THE ENHANCED PYP FRAMEWORK
Learning in the PYP is inquiry-led and transdisciplinary that challenges students to think for themselves and take responsibility for their learning as they explore local and global issues and opportunities in real-life contexts.
The central principle of the PYP curriculum framework is agency, which is threaded throughout the three pillars of the curriculum: the learner, learning and teaching and the learning community.
The learner: describes the outcomes for individual students and the outcomes they seek for themselves
Learning and teaching: articulates the distinctive features of learning and teaching
The learning community: emphasizes the importance of the social outcomes of learning and the role that IB communities play in achieving these outcomes
LEARNING THROUGH THE TRANSDISCIPLINARY THEMES
The transdisciplinary themes mark the starting point of students’ inquiries. These are structured within the school’s Programme of Inquiry (POI) across the different age groups. The POI fosters students’ development of subject knowledge, skills, conceptual understandings and dispositions while simultaneously communicating to the learning community that trans disciplinary inquiries are creative.
WHO WE ARE
WHERE WE ARE IN PLACE AND TIME
HOW WE EXPRESS OURSELVES
HOW WE ORGANIZE OURSELVES
HOW THE WORLD WORKS
SHARING THE PLANET
Agency is the power to take meaningful and intentional action, and acknowledges the rights and responsibilities of the individual, supporting voice, choice and ownership for everyone in the learning community. Student-initiated action is considered as a dynamic outcome of agency, and an integral part of the learning process that can arise at any time, within or outside the programme of inquiry. Action might come in the form of participation, advocacy, social justice, social entrepreneurship, and life choices (The Enhanced PYP, 2018).
At Sekolah Monte Sienna, our students are taking action through change in thoughts or feelings, the development of skills or knowledge that helps them solve a problem, or maybe even inspiration or determination to do something that will improve themselves and their community.
As a community, we celebrate the progress of our students’ learning. The Celebration of Learning provides opportunity for students to share what they learned, how they learned, the questions that they have wondered, the skills that they have developed and gain confidence by presenting it to an authentic audience.
The culmination of the PYP journey is through an exhibition as a way to demonstrate student agency and a reflection on students’ capacity to organize and manage their own learning. The exhibition is a student-led inquiry into a subject of interest to them, in which students are required to put their learning repertoire into action,
which includes the application of transdisciplinary thinking, knowledge, conceptual understandings, skills and attributes of the learner profile.
The exhibition is student-initiated, designed and collaborative. All students take an active role in all aspects of planning, inquiring, investigating, communicating and assessing their learning in the exhibition. Students will benefit from guidance and collaboration with teachers, peers and mentors to facilitate, direct and adjust their learning. The result is the development of internationally minded students who can make a positive difference in their own lives and the lives of others.