Teaching What is Worth Knowing

“For any subject taught in primary school we must ask (is it) worth adults knowing, and whether having known it as a child makes a person a better adult” Jerome Bruner

The Primary Years Program believes that teaching and learning should be significant, relevant, engaging and challenging for all students. Learning that is relevant and significant is connected to the real world, and is worth knowing and exploring. Significant ideas and concepts are global and have many perspectives to explore. Each grade level learns through six units of inquiry for between 4-6 weeks. These units allow students to explore outlined ideas and concepts in depth, and in ways that are personal to each learner.

Engaging students within the PYP is about helping students see how things are related to them, and then exploring these connections in ways that work for the individual. Students learn through inquiry, manipulating scenarios, asking questions and collaborating to further their understanding.

We try to make all learning challenging by providing opportunities to extend student learning, ask questions and pursue self-directed inquiries.

Here are some of our guiding questions when planning for learning:Does this knowledge/concept have enduring value beyond the classroom?
Does it allow students to explore issues of local, national and global significance?The Primary Years Program aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural respect and understanding. Here at Spicewood we support this goal through relevant, engaging, challenging and significant teaching and learning!

Exploring Significant and Relevant Knowledge Through the Six Transdisciplinary Themes

Students in the 21st century are faced with the challenge of learning about an interconnected world where knowledge is constantly developing. One way we help students connect to the world around them is to view it through six transdisciplinary themes. Each grade level explores one unit under each theme, connecting to and building off of, their prior knowledge and experiences.


The PYP offers a balance between learning about or through the subject areas, and learning beyond them. The six themes have global significance and create a transdisciplinary framework that allows students to learn while investigating issues that have meaning for, and are important to, all of us.


These themes are:
•Who we are
•Where we are in place and time
•How we express ourselves
•How the world works
•How we organize ourselves
•Sharing the planet

The PYP Learner Profile at Spicewood

IB programs promote the education of the whole person, emphasizing intellectual, personal,

emotional and social growth through all domains of knowledge. By focusing on the dynamic combination of knowledge, skills, independent critical and creative thought and international-mindedness, the IB espouses the principle of educating the whole person for a life of active, responsible citizenship. Underlying the three programs is the concept of education of the whole person as a lifelong process. The learner profile is a profile of the whole person as a lifelong learner.(© The Learner Profile Booklet, IBO 2006)

The attributes are: balanced, caring, communicator, inquirer, knowledgeable, open-minded, principled, reflective, risk-taker and thinker.

At Spicewood the Learner Profile is at the heart of who we are, and what we do. We infuse these attributes into all aspects of the curriculum and into our  instruction.

This summer the Texas IB Schools association (TIBS) held the Annual Regional Conference for the IB Americas in San Antonio. Spicewood joined with other TIBS schools to perform on the last day. This IB Choir demonstrated the qualities of the Learner Profile by taking risks, demonstrating balance in what they love, and by communicating in a very universal way: singing.  We congratulate those students, and their caring teachers, Mr. Steinburg and Ms. Bray, for organizing this experience and modeling the Learner Profile.



The IB Choir on stage in San Antonio.



Taking Action in the PYP!

The PYP contains five essential elements: attitudes, knowledge, concepts, skills and ACTION!
At Spicewood we believe that education must extend beyond the intellectual to include not only socially responsible attitudes, but also thoughtful and appropriate action.
Our Units of Inquiry are designed to be relevant and significant to our students so that they will want to take action on what they are learning. This action can be small: sharing a book from home to further a class's understanding, making a poster to increase awareness, changing a habit to reflect new knowledge; or big: raising awareness by creating a public service announcement, writing a letter to a congressman, joining an organization in their cause, or starting a campaign or drive to support something we believe in.
Spicewood students are ALWAYS taking action, big and small. You can check out our Student's Taking Action board by the atrium to see some of the great things we do as individuals and groups.
This year as a result of their unit on needs and wants, 1st grade became involved with the S.A.F.E project. Stuffed Animals for Emergencies provides gently used stuffed animals to those who need a special, cuddly friend. Students brought beloved stuffed animals from home to give to the boys and girls who lost everything in the Central Texas fires.

We are proud to be developing empathetic students who look at the world and know they can make s difference, one action at a time.

Spicewood Students Create Word Cloud for Shared Unit of Inquiry

This year Spicewood will undertake a shard unit under the transdisciplinary theme Where we are in Time and Place about shelters. To kick off this shared PYP Unit each student was asked to submit a word they think of when they think about shelters. This was both a provocation to generate interest, and a preassessment to establish what students already know on the subject.
Tagexedo was used to generate the following word cloud:

We look forward to further exploration and inquiry of our shared unit.

The PYP Unit of Inquiry

In the next few weeks Spicewood will  be hosting a parent workshop titled Unlocking the PYP Unit of Inquiry. This workshop is designed to outline the six transdisciplinary themes that every grade level investigates, as well as the process of planning a unit under those themes.


Teachers use a planning document to guide this process and record the process. Each unit begins with the theme, then teachers write the central idiea that will guide the learning, then the unit summative assessment. The rest of the planners outlines the skills, attributes and attitudes and other assessments that will be explored through learning experiences, provocations and lines of inquiry.


In the meantime, check out what a blank planner looks like!

A Special Pledge for Spicewood

A member of our Spicewood community was inspired to write this pledge after spending time on our wonderful campus. One of the most valued aspects of the PYP is the Learner Profile. The Learner Profile outlines the kind of student we aim to create, one that would demonstrate these attributes: inquirer, thinker, communicator, risk-taker, principled, caring, open-minded, balanced and reflective.

Here is the pledge inspired by Spicewood:

i pledge my allegiance to truth

under whatever flag it flies

for i know no one holds all truth

and i pledge my allegiance to kindness

wherever it see it

and to understanding.

whenever it comes

I pledge my allegiance to sharing

and hopefulness.

and to speaking softly

and to love

when it feel it

and to hope

when i don't.

I pledge my allegiance to the children of the world

boys and girls like me

who are in this classroom,

and who are far from here.

who are rich,

and who are poor.

and to all the schools here and not here

and to the knowledge of the school libraries

and i pledge to follow the path of knowledge

to the best of by abilities

because with knowledge comes wisdom

and with wisdom comes grace

I also pledge my allegiance to laughter

because laughing makes people feel better

and it is contagious.

and finally i pledge my indivisible allegiance to recess

i pledge to play with a joyful and kind heart

and i pledge to use my voice and not to hit

because i know how i play

is how i will live my life

and i want to follow the path of peace and understanding

and live softly on this good earth

-Stuart McLean

Welcome to PYP at Spicewood Elementary

The PYP, or Primary Years Program, is the elementary version of the International Baccalaureate. The IB is an organization that is motivated by a mission to create a better world through education.
The IB promotes intercultural understanding and respect, not as an alternative to a sense of cultural and national identity, but as an essential part of life in the 21st century.



All of this is captured in their mission statement:


The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.
To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment.
These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.



This blog will be a window into Spicewood's PYP program, a place to learn more about how and what we teach and learn here at Spicewood!

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