function of organizations. Following that, the community members were provoked to envision “what would your day be like without fractions?” McLeod shared the dramatic impact on her life in a hypothetical situation where “Fractions had the day off”.

Student empowerment at WISS is also reflected in involving them in the design of assessment tools and evaluation of products or performance. For example, before they presented how to make tomato sauce, G1 students were asked to discuss and devise their presentation rubrics which broke down to detailed standards such as eye contact, voice, body language, and teamwork. Based on these rubrics, they directed and evaluated their own and peers’ performances.

Tips on empowering children include nurturing them to make informed decisions while shopping up and down the aisles in a supermarket. The parents shared their feedback and indicated what kind of workshops they look forward to in the next school year.

Thank you to the WISS community members for making this workshop such a worthwhile and inspiring sharing experience.

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