In our school I (the ICT Specialist) have made great strides in integrating ICT more into the curriculum. We still have a computer lab and assigned lab times, but little by little I am working my way into the classrooms and co-teaching lessons with our primary and middle schools.
I officially meet with each class bi-weekly (although I tend to have informal meetings much more often) to discuss integration into either their units or their stand alone lessons. We are a bilingual school and I tend to work most with the English speaking teachers mostly because they are the ones who are working during ICT time. I have integrated and co-taught some lessons with some of our Italian teachers as well.
It is not always easy with many teachers wanting to create “projects” without true integration. I think my time as a classroom PYP teacher in the past helps me try to guide them away from this idea. I try to either be part of the summative or formative assessments in each unit so the teachers can see the integration better themselves. I might start working with a class in co-teaching or in the lab and the students need to then work in their classrooms (with portable computers) to finish.
I try to connect to the UOI whenever possible but I don’t want to force any connections. Doing so tends to lead to more of a “Project based” rather than “Inquiry based” Learning.
When I cannot find a relative connection I also will connect with stand alone lessons. For example now with our year 1 I am connecting with maths and we are exploring place value. I have worked with our year 4 class in maths with creating charts and graphs, we then took those lessons and used them to create infographics for their following unit on migration, immigration and emigration.
