Chapter 5

Every so often, our commanders-in-chief ask me to speak to parents about the MYP program. I have a fancy-schmancy power point that I show and talk about how great the IB- MYP program is, but it is hard to define for the parents. Truthfully, it was hard to define the difference between IB and non-IB for me until I had about six months experience with attempting to implement IB teaching methods in my classroom. The “thing” that doesn’t make sense to most people is the areas of interaction. Now, I think I have found a great, tangible, explanation for parents, new teachers, and even students.

On page 98, Erickson states, “concept-based classroom structure learning so that students are invited to process factual material through their personal, conceptual mind. This invitation comes in the form of a conceptual lens: ‘I’d like to invite you to think aobut our earth system in terms of SUSTAINABILITY.’ The lens of SUSTAINABILITY invites the students to think beyond the facts of our earth system and construct personal meaning.”

That, in a nutshell, encompasses the meaning of the areas of interaction. I have had more than one trainer refer to the areas of interaction as the lens through which we ask the students to see the curriculum.

I liked that Erickson gave examples of ways to increase “brain power” in this chapter. With APPROACHES TO LEARNING as one area of interaction, I think it is key that we purposefully do thinks to engage “brain power.” I liked the activity described on page 101. This could be a homeroom activity fairly early in the year. I could see the grade level teachers devising a list of activities and the homeroom teachers introducing the activity and facilitating the follow up discussion. I also think the secondary activities described on pages 101 – 103 could be homeroom/advisory activities.

I like how this chapter referenced the term “best practices” as well. If you are not familiar with “best practices,” you should probably look up what your discipline says about them. Hint: you can go to google and search for your subject [ie – best practices in teaching language arts] to get several web sites. I think if you do this, you will see that the AIMS and objectives of the MYP match up well with these “best practices.”