Parvin Peivandi , IB reflection, Dec 3^rd, 2014

This IB seminar was about reporting in the IB, internal assessment and external assessment. The new assessment system that is employed in IB is cumulative and students have the whole year to continue working on meeting the same objectives. Also no averages are taken. I learned a lot about the things that IB teachers should avoid in the assessment: Teachers should avoid grading based on the proportion of scores for class work, homework and test. Teachers should not averaging summative performance score over the year and teachers should not determine the final grade by looking at one single piece.

All these criteria got me reflecting on my own education, old, traditional schooling which still exist in many educational system. In the old educational systems without all these assessment sheets, rubrics and disciplines, there was no respect for the students’ rights and grades are mostly affected by the personal preferences and judgments of the teachers. Students do not have chance to show their progress and be assessed over the year and any fail is counted in their final grade. There is no need to say how much frustration the old traditional system would bring for the students and how it can influence the students’ motivation for learning and growth. In comparison, the IB education lets the student to achieve the educational objectives and goals over the year and feel responsible always to correct their mistakes and progress. IB education motivates the students to learn and think profoundly rather than performing just for the time of final exams.

Parvin Peivandi, IB Reflection, Nov. 27^th, 2014

Learning about the ATL skills in IB education, got me reflecting on my own practice and how much did I considered these skills in designing my unit plans before? I think the most remarkable aspect of the IB education is its systematic approach and in developing the important skills that students need to function well in society. IB education emphasizes both on self-reflection as well as the teachers’ reflection. Some of the great ATL skills that I like to consider in my unit plans are self-reflection skills, organization skills, collaboration skills, creative thinking skills, critical thinking skills and Affective kills.

Affective skills seem more challenging for me as I ask myself how can I design a unit plan in which this ATL skill is considered: How can students manage their own state of mind? This is the area that I feel I need to do research more and studies in order to help my students better to improve themselves.

I think considering all the ATL skills as approaches to learning and also Approaches to teaching (ATT) in IB education makes the IB education distinct and separate from the non-IB education, the education that makes the future generation more responsible and risk takers to solve the problems of the world. This got me reflecting on my huge responsibility as well to make my skills and knowledge in a great level to satisfy my student’s needs.

Parvin Peivandi, IB reflection, Nov. 20^th, 2014

Introduction of the summative assessment in IB was the goal of this IB seminar. I learned how this systematic approach of IB assessment for the art is more efficient than assessment in non-IB setting. When I design my summative assessment in this format, I write a background info that has the IB objectives in it; it is like starting the road with the map in hand. The assessment task sheets are also useful and I found them really useful in assessing the student’s works without the interference of personal preferences or biased opinions.

What I observed in my short practicum was that the Art teacher was really fair and had a very similar task sheet that he had mentioned the criteria before. I am asking myself what should I consider in the summative assessment of my unit plan to judge the students’ works fairly? How can I deal with those students who are not satisfied with their grades? What are the solutions?

Parvin Peivandi, IB reflection, Nov. 12^th, 2014

This seminar was devoted mostly to sharing the experiences of short practicum and it was great to hear what other teachers have done and have learned in their practicum. It was interesting to see what the other peers felt or observed was some how similar to my own observation.

Definitely short practicum was a very useful experience for all of us to be prepared for the long practicum, but it also was disappointing for some of the student teachers. Definitely all we read in theories do not come into real practice at schools, but I believe the real pedagogy has stemmed from those fixed theories. Contrary to some of my peers who felt upset about the difference between theories and practice, I felt there was a very natural and reasonable adjustment of the pedagogy at school. Rules are there that we learn, but there are not written on stones and we can modify our pedagogy based on the classrooms’ climate. I ask myself what I am learning as an educator for myself? How can I improve myself at first place? As educators, I believe we should learn to be flexible and tolerant and adjusting ourselves to the new situations and contexts is a great skill that we should all practice.

Parvin Peivandi, IB reflection, Oct 26^th, 2014

This week, the IB seminar was very useful for preparing us for the short practicum. I planned what should I observe, ask, or do in short practicum. I intended to observe the international minded education in the classroom, the way teacher teaches based on the multi cultural nature of the school and the way he designs his lesson plans with globally minded education and up to date Information. I picked two goals of the education in the IB seminar as the areas of my interest:

The goal of education is preparing children for citizenship and also to teach them cultural literacy. I found the base and the most important of all of the educational goals is critical thinking. If we teach students to think critically, they stay away from the biased information, judgments and assumptions. If students learn to think profoundly about every thing they see or receive, they will be open-minded and can function or compete in international settings more successfully.

I reflect on my visit of ST. John’s IB school and how the art teacher designed her lesson plan to improve the critical thinking of her students. She taught perspective successfully by creating many analytical questions before project and after project that made students really engaged in the subject matter, the challenge and problem solving solutions for fixing the perspective drawings.

I am asking myself that how can I design my lesson plans to improve the critical thinking of the students? How can I teach them to be more innovative in 21^st century? What should I bring from contemporary art to the class to give students recent information of the field?

Parvin Peivandi, IB Reflection, October 16^th, 2014

In the IB seminar this week, I had chance to show my IB journals to one of my classmates: Rachael. I asked her to write some notes for me about the IB reflections that she reads and her feedback was really helpful. She highlighted the strengths of my IB reflections such as: great questions, use of IB vocabulary, thoughtful observations, great connections to other courses and my real experiences. She noted also few grammar mistakes.

Reflecting on this experience in our IB seminar,I found peer feedback assessment as a strong educational tool that I can use more in my future classes. As I have learned in human development and psychology course, Scaffolding is a technique that I can use to empower the students in need by the help of their peers. Now, peer feedback is another scaffolding technique that I can use in my IB pedagogy. Due to the challenging and rigorous nature of IB education, I believe more assistance and modification strategies should be considered in unit lesson plans such as peer feedback, formative assessment in the form of teacher’s feedback and also rubrics with student friendly language.

The idea of making the language of our education student friendly was amazing too. Few years ago, I have experienced a hard time as a student in some of my classes in which the teacher was teaching with a complicated language and challenging vocabularies. Also the speed of the presentation is an important factor that has a huge impact on the student’s learning. Also, I remember in our teaching methodology class at UBC, how one of the previous graduates of UBC talked about her mistake in delivering materials fast and in a complicated language that made her class fell behind the curriculum.

With all of these useful hints, there are some great questions here: How long should be devoted to peer feedback in each unit plan? What should be the criteria of successful, unbiased peer feedback? How should I make as a rubric for peer feedback to guide the students? What should be concluded, what not? And why student friendly language is so important in teaching technical vocabularies in art classes? What visual elements should be added to rubrics for the ESL students?