Professional Development update

How to implement critical thinking in classrooms - Dr Philip Balcaen

On 13 April 2010 fifty teaching staff from K-12 attended a full day workshop on “How to Implement Critical Thinking in Classrooms”, conducted by Dr. Philip Balcean which was well received. Dr.Balcaen teaches in the Faculty of Education at The University of British Columbia-Okanagan, Canada. He is an acknowledged authority in teaching critical thinking and has extensive experience working with educators across Canada in the US and in India.

During his full day workshop he covered the following topics:

During his full day workshop he covered the following topics:

Session 1: Introduction to teaching Critical Thinking

* Background to the pedagogy of Critical Thinking; What is it and why include a focus on critical thinking in your teaching?
* What does teaching critical thinking “look-like & feel-like”? An example!
* Three kinds of questions and considering “challenging questions” as invitations to think critically.
* Examples of Challenging questions from across the curriculum

§ Overview of the TC2 teaching model

Session 2: Teaching the “tools for thought”

* Identifying and Developing Criteria for Judgment—the key to critical thinking:
* Content knowledge as a key component of teaching critical thinking
* Teaching thinking vocabulary/concepts as essential elements of critical inquiry.
* Strategies for teaching thinking
* The importance of teaching Habits of Mind when developing a classroom community of thinkers

This workshop was hands-on and tailor-made to fit into the realities of classroom lesson planning and teaching. The staff found this workshop to be very productive and there was all-round appreciation for it. This workshop has set the ground for future advanced workshops in critical thinking.

Kaisar Dopaishi
Vice Principal

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Professional Development

Academic Year 2009-10 Second Semester: Professional Development Workshops

Topic : Engaging all students for the 21st Century: Differentiation Strategies for Effective Teaching & Learning

About the workshop facilitators

Susan Baum PhD
Susan Baum is a celebrated and renowned author of many books including the very popular and useful Multiple Intelligences in the Elementary Classroom: A teacher’s toolkit with Howard Gardner. She is an expert on twice exceptional children and is a Professor Emeritus for the College of New Rochelle, New York and presently works as an international educational and business consultant serving international communities around the world. Susan Baum – subeebaum@yahoo.com

Henry J Nicols, MS.(Hank)
Hank Nicols is a teacher, adventurer, and an international consultant in both education and business. He is co director of the International Center for Talent Development and an adjunct professor for the Buffalo State College of the State University of New York and for the College of New Rochelle where he teaches graduate courses in emotional intelligence, adventure based learning, conflict management and violence intervention. Hank has presented extensively all over the world on topics as diverse as stress management, time management, communications, and innovative training, teaching and learning.
Hank Nicols – hjnicols@yahoo.com

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Professional Development in KIS

. The KIS professional development policy now put together as a document aims at building a professional learning community which has a shared mission, vision and values, enhances collective inquiry, believes in collaborative teams, experimentation, action, results and continuous improvement. It is our endeavor to work towards this goal slowly but surely!

· The new avenues we are exploring are having official IB in-house workshops in MYP and PYP by the IB personnel so that at lower cost more staff can get their official training. Also we are making some staff take up specialized areas such as planning MYP units as online courses with a hope that a better in-depth expertise is gained in areas were the need was identified.

· Nevertheless, the focus is to achieve a mixed bag of workshops which suit the needs of the school and the staff – in-house official workshops, online official workshops, sub8 regional workshops, IB workshops held in different parts of India and overseas.

· Based on the recommendations of MSA, MYP and IBDP and the needs of the PYP our workshops have been planned in areas such as critical thinking and differentiated learning.

· The workshops staff have attended up to September 2009 (apart from the regular Tuesday inservice) are:

1. KAGAN (USA) - 5
2. In house official MYP workshops led by the Associate Regional Manager of MYP (Asia –Pacific) -4th and 5th September - 25
3. Online IBDP workshop – CAS - 1
4. Online MYP workshops – Language B, PE and Technology (making MYP Units) - 3
5. MYP Coordinator’s workshop - Level 2 – Bangkok (Thailand) - 1
6. DP Physics (Mixed Level )workshop - Malaysia - 1
7. Colleges and Careers Counselor - New Delhi - 1
8. HP and ISTE training – Integrating technology in the classroom- New Delhi - 3

· A workshop on KIS appraisal system was conducted by the Vice Principal for the new staff, HODs and Coordinators. The teacher evaluation period has now started from 1 September and goes on till 23October 2009.

· Our ISM Rudy Wuthrich, Science HOD Mr Shand and our senior Math teacher Mr Biswas attended a HP and ISTE training program. This helped teachers become aware that technology is a tool to support the learning experience. It's not about learning 'computers'.

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