Policies

Purpose

This policy outlines the principles and practices guiding access to the International Baccalaureate (IB) Middle Years Programme (MYP) at Lucile Erwin Middle School. It affirms our commitment to equitable, inclusive education and supports the IB’s mission to develop inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young people.

Philosophy

Lucile Erwin Middle School believes all students benefit from access to an academically challenging and internationally minded education. The MYP is open to all students regardless of academic background, language proficiency, or socio-economic status. We are committed to removing barriers and ensuring all learners can engage meaningfully in the MYP framework.

Admissions Criteria

• Open Enrollment 

  • Students outside the attendance boundary may apply through the district’s open enrollment process. Admissions decisions are based on space availability and are not contingent on academic ability.

• Transfer Students

  • Students transferring from other IB World Schools may be admitted and supported to continue their MYP experience. Those new to the MYP will be welcomed with appropriate orientation and scaffolding.

Commitment to Inclusion

• Special Education and 504 Plans

  • Students with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) or 504 plans are fully included in the MYP. Appropriate accommodations and modifications are implemented to ensure equitable access.

• English Language Learners (ELLs)

  • ​​​​​​​ELL students participate fully in the MYP. Language support services are coordinated with MYP planning to ensure access to the curriculum and development of both academic and social language.

• Gifted Educated Students

  • ​​​​​​​Enrichment and extension opportunities are embedded within the MYP to support advanced learners.

Communication and Support

• Orientation

  • ​​​​​​​Families and students receive an introduction to the MYP during enrollment and at school events.

• Ongoing Communication

  • ​​​​​​​The school provides regular updates and resources to families through newsletters, the school website, and information sessions.

• Counseling and Academic Support

  • ​​​​​​​School counselors, IB coordinators, and teachers collaborate to support each student’s academic and personal development throughout the program.

Review and Policy Oversight

This policy is reviewed every three years by the MYP Coordinator in collaboration with school leadership and staff. Input from families and students will be considered to ensure ongoing relevance and equity.

 

Revised May 9, 2025

Purpose of the policy

The purpose of the LEMS Assessment Policy is to provide clear and consistent assessment practices for all stakeholders across all subjects and grade levels.  This policy will serve as a guide for teachers to use as they develop and refine assessments and reflect upon the purpose, process, and implementation of assessment practices.

Purposes of assessment

The purpose of assessment is to allow teachers to provide meaningful feedback about students’ progress on subject area standards and criteria to all stakeholders.  Assessments can be informal or formal, formative or summative.  Through formative and summative assessments, teachers determine and reflect upon student understanding and teaching practices.  

Formative assessments are the day-to-day activities that teachers use to gauge students’ understanding.  These short checks give both teachers and students feedback about where students are in the learning process.  

Summative assessments allow students to demonstrate what they know and can do in new and novel situations and are typically more substantial checks of achievement.   Not only are assessments accurate indicators of success, growth, and proficiency of content, skills, and concepts, they also allow for meaningful dialogue to take place between all stakeholders.

 Effective assessment should:

• be tightly aligned to standards and criteria
• be easily understood by all stakeholders
• be authentic indicators of understanding
• assess skills at all levels of DOK (depth of knowledge)
• allow students multiple opportunities to achieve at the highest level
• include a variety of assessment strategies
• allow for modification of instruction/next steps adjustments through collaboration, team PLCs (professional learning communities), etc.
• provide meaning feedback and be consistent across subject areas
• include common assessments from data-driven dialogue work
• include norming and calibration of student work
• be culturally relevant and fair

Assessment Practices

Examples of assessment strategies (from MYP: From principles into practice pages 86 & 87):

• Observation
• Selected response
• Open-ended tasks
• Performance
• Process journals
• Portfolio assessment

 Examples of assessment tasks strategies (from MYP: From principles into practice pages 87 & 88):

• Compositions – musical, physical, artistic
• Creation of solutions or products in response to problems
• Essays
• Examinations
• Questionnaires
• Investigations
• Research
• Performances
• Presentations – verbal (oral or written), graphic (through various media)

Differentiation

Accommodations are made for students who have individualized learning plans.  

Grading/Recording/Reporting

The Thompson School District uses Infinite Campus as their student management system.  The gradebook at LEMS has been modified to include Criterion A, B, C and D for all subject groups.  Each score entered by a teacher is first identified as assessing criterion A, B, C or D.  Therefore, for example, “Criterion A” can be chosen and only those scores assessed against Criterion A will be displayed.  This allows parents, students and teachers to have an overview of a student’s progress against each of the criteria.

This policy will be reviewed annually, however, major revisions may occur as a part of our self-study process prior to future evaluations.

 

Last updated October 2020

Philosophy

According to the IB, “Academic integrity is a guiding principle in education and a choice to act in a responsible way whereby others can have trust in us as individuals. It is the foundation for ethical decision-making and behavior in the production of legitimate, authentic and honest scholarly work.”  At LEMS we believe our entire staff has the responsibility to encourage academic honesty, to follow guidelines on teaching students how to use all forms of resources adequately, and to follow procedures when dishonesty is discovered.  As our *principled students enter high school and the workplace, they will have demonstrated their understanding of the value of creating original work and giving credit to others who have contributed to their work.

Student Responsibilities

• Students will give credit to sources (texts, pictures, videos, lyrics, graphics, etc.) whether quoted directly or paraphrased in the form specified by the teacher.
• Students will produce and turn in work that shows their own thinking and effort.     
• When working in partners or groups, students will contribute to the shared work, not just copy or take credit for others’ thinking or work.
• Students will be honest in claiming “no name” work.
• Students will be honest in reporting their progress towards completion of ongoing assignments or projects.
• Students will be responsible and honest in reporting their progress to parents/guardians and in taking home graded work or progress reports. 

Teacher Responsibilities

• Teachers incorporate lessons on how to cite sources using resources such as the citation tool in Google Docs, http://www.bibme.org, http://www.citationmachine.net and http://www.easybib.com into their units. 
• If plagiarism is suspected, a conference is held with the student and parent(s) are contacted.  If necessary, further disciplinary action per the Code of Conduct will be enforced.
• Teachers model correct technique, a chance to redo, and rubric support for expectations.
• Teachers regularly model honest communication with parents and other professionals regarding student progress.
• Students use appropriate resources/tools when allowed.

*Academic honesty/integrity is part of being “principled”, a learner profile attribute where learners strive to act with integrity and honesty as well as to take responsibility for their actions and the consequences of those actions.

School Responsibilities

• Systems are in place to support students through the counseling department as well as student support services (SSS)
• Teachers and staff receive training on a consistent basis to meet the needs of students academically and emotionally.  
• Staff regularly communicates expectations with parents and students.
• Staff is expected to communicate with parents and students to support students toward success.  

Parent Responsibilities

• Parents help and support his/her child by using appropriate resources on their homework.
• Parents let his/her child work through homework, projects, etc. on his/her own providing support only if needed.
• Parents proof-read and check over completed homework and give appropriate feedback to his/her child.
• Parents become familiar with the academic integrity policy.

Education and Support Section

• All Erwin students receive instruction regarding proper ways to cite material and give credit to those sources they use.
• Teachers model proper classwork and writing assignments to practice and correct.

Guidance

Year 1 Expectations

Year 3 Expectations

• Meets teacher expectations as described on assignment or task sheets. • Mentions titles and/or authors of texts (tables, graphs, photos, etc.) • References specific page numbers or paragraph numbers. • Includes direct quotes from text using quotation marks. • Includes paraphrased ideas and references the source.  For example, “In my science notes…,” “In the story we read, “In the text provided…,” “Through class discussion…”  •Create bibliographies or works cited pages when appropriate or assigned. • Determine whether sources are credible and question where information comes from.

• Demonstrates all year 1 expectations with consistency and fluency. • Includes a work cited page and in-text citations following MLA format.

 

Scenarios 

Adapted from Academic Honesty in the IB Educational Context. Nov. 2016, www.ibo.org/globalassets/digital-toolkit/brochures/academic-honesty-ib-en.pdf.

Scenario #1:

As part of a science project, an MYP student has been asked to conduct a series of lab tests.  When he discovered his results were not the same as those around him, he decided to copy results from another student’s experiment whose results confirmed his hypothesis.

The teacher is responsible for discussing the importance of reporting data accurately.  Achievement in the task depends on thoughtful analysis, not consistent results across trials or experiments.  Copying, creating, or manipulating data won’t help students attain a higher achievement level.  Scientific thinking relies on the honesty of researchers who design and carry out experiments, and the data they generate.  An honest MYP student would discuss his data with the teacher and provide both his original and copied results to the teacher.  The teacher may choose to reduce credit for the grade and or write a discipline referral. 

Scenario #2:

An MYP student is required to read books in four different genres during the semester and write a summary and review for each.  The student has finished reading the book, but is rushed for time and decides to look for a review of the book on the internet.  The student copies and pastes the review on to a Word document and changes some of the wording to her own.  She turns the work in.  The teacher is suspicious and decides to run the work through a plagiarism detection site, and discovers the work is not the student’s. 

The teacher is responsible for explaining to the student that this is blatant plagiarism.  Knowingly passing someone else’s work off as your own, even when you have changed a few words or have similar ideas, is unacceptable.  The student will take a zero score for the assignment and the teacher will write a discipline referral.  Parents will be contacted.

FAQs  

• If I cite the source, do I have to use quotation marks in my writing?  
  Yes, you still need to use quotations, and you need to paraphrase what the article is saying.
• Do we need to cite our sources?  
  Yes.  When working in Google Docs, the citation tool can be used.  Your teacher may also suggest other online citation websites for you to use. 
• Can we work together on this?  
  If you are not sure, ask the teacher for clarification because expectations vary.
• Is a web address a source citation?  
  No.  A website address is only one part of an MLA citation for an online source.  Please see one of the above online annotation tools.  

Vocabulary Related to Academic Integrity/Honesty

• Academic Misconduct  

  • The IB defines academic misconduct as deliberate or inadvertent behavior that has the potential to result in the student, or anyone else, gaining an unfair advantage in one or more components of assessment.  Behavior that may disadvantage another student is also regarded as academic misconduct.
     

• Collusion 

  • This occurs when students work together on an assignment, assessment, etc. but the work is submitted as an individual student’s work.
     

• Collaboration 

  • Students work together on an assignment, assessment, etc. and submit the work with all contributing students’ names as authors/creators.
     

• Intellectual Property

  • Work that is a result of the creativity of an individual.  That individual holds the rights (is the owner of) that work. 
     

• Authentic Authorship 

  • The individual that claims to have created the work is, indeed, the original creator of that work.

Procedures, Student Rights and Consequences for Failure to follow the LEMS Academic Honesty Policy

Academic Honesty is specifically addressed under “Code of Conduct (JICDA)”, number 16, in the Thompson School District Code of Conduct and Discipline Code 2014 – 2015.

Code of Conduct  (JICDA) 

a. The principal may suspend and/or recommend expulsion of a student who engages in one or more of the following specific activities while in school buildings, on school grounds, on district property, at district sanctioned activities or events, when being transported in any vehicle dispatched by the district or one of its schools, or off school property when such conduct has a nexus to school or any district curricular or non-curricular activities or events. Suspension or expulsion shall be mandatory for serious violations in a school building or on school property. 

16.  Scholastic dishonesty, which includes but is not limited to cheating on a test, altering student records, plagiarism, or unauthorized collaboration with another person in preparing written work.

The first offense for academic dishonesty will require the student to re-do the work for a lower grade.  Failure to produce the revised work will result in detention until the work is completed.  The second offense will result not only in the loss of credit (any recovery will be at the discretion of the teacher), but also in-school suspension.  The third offense carries the same consequences as the second offense with an addition of increased in-school suspension time.

As with other disciplinary actions taken by the administration, students may request to have a peer, teacher, and/or parent advocate on their behalf.

Further Reviews

This policy will be reviewed annually; however, major revisions may occur as a part of our self-study process prior to future evaluations.

References

Academic Integrity - International Baccalaureate. Oct. 2019, www.ibo.org/contentassets/76d2b6d4731f44ff800d0d06d371a892/academic-integrity-policy-english.pdf.

Purpose

The faculty has created this policy in order to:

• Communicate clear guidelines to all school stakeholders regarding the teaching of language and the inclusion of English Language Learners in Lucile Erwin Middle School by defining our practice in the context of the guidelines outlined by the Thompson School District, State of Colorado, and the International Baccalaureate Organization.
• Support the mission and vision, as well as Thompson School District Board Policy regarding language education.
• Establish clear expectations and responsibilities for all stakeholders in language instruction and the education of English Language Learners pursuing course work through the MYP Programme.

Philosophy

The faculty believes that all teachers are language teachers with responsibilities for facilitating written, verbal, and visual communication. Our goal is to establish an engaging academic setting in which students learn and excel in Language and Literature and Language Acquisition. 

Language is recognized as one of the elements that connect content across the curriculum. In all subject groups, students are expected to proficiently reflect on, communicate, and present written, oral, and visual knowledge and ideas (in the broadest sense of these words). 

Through our Language Policy, we will guarantee that:

• A comprehensive Language Acquisition curriculum is provided for students, offering the choice of French and Spanish through years 1-3 of the MYP programme.  This Language Acquisition curriculum will be built upon students’ previous study of French and Spanish each year of the programme.  
• Any native speakers will be enrolled in a Language Acquisition course for a language other than their mother tongue. 
• Non-native English speakers have the option to pursue a second Language in their native language given that they can read, write, speak, and listen at the advanced-low proficiency level in that language.
• Practices are in place to ensure equity of access for students who are learning in a language other than their mother tongue, so that non-proficient Emergent Bilinguals have the same opportunities.  These students have been identified as EB (Emergent Bilinguals*).
  • As EB students are producing written and oral work in a language other than their mother tongue, we recognize that the communication of ideas and content area knowledge plays a greater role in assessment than usage and mechanics.  All appropriate accommodations will be made for EB students.
  • We will continually develop strategies that best support emergent bilingual students by:
    • Planning lessons according to the appropriate skill building-level of students through activating students’ knowledge and building upon their previous understanding.  
    • Using a variety of teaching strategies designed to foster student success in language learning.  
      • These activities may include, but are not limited to, inquiry-based teaching methods, Socratic seminars, small group discussions and projects, presentations, interpersonal conversation, writing assignments, and student reflection through journals and/or response to literature.
• Evaluating students’ oral and written expression based upon the requirements the MYP programme and State Academic Standards. 
• Lucile Erwin promotes multiculturalism by embracing and celebrating diverse values and cultural traditions. This is done through all groups by curriculum choice as well as community interaction.
• All documentation is translated, as needed, into the mother tongue of our students and maintained on record.

Dual Language at LEMS

Lucile Erwin Middle School is proud to offer a Spanish Dual Language program as part of our International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme. In this program, students build bilingual skills in both English and Spanish while engaging in rigorous, standards-based learning. Dual Language courses are integrated into Language Acquisition and Individuals & Societies, giving students the opportunity to strengthen academic content knowledge while developing language proficiency. This program reflects our commitment to fostering intercultural awareness, communication, and a welcoming, inclusive community for all learners.

Review

This policy will be reviewed every two years, or as procedures outlining Emergent Bilinguals and/or world languages education change.

*The Emergent Bilinguals program is designed to aid students whose mother tongue is not English. Thompson School District provides a research-based language instructional program for all identified K-12 EB students. EB students receive instruction in English in the regular classroom setting, and English language acquisition classes with the EB instructor for part of their day. Lucile Erwin Middle School follows the English language development standards, benchmarks, and indicators that have been set forth by the state of Colorado. WIDA Can-Do performance indicators outline the expectations of English Language Learners at all levels.

Philosophy

All IB schools have a statutory responsibility to provide an inclusive, broad and balanced curriculum for all students regardless of disability. The Special Education needs policy places great emphasis on the responsibilities of the classroom teacher to be aware of and make provision for students with special education needs and the rights of students and parents to be fully informed of that provision. The local/national requirements of teachers in meeting the needs of all students with disabilities are based on the provision of Individual with Disabilities Education Improvement Act of 2004 and Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, amended in 2008. 

The Lucile Erwin staff believes that teachers must establish a safe, inclusive, and respectful learning environment for a diverse population of students, including those with special needs. We believe that students with special needs should be in the least restrictive environment. Whenever possible and appropriate, students with special needs should be with their general education peers. 

We believe that all staff members have a stake in the learning of all students. For students with special needs, the classroom teacher, exceptional student services teachers, and other service providers’ work together closely to meet the needs of students. All staff members at Lucile Erwin work together with students with disabilities to ensure that students are able to actively engage and become responsible 

Review

This policy will be reviewed every three years, or as laws governing special education change. 

Revised 10/22