Definitions of the PYP attitudes

In my class with 5-6 year old students we talk about the learner profile a lot. In my first years as a PYP teacher I found myself focusing mainly on the learner profile attributes (being Balanced, Caring, Communicators, Inquirers, Knowledgeable, Open-Minded, Principled, Reflective, Risk-Takers and Thinkers). Not only did the students need to learn the vocabulary, I had to get used to using these words myself.

Now that I have even started to use these words in my daily life outside the school walls, I have started to incorporate the attitudes as well in my daily teaching and assessing. In our current unit we focus on the attitudes of Empathy, Appreciation and Creativity. This week I had my students working on definitions of these words. This is what they came up with:

Empathy
- You think about other people's feeling.

- Caring about other people's feelings.

- You have to think about what you say, if it's good or bad.

- You think about what you do before you do it.

Creativity
 - Using your own ideas and put them into action.

- Try to make something new.

- Use it to make beautiful drawings and paintings.

- Use it to make sculptures.

- Think of new experiments.

- Think of new stories and jokes.

Appreciation
 - Something you like or love.

- Show is by telling people you like them or what they do.

 - Show it with your body (hugs, kisses, tickles)

- Show it by making cards.

- Show it by taking good care of things.

- Show it by taking care to do things properly.





These definitions didn't just fall from the sky into their heads. Before this activity, we had read many story books that had characters in them who demonstrated these attitudes. We had discussed these books and made connections to our own lives as learners. And now they were ready to describe these attitudes in their own words. We did this as a whole class activity, which was OK as I had only 15 students present that day. (In a class of 20 or more, I would have split them into smaller groups, tackling one attitude per group). All I had to do now, was write what they told me to write. And I put the comments in a more logical order after the students had given me their input.

I usually like to give the students credit for their work by writing their names next to their comments. On this blog however, I have blacked out the names for privacy reasons.