This year, I started a new role in an international school in China. I am a middle school social studies, but also teach an elective to high school students. The elective is based on the International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge course.
When I was designing the course, I was a bit concerned because TOK is a complex course. The IB sets out the course as a philosophical and epistemological course. So, creating a scope and sequence along with appropriate evaluations can be challenging. However, I was ready and up for it. I created a scope and sequence for the elective, creating four units: Unit 1 – The 4Cs of Education, Unit 2 – What is Knowledge, Unit 3 – Interdisciplinary Connections and Unit 4 – Real Life Examples and Case Studies.
Now that it is January, we are well into Unit 1. In this post, I will reflect on how that has gone. Unit 1 focuses on the 4Cs of education – communication, creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration. We have had several lessons on each of these ‘skills”. On introducing the unit to my students, I explained that this unit is going to be skills based, where we are going to discuss these skills, do activities to develop them and, most importantly reflect as a way to consolidate learnings.
We have had activities and discussions on a variety of topics that touch upon these skills, such as active listening, body language, tone, leading a discussion, presentation skills, divergent thinking and so on. For example, in an activity on the importance of tone, I had students work in pairs, memorize a single dialogue, and act it out in different scenarios, including a robot and his designer, two people that are almost deaf and a detective/criminal. The same dialogue sounded completely different based on the situation. This activity highlighted how tone and body language are key vehicles in the communicative process.
The students seem to enjoy the discussions and activities we have, because they are student centric and participative in nature. My methodology is such – getting students to experience and learn by doing. After we finish an activity, discussion and/or evaluation, I have my students reflect. And this is where the challenge lies. Reflecting is an inherent part of the learning process. Educationalist John Dewey’s quote puts it aptly: “We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience”. In another post, I will reflect on how I get my students to reflect!