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IB PYP – Foundation for Lifelong Learning
Sharanya Narayani International School is authorised to offer the Primary Years Programme (PYP) of the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), which provides a comprehensive curriculum framework for teaching and learning in the primary years (Kindergarten to Grade 5), while insisting that students fully explore their home culture and language.
“The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.”
~ Robert M. Hutchins
What is IB PYP?
The IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) is an international curriculum framework designed for children between the ages of 3 and 12 years. The programme focuses on the total growth of the developing child, academically and holistically. The PYP keeps transdisciplinary, inquiry-based and student-centred education, with responsible action, at its core and remains trusted, timeless and transformational.
Through the PYP, students experience learning that is engaging, significant, challenging and relevant as it spans between, across and beyond traditional subject boundaries. With new enhancements, the PYP framework emphasises the central principle of agency: everyone connected to the school community has voice, choice and ownership in shaping learning and teaching.
What the PYP Offers
The PYP focuses on developing the child academically and holistically as an inquirer, both in and out of the classroom.
In promoting this aim, the programme is devoted to developing the attributes of the IB learner profile among its students.
The PYP offers a comprehensive, inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning and provides an internationally designed model of agency in which students take ownership of their learning. It incorporates strategies that address students’ multiple intelligences, teaching methodologies and approaches to formative assessment.
The PYP nurtures independent learning skills, encouraging every student to take responsibility for their learning. The programme incorporates local and global issues into the curriculum, asking students to look at six related, transdisciplinary themes and to consider the links between them. (Source: ibo.org)
PYP Curriculum Framework
The IB PYP programme is for children aged 3 – 12. The PYP is taught in more than 100 countries around the world and incorporates all the key subjects such as maths, science, languages and social studies, guided by six main themes:
- Who we are
- Where we are in place and time
- How we express ourselves
- How the world works
- How we organise ourselves
- Sharing the planet
Shaping Young Minds: PYP at SNIS
“Wisdom is not at the top of the graduate school mountain but at the bottom of the sand pile in school,” is an oft-quoted quote that quite simply sums up how pivotal the early years of a child’s life are, and therefore their schooling. It is here, in their primary years in school, that we nurture a child’s imagination, give wings to their thoughts and lay the foundation for a fruitful life ahead. I couldn’t agree more with Robert Fulgham, who said, “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten.”
It is the freedom of exploration, thinking and expression that kindles children’s natural curiosity. The Primary Years Programme (PYP) at SNIS therefore provides these tiny tots with an environment that nourishes and stimulates their active minds. Along with following the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which allows children to get acquainted with a wide range of subjects through inquiry at an early age, we also provide the infrastructure, teaching aids and tools that go hand in hand with our learning strategies.
We firmly believe that it is not books alone that teach us. Our surroundings provide a myriad of channels that constantly supply us with information, and we do not realise this until we have an opportunity to use it. At SNIS, we therefore strive to provide students with a rich environment, whether through language, behaviour, knowledge or etiquette. Our classrooms are lively, colourful and inviting, helping students feel confident and comfortable being themselves so that they can learn more.
We appreciate the fact that every child can learn, though not necessarily on the same day or in the same way. Therefore, we try our best to provide individualised lesson plans, teaching content in the way each child best understands, whether it is maths, language, art or music. Educational psychology has provided ample evidence about the plasticity of a child’s brain: it is physically malleable and can be tuned to function in a particular way when the relevant physical environment is designed and provided. But this magic lasts only until children attain puberty, because their brain structures begin to ‘cement’ from puberty onwards, making it difficult (though not impossible) to learn more. Thus, far greater effort is needed to grasp new things.
With such a huge responsibility to shape children as individuals, we cannot impart knowledge alone; we need to give them a moral compass as well. And who better to do this than our teachers? Schooling and learning are also social processes in which children make friends, seek challenges, overcome obstacles, win laurels and grow as independent people. All of this requires them to learn not only information but also culture and values, because education, as William Inge puts it, “is not only of facts but of values as well.”
Nurturing Young Minds with Care
Mark Twain once said,
“I never let my schooling interfere with my education.”
PYP at SNIS therefore does not aim to hone only one element—academics—
but all elements of a whole education: the building blocks of character.
It is the freedom of exploration, thinking and expression that kindles children’s natural curiosity. The Primary Years Programme (PYP) at SNIS therefore provides these tiny tots with an environment that nourishes and stimulates their active minds. Along with following the International Baccalaureate curriculum, which allows children to get acquainted with a wide range of subjects through inquiry at an early age, we also provide the infrastructure, teaching aids and tools that go hand in hand with our learning strategies.
At SNIS, we strive to provide students with a rich environment, whether through language, behaviour, knowledge or etiquette. Our classrooms are lively, colourful and inviting, helping students feel confident and comfortable being themselves so that they can learn more.
We appreciate the fact that every child can learn, though not necessarily on the same day or in the same way. Therefore, we try our best to provide individualised lesson plans, teaching content in the way each child best understands, whether it is maths, language, art or music.
