International Baccalaureate (IB)
Steele Elementary School is a fully authorized International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IBPYP). At Steele, we help ignite natural curiosities that are innate in young students. Our teachers offer rigorous, well-rounded, inquiry-based and transdisciplinary educational opportunities in all of our classrooms which ultimately unlock global-minded citizens. Our students learn Spanish and participate in classes including physical education, art, music, library, and technology instruction.
For further information about the IB and its programmes, visit www.ibo.org.
All About IB Education
- IB Learner Profile: As IB Learners, We Strive To Be...
- IB Approaches to Teaching & Learning
- Primary Years Programme (Kinder - Grade 5)
IB Learner Profile: As IB Learners, We Strive To Be...
Inquirers: IB students are curious and have a love for learning. They are encouraged to ask questions and seek answers.
Knowledgeable: IB students understand and apply knowledge across various disciplines, enabling them to make connections between different areas of study and apply their learning in real-world contexts.
Thinkers: IB students to analyze information and viewpoints critically and generate innovative ideas, addressing complex problems with creativity and confidence.
Communicators: IB students learn to express themselves clearly, actively listen, and collaborate so they can contribute positively to their communities.
Principled: IB students are taught to act with honesty and fairness, making choices that reflect their values and beliefs.
Open-minded: IB students learn to value differing viewpoints and think critically.
Caring: IB students develop empathy, compassion, and a sense of responsibility towards others to nurture an inclusive and supportive community.
Risk-taker: IB students learn to approach new situations with confidence and resilience so they can adapt to the rapidly changing world.
Balanced: IB students maintain balance between academic pursuits and other aspects of life such as physical, emotional, and mental health.
Reflective: IB students learn to reflect on their experience so they can continuously grow and improve.
IB Approaches to Teaching & Learning
As an International Baccalaureate® (IB) World School, we adhere to the six IB approaches to teaching, and five IB approaches to learning.
Approaches to Teaching
- DEVELOPED IN LOCAL & GLOBAL CONTEXTS: Teaching uses real-life contexts and examples, and studentsare encouraged to process new information by connecting it to their own experiences and to the world around them.
- FOCUSED ON CONCEPTUAL UNDERSTANDING: Concepts are explored in order to both deepen disciplinary understanding and to help students make connections and transfer learning to new contexts.
- BASED ON INQUIRY: A strong emphasis is placed on students finding their own information and constructing their own understandings.
- FOCUSED ON EFFECTIVE TEAMWORK & COLLABORATION: This includes promoting teamwork and collaboration between students, but also refers to the collaborative relationship between teachers and students.
- DESIGNED TO REMOVE BARRIERS TO LEARNING: Teaching is inclusive and values diversity. It affirms students’ identities and aims to create learning opportunities that enable every student to develop and pursue appropriate personal goals.
- INFORMED BY ASSESSMENT: Assessment plays a crucial role in supporting, as well as measuring, learning. This approach also recognizes the crucial role of providing students with effective feedback.
Approaches to Learning
- THINKING SKILLS: Including areas such as critical thinking, creative thinking, and ethical thinking.
- RESEARCH SKILLS: Including skills such as comparing, contrasting, validating, and prioritizing information.
- COMMUNICATION SKILLS: Including skills such as written and oral communication, effective listening, and formulating arguments.
- SOCIAL SKILLS: Including areas such as forming and maintaining positive relationships, listening skills, and conflict resolution.
- SELF-MANAGEMENT SKILLS: Including both organizational skills, such as managing time and tasks, and affective skills, such as managing state of mind and motivation.
Primary Years Programme (Kinder - Grade 5)
About PYP
The PYP is a curriculum framework for young learners aged 3–12. Like all International Baccalaureate (IB) programmes, the IB learner profile permeates all facets of school life in the PYP.
The PYP is based on the recognition of a child’s natural curiosity, creativity and ability to reflect. It generates a stimulating, challenging learning environment to nurture the whole child and foster a lifelong love of learning for all.
The PYP is transdisciplinary, meaning students learn across subject areas while inquiring into big ideas.
The PYP develops students’ academic, social and emotional wellbeing, focusing on international-mindedness and strong personal values. Students learn traditional subjects with emphasis on real-life situations, decision-making, problem solving, research, and action. The program incorporates local and global issues into the curriculum, asking students to look at related, transdisciplinary themes and to consider the links between them.
In the early years, students learn through doing (e.g., playing), as active participants in their learning. The power of play is the primary vehicle for inquiry, supporting thoughtful and intentional opportunities for child-initiated play, hands-on learning, and the co-construction of learning between teachers and young learners. Students learn to inquire as they build and test theories to help make sense of the world around them.
As students move through the PYP program, they’re asked to construct their own meaning independently, helping to develop a deeper and more profound understanding of the subjects they study. Within each unit of inquiry, students and teachers together identify together what they want to know, what they already know, what they need to know, and how they might best find that out. This encourages students to see connections between subjects.
Curriculum
The curriculum is guided by six transdisciplinary themes of global significance. This means that students deepen their learning by developing their conceptual understandings; strengthening their knowledge and skills between, across and beyond subject areas. The transdisciplinary nature of these themes allows the students to explore issues across the languages and subject areas, encourage them to engage in a curriculum that is engaging, challenging, significant, and relevant to the real world, while also incorporating the attributes of the IB Learner Profile.
The six 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
Each PYP unit begins by assessing students’ prior knowledge on a central idea and pre-determined lines of inquiry. Then the students formulate questions based on what they want to know about the topic.
Those student questions start the cycle of inquiry that guides every PYP lesson. Teachers support the student-led inquiry with age-appropriate resources and activities to guide and structure the learning. It’s an approach that works at every grade level to provide challenges for every student.
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Authorization Process
- Phase one: Steele Elementary School was approved by the IB and District 11 Board of Education to become a candidate PYP school, 2022
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During the candidacy phase:
- the school completes the professional development (PD) required for authorization
- collaborates to develop or update policies and unit of inquiry which follow the Colorado Academic Standards
- refines or establishes new processes and practices, and
- continues to explore how the IB will be implemented in its school context.
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- Phase two: Continue to align the curriculum in grades K - 5, within the PYP curriculum framework. Develop the transdisciplinary themes at every level. Continue to provide professional development for teachers. Launch parent education programs.
- Phase three: Complete PYP authorization; Estimated Time Spring of 2025.