PYP at Spicewood

Spicewood is a No Place for Hate® school. No Place for Hate® helps to create and sustain inclusive school environments where all students feel valued and have the opportunity to succeed by promoting respect for individual difference while challenging bigotry and prejudice. No Place for Hate® is a school based initiative supported by the Anti Defamation League and began in Austin in 2004.

As an IB PYP school, Spicewood promotes the attributes of the IB Learner Profile in everything we do: our curriculum, classroom management, and in creating our school culture. We want to live the IB Mission Statement, so identifying with the goals of the No Place for Hate® initiative makes sense for us.

Because we believe in students taking action as a result of their inquiries, our No Place for Hate® student group is student lead, and student run. Students volunteer for the committee and then decide what needs to be done at Spicewood to promote empathy, compassion, respect and open-mindedness. They create an action plan and and then meet regularly to implement their self-selected strategies. Check out our students in action:

This is a question we ask students all the time. In math they work through a problem and we ask them to explain their reasoning and evaluate their solution. While reading we ask them to check their comprehension and find evidence in the texts to support their conclusions. In science they have to prove their hypothesis or conclusions using evidence and observations. We ask them to write persuasive papers trying to convince us to see something from their perspective. We ask them to cite their sources and ensure they are reliable. Through all of this we ask: how do you know? This is one of the PYP Key Concepts, and also an IB Learner Profile attribute (reflective). Going this deep into what we do supports authentic learning. We want our students to be able to learn skills at school they will use as future students, and as human beings in the real world. Critical thinking skills are paramount to this task. At Spicewood we strive to provide students with learning opportunities that ask them to go beyond knowing and engage in applying and reflecting.

One great example of this is our How the World Works unit in 5th grade. The central idea behind the unit is human and natural phenomena exist in our world and impact societies. This unit could very easily be a research project. Students choose a phenomena from a list and then research it. They could regurgitate where the phenomena is, the history behind it and they could maybe even list how it has impacted its society (if they could find someone's opinion on it). However we want kids to think. SO we ask our students to first determine criteria for phenomena. As a class they must decide what makes something phenomenal. There are no right or wrong thoughts, only justifications and evidence. Once they agree on the criteria they must choose a phenomena to explore and then see how it holds up to the criteria. Often this step sends them back to the drawing board because they have to revisit their thoughts on phenomena now that they have new knowledge. Through the whole process the criteria become fluid, as they learn new things and apply it to their definitions. They push boundaries, debate, and convince every step of the way. Some phenomena are "let in" in some classes, while others have determined them not to meet the expectations. We give students this control because they are reflecting and applying their knowledge because they have ownership This is not a top-down process that relies on facts and figures alone. Students have to infer, ask questions, explore and collaborate to get to the end of the process. They become experts on their phenomena and do it in a way they design. Think of the way you last learned something new. Was it because someone gave you a topic, asked you to create an outline and then write a report? Or did you dive into wide open research, discuss it with others, try some things, narrow your definitions and research some more? Learning, and inquiry, is an active process where students are engaged and in charge of answering: how do you know?