Young Long Beach Students Have Team 'SPIRIT'

Students from East, Lido, Lindell and West elementary schools who participate in the SPIRIT program have been strengthening a number of qualities through a unit that explores the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile through teamwork.

A range of hands-on STEM-based activities foster learning while enhancing teamwork proficiencies. SPIRIT, an acronym for Specialized Program Integrated Research, IB Principles and Technology, is an enrichment program for children in grades 3-5. It is provided in each elementary school and incorporates 21st century learning opportunities while emphasizing the principles of the International Baccalaureate Learner Profile. The units of inquiry are designed to teach students to understand the IB Learner Profile traits and become reflective, communicators, knowledgeable, risk-takers, thinkers, inquirers, principled, open-minded and well rounded. Long Beach Middle School is in the authorization stage for the IB Middle Years Program, and the SPIRIT program helps to emphasize the same habits and skills that will make students successful learners as they move into the upper grades.

In their most recent unit, the children practiced reflecting on their experiences after building supporting devices for inflated balloons. They worked on being creative communicators when they worked together to build flying devices with the added challenge of not speaking. Students proved that they were knowledgeable when they engineered bridges that could hold specific amounts of weight. They also had a chance to be risk-takers and thinkers by building structural devices and creating clay formations.

The SPIRIT students will be working in teams in later units to create research projects using these IB Learner Profile traits in addition to others.