Exploring Current Events Through Units of Inquiry

One of the benefits of teaching and learning in the PYP is how it strives to provide students with a way to connect to their learning. It does this by making that learning relevant. One way we do this is to bring in the world around us and support students as they make connections. This is a powerful way for students to process current and historical events in context.
Right now at Spicewood 2nd grade is exploring the causes and affects of natural disasters. They bring in local events such as the recent central Texas Fires and the ongoing drought; as well as global events such as the flooding in Thailand. This provides students with theopportunity to expand their awareness of the world around them and investigate the social and scientific factors involved. This unit also provides students with the background knowledge, or schema, they will need when as 3rd graders they look at how economic factors are affected by interruptions to the supply and demand chain. One of the disruptions being a natural disaster, or weather event.
Other current events and topics being explored at Spicewood right now are: alternative energy sources in 5th grade and conflict resolution in 4th grade. In the 4th grade unit the conflicts being examined are those related to economic, social, cultural, political and religious differences.
Stop in any Spicewood classroom to see students acquiring the skills and knowledge that will help them create a better and more peaceful world!

Reflecting and Looking Ahead

Reflection is an integral part of the Primary Years Program for teachers and students. It is an attribute of the Learner Profile outlining the need for learners to give thoughtful consideration to their own learning and experience as well as encouraging assessing and understanding our strengths and limitation to support and develop goals for growth.
Reflection is also one of the key concepts that drives our units of inquiry. When we explore a topic, or a big idea, reflection encourages us to look at our conclulsions and understandings, questions our evidence and consider our methods of reasoning. The idea is to find out for yourself, while considering how we know what we know.
The PYP rationale for its inclusion of reflection as a key concept is as follows: it challenges students to examine their evidence, methods and evidence. In doing so , it extends their thinking into higher order of metacognition, begins to acquaint them with what it means to know in different disciplines, and encourages them to be rigorous in examing evidence for potential bias or other inaccuracies.
The idea of extending our thinking is a powerful one. When we reflect on what me know and how-we must make the leap to analyzing our knowledge and evaluating its origins and accuracy. This is powerful and in a world full of ever-changing data and information, encourages learners to seek out more than just unrelated facts.
We learn by asking questions, applying knowledge and seeking out more knowledge and information. This is the inquiry cycle and reflection drives it!

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.