When we opened Brewster Madrid, I shared a vision for a community of learners who worked together efficiently and effectively so that everyone felt supported. This was how I envisioned achieving our mission to see that every learner of all ages thrived. By establishing a Lower School on the idea of relationships before program, and communicating a strong sense of shared ownership for the learning and teaching process, I was able to guide our team to fully implement systems for learning, teaching and assessment.

In July 2023, I introduced our founding Lower School team to the principles of Concept-Based Curriculum and Instruction (CBCI) based on the works of Drs. Erickson and Lanning. As an Erickson & Lanning CBCI certified trainer, I used our Brewster Summer Institute (BSI) to begin making conceptual teaching and learning accessible to our team. We started with establishing an initial understanding of the role of generalizations, their structure and levels or depth of understanding. Generalizations serve as an assessment tool from which we can respond to through scaffolding the thinking process. This impacts our planning process. When there is an intention to harvest generalizations, the planning process needs to change so that can become a reality.

These themes formed the foundations for our deep dive into inquiry-based learning for conceptual understanding. Every teacher received a copy of Carla Marshall and Rachel French's book, Concept-Based Inquiry in Action: Strategies to Promote Transferable Understanding. Our school joined the Concept-Based Inquiry Mathematics (CBIM) pilot project to begin to dive into CBI through the lens of mathematics. My hope was that this participation would support teacher understandings over time of how the inquiry cycle works, and the intentions behind its design. By the second year, under the guidance of our NEASC visitors, we established Concept-Based Inquiry (CBI) as our first pedagogical anchor, the pedagogy that we would see in action daily. This anchor became one of 4 anchors:

1. Concept-Based Inquiry
2. Approaches to Learning
3. Progress Monitoring & Reflection
4. Inclusive Classroom (UDL & Differentiation)

Our Early Years program, while inspired by the pedagogy of play, honors the principles of CBCI. We know our early learners can be thinkers. They can think about their play and express understandings as emerging communicators. Between 2023-2025, our team came to in-service training days with open-minds, carefully and thoughtfully considering the concepts of play, space, playful (more teacher-led) and play-based learning. Through reflection, we continually unpacked the ways in which we can plan for play: 

• play invitations
• play provocations
• continuous provisions 

There were ongoing discussions about the documentation of what was observed for learner ownership, participation, reflection and parental involvement.

• the hard copy portfolio - intended to be student-led
• the digital Toddle portfolio - parent involvement and feedback
• the documentation on the walls and bulletin boards - teacher- and student-led

During planning meetings, we slowly unpacked the ideas behind play-based learning endeavoring to elaborate an evolving Philosophy of Play personalized to our learning program. We want a program where we can follow and respond to the developmental needs of the child. This means introducing them to literacy and numeracy concepts when they demonstrate readiness - knowing our learners well to keep them challenged.

The tension lies between our need to be teachers (i.e. to teach phonemic awareness, phonics, the elements of a story) and play without reconciling what that can look like through play. The tensions are real! As teachers learn to facilitate play there is a struggle to identify their role. And it is through patience and ongoing support that each teacher can find the space to wrestle with their individual tensions and explore ways to employ continuous provisions for symbolic exploration and expression. I am thrilled with how far our team has come in their understandings. We have high hopes for program as we continually unpack the needs of our learners and their development.

Progress Monitoring & Reflection
There was a lot of mental tug of war as our team began to dive into the UK Birth to 5 Matters with increasing intention to make sense of those developmental parameters and align those with the observable skills identified in the PYP Early Years Approaches to Learning. We wanted to build an understanding of the two documents so that we could document what we saw, speak to developmental progress based on observations in alignment with stages and help parents understand how learning happens through play. An ongoing project, we continue to consider are the Approaches to Learning and their connection with Birth to 5 Matters for developmental growth tracking. We currently are pondering these questions:

• What tools will help us track learner development efficiently?
• How can we organize the information in those documents for accessibility?
• How can we track development to guide our play plans such that both students and parents are aware of the developmental progress we observe?

Over these two years, our EY team's curiosity about how to plan for play while making connections to our units of inquiry has led us to dialogues about process, efficiency and learner agency. We aimed to document learning in a way that our learners can connect to their contributions. We also wanted our parents and families to feel connected and informed through our Toddle digital portfolios. It can become overwhelming if we don't find the right approach.

• By creating Walls of Understandings, we can share the learning story with our families and make the learning visible to our community.
• Through group learning stories, we can communicate our observations about early childhood development: the emerging knowledge and skills, the approaches to learning and the whole child's physical development.
• The individual hard copy portfolio become places to store the artifacts chosen by the learners. It is accessible to the child to peruse and reflect on. And its relevance will grow over time as they build connections to tracking their learning journey over time.

In August 2023, outdoor play presented a challenge for our team as we lacked sufficient equipment and storage. As a new school, we had not been able to participate in planning the outdoor spaces. When we saw what had been organized by the architect, we were uncertain of how to create a welcome space for all ages. The equipment selected was limited, lacking the ability to develop strength and the vestibular system (equilibrium, balance). We were overwhelmed by what we lacked: a mud kitchen, creative play spaces and a storage shed to teach our learners how to care for the equipment for sustainability. It was difficult to make the space stimulating and engaging. Unintentionally, we found ourselves focussed on controlling the play area with lots of rules and increasingly eliminating risky play opportunities.

Through collaboration with the facilities team and our senior leadership, we were able to get some equipment built. Using the discarded pallets, Juan Carlos built us a mud kitchen, three mini-markets, benches and a mark-making house. These additions began to transform the play though we still lacked the storage to maximize the spaces and the Tuff trays. Most of the equipment was getting abused and worn out by the rocks and the type of dirt we had. We prepared a space for digging dirt to be delivered but was unable to get that approved due to the shortfalls in the budget. 

Our play consultant, Duane Smith, offered the teachers advise on ways to use what we had access to through a continuous provisions approach. By responding to the play observed, teachers can stage the play before children arrive. This system took time for our team to adapt to and slowly, slowly, all this equipment began to shift and move locations. We realized the Tuff Tables needed to be far away from the rocks and mud so that they could be used for blocks and other play invitations. We moved the mark-making table out of the garden and onto the patio to put chairs around it for reading and drawing outside. We saw the children building fairy houses in the trees, using their imaginations creatively.

Planning forward with a significant increase in enrollment for September 2025, we were targeting more didactic materials for outdoor play including oversized blocks, tools for building ramps, large outdoor games, and a new mud kitchen to make sure all children could find materials and something to draw their curiosity. Because of the heritage building, getting swings requires more permitting. Over time, there is hope to replace the seesaws with open space for more flexibility. And to remove the equipment in the sandpit. There is hope to have that in place within a year or two.

In January 2025, we finally got a storage shed installed. It was exciting to organize it so that we could begin teaching the children how to care for their play materials. We wanted to find the way to allow for full access with our learners practicing care and responsible choices.

Our greatest resource was found in our consultant, Duane Smith of Early Learning in Education, who carries a full career heavily invested in the early years teaching and learning. We consulted with Duane in the second year of the school and program launch. He spoke from experience building immediate rapport and igniting curiosity from our EY team. He inspired our entire team to rethink how we defined play, how we used the spaces and to challenge our team to provide for a wide variety of childrens' play needs through continuous provisions.

Recently, I was invited to facilitate a workshop for a private school in Izmir on concept-based inquiry. The school had recently undergone the self-study process and a revision of its guiding statements. With a newly revised learning and teaching policy based on the new mission and vision, the process of shifting the approaches to teaching had to begin. I was asked to shift their beliefs about learning and teaching from a teacher led classroom to that of a thinking classroom through concept-based inquiry. Sometimes shifting mindsets can be quite a challenge because beliefs are challenged and affected by the need for self-efficacy. 

The school follows Cambridge International Curriculum (CIE) and the International Primary Curriculum (IPC). As the course was not solely for primary teachers but including the whole school staff, I had to consider ways to make the content contextual for all ages so every teacher could visualize concept-based inquiry in his or her context and age range. Thus, I chose the run the workshop through concept-based inquiry day and allow the teachers to learn about inquiry by experiencing it. Before I arrived that Saturday, I sent a short survey to pre-assess their understandings so I could be sure to address any misconceptions and try to find ways to answer their questions. 

Some of the questions and misconceptions I saw were:

1. How do I get my children to become inquiry based learners?
2. How do I transition student expectations from traditional to inquiry based and to build their confidence/willingness to fully engage? How does it work? How do I manage it when there is a wide ability range in the classroom? How it would look at different levels (ages)? How do I manage classroom time to meet demands of syllabus? How do I manage preparation time workload?
3. How can we transform the exam-based program (Cambridge exams) to a concept-based inquiry?
4. How do I match the success criteria of a concept-based inquiry unit in Maths to the CIE learning objectives? This type of learning is great for engaged students whom take responsibility for their own learning, but what about the students that aren't engaged, and don't care about their education? Wouldn't their concept-learning then need to become more teacher-led, in order to help them achieve the success criteria?
5. Isn't concept-based inquiry just another word for student centered?
6. Whereas concept-based learners develop skills related to collaboration and justifying their reasoning, many tests reward fact-based learning with multiple choice and short answer questions. This can cause issues when students take standardized tests, as they may not have the breadth of knowledge needed to achieve high scores. How can this be addressed?
7. I have tried to implement in past with Social Studies but felt it didn't work as it was a 'stand-alone' class and not worked on alongside other teachers/classes. How do we use inquiry-based practice and still meet very specific learning objectives in the Cambridge Curriculum? Is it possible to take elements, e.g. focus on skills and apply it to our curriculum?
8. Isn't it necessary for the students to have some kind of background knowledge and at least some basic skills before they can take up the challenge of research and inquiry? When are we sure that our students have acquired those skills? How do we build that previous background knowledge? Are the demands of that kind of knowledge too great for some students?

In order to be able to address these questions and misconceptions, I decided to begin the workshop with a jigsaw activity wherein different groups read articles about concept-based inquiry and created a headline with a summary of the content. During the sharing time, I observed discussion, critical thinking and reflection. Using this learning engagement, enabled the staff to begin to shed some light on their areas of concern. 

Then we used the Frayer Model to define inquiry-based learning before taking a look at a step deeper to concept-based inquiry.

As a time of application, I asked the teachers to plan one lesson that would be inquiry-based using the lesson planner acronym from Jane Pollack, GANAG. We did this rather than planning an entire unit because the workshop was for just one day. To guide the teachers, I gave them a template that explained this acronym more thoroughly with examples to show how it can be useful and relevant to the concept-based inquiry classroom. 

G - goal - with inquiry, we begin with a question or a series of questions
A - access prior knowledge
N - new information
A - application
G - goal review / reflection time

Finally, everyone filled out an exit ticket using the visible thinking tool, I used to think but now I think. This was even more rewarding than the conceptual understandings. It was an amazing day and I was so happy to see all teachers finding relevance to their context - from early years to grade 12.  Everyone left the workshop feeling challenged and empowered to try out concept-based inquiry in their classrooms.

Once we had the concepts in place, I moved to the white board to guide the class to write a generalization together. I asked them to tell me what they understand about organizations now. I wrote 'Organizations' on the board. Then I told them to look at the map and think how we can use the concepts to explain what we know about organizations now. I reminded them of the no, no words: is, are, have and pronouns. I asked them to think deeply about strong verbs. There were moments when it was very quiet as students stared at the board, then the concept map and thought about strong verbs.

The first phrase we produced together was: Organizations use teamwork and collaboration strategies...

so I added the word 'to' and asked them to continue thinking about our understandings. Wait time was so important here. I gave them time to think and then we were able to add:

... to solve a mission for changes in the world.

Following that session, we continued to make connections between our professional learning communities (PLC's) and CBCI to develop further our understandings about the value of CBCI. I provided each PLC with a T-Chart to compare CBCI with their inquiry topic. While some were investigating Understanding by Design, others were looking into methods of inquiry, multilingualism, strategies for ELL to use in inquiry or visible thinking tools. As a staff, we were able to make many connections between CBCI and our PLC's.

Finally, I shared some of my own learning journey as I had moved from project-based learning to concept-based inquiry. I shared some of my personal questions, frustrations and ideas I had found to both deepen and capture conceptual understandings. My goal was to show them the complexity and validity of the journey I had pursued by making it tangible. I shared my struggles, my fears and victories, and my passion for growing and deepening my own understanding about CBCI in the classroom.

We resumed the CBCI course content with a different vibe in the room. There was more interest, more questioning and buy in. Teachers actively engaged in discussions to plan their units of inquiry using the framework of CBCI. At the conclusion of the training, I saw some true shifts in understandings. The most important lesson I learned from my  reflection is that learning must be relevant for all - both students and teachers. They must know why.

​As a concept-based inquiry teacher, I am fascinated with ways in which we can guide students to use their critical thinking skills to find the big idea or produce their own unique generalizations to express understandings about the unit of inquiry.  While working with grade 5, I explored the use two different tools to draw out those understandings. I wanted to know if they could produce a generalization that extended the central idea since they had already been exposed to it. Secondly, I wanted to know if they could generate a generalization about the transdisciplinary theme, How We Express Ourselves.  
 
To address my first goal of extending the central idea, I gave each student a concept wheel (see figure 1). Because this was their first experience with this tool, I guided them through each step. Together we decided on the concepts we had learned about and used those as our categories around the concept wheel. I observed the students thoughtfully engaging with the engagement which meant we had reached that synergism of thought connected to the 3D curriculum (see figure 2). They were able to write a variety of statements, demonstrating both conceptual understandings and knowledge gleaned from our inquiry around the question posed in the center of the wheel. I then asked them to write a big idea using the concept wheel as a starting point. This was too difficult and I got a lot of thoughtfully confused looks. So, I wrote the central idea on the board:
 
People express ideas, emotions and reflect social issues through their art.
 
But I challenged them to extend it. I asked them the questions, why and so what? This resulted in some nice generalizations but it would have been better if they had never seen the central idea in the first place. I would like to try it again without the central idea on the wall and see if we come close as a class to writing the intended understanding. I will repeat this exercise with grade 5 at the end of this upcoming unit to see if there is a difference.
 
The following day, we thought about our transdisciplinary theme and how it related to each student personally. I developed a tool with questions drawn from our central idea and lines of inquiry with our TD theme at the center (see figure 3). This was also the first time I tried to draw out their new understandings of the TD theme. I am still in the process of developing my own understandings about the best way in which to do this. I realized some of my questions were difficult to answer for some of my students. I realized it is important to continue to develop metacognitive thinking skills in order to learn and know more about themselves. so not all of my students were using enough reflective or metacognitive thinking to be able to interact with the graphic organizer. It will be a skill that I would have to continue to build with them. 
 
What is my take away? I see that learning to use these types of tools and becoming a CBCI teacher is a learning curve that takes practice. Each time will get better and as I learn to scaffold the thinking better, the results will get better. It also means more collaboration with other teachers pursuing the same approaches to learning. Discussing our attempts, reflecting together and finding ways to improve together is much better than trying alone. I encourage you to make connections with others who are also working to improve their skills and understandings about CBCI.

"The Big Idea," Global Women Network, Eva Smith, 2014.

Erickson, L, Lanning, L. and French, R. (2017). Concept-based curriculum and instruction for the thinking classroom, 2nd ed. Corwin: Thousand Oaks.