International Baccalaureate
Primary Years Program
Primary Years Program
Tessa is proud to be an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School offering the Primary Years Program (PYP). This dynamic and goal-oriented framework creates many academic and social emotional growth opportunities for our students, and provides children with the skills to challenge themselves in an environment that holds them to the highest academic standards.
The International Baccalaureate Organization is a not-for-profit foundation, which offers high quality and challenging educational programs for a worldwide community of schools. For over 40 years, IB programmes have gained a reputation for their high academic standards, for preparing students for life in a globalized 21st century, and for helping to develop the citizens who will create a better, more peaceful world. Founded in 1968, currently there are more than one million IB students at over 5,000 schools in 147 countries across the world.
The IB PYP is a curriculum framework designed for students aged 3 to 12. It focuses on the development of the whole child as a learner both in the classroom and in the world outside.
The IB PYP is a curriculum framework which centers around a series of transdisciplinary themes that address human commonalities.
The students are exposed to units of learning that promote inquiry, exploration, and investigation. These units integrate all subject areas and provide meaningful learning experiences for students.
The IB PYP focuses on the development of the whole child as a learner both in the classroom and in the world outside.
The International Baccalaureate (IB) learner profile describes a broad range of human capacities and responsibilities that go beyond academic success. They imply a commitment to help all members of the school community learn to respect themselves, others and the world around them.
The profile aims to develop learners who are:
As part of their Unit of Inquiry “How the World Works”, our PK4 students worked on the central idea: Materials behave and interact in certain ways, which determine how people use them.
They focused on:
Pictured are some students from our French class showing the music instruments they just built.
They studied musical instruments of the world, and decided which one they would each build. They learned the names of the materials, both in English and French, compared which ones were the loudest or the most likely to create musical sounds. They reflected on which tools they would need to build these instruments. They chose to recycle and reuse materials they could find in the classroom, such as cardboard, rubber bands and food containers. This transdisciplinary activity allowed students to practice math (with the shapes they created and cut out), music, language and vocabulary, as well as their writing skills (by writing the name of each instrument). Ultimately, transdisciplinary learning goes further by helping students grow and learn at a deeper level.
At the end of each unit, classes hold a celebration of their achievements. At Tessa, parents are invited to one celebration a year. Students demonstrate their work and achievements from the past few weeks under the form of their choosing: exhibition, songs and performances, crafts…
The Celebration of Learning is a part of the IB PYP curriculum framework and a great way to develop a partnership between parents and schools. It is a powerful opportunity for students to make their learning public and gain confidence by presenting it to an authentic audience. Through this process, students can embrace the different learner profiles to reflect on their learning by communicating what they now know and what they are inquiring about.
Read about one of our end of unit projects on our blog.
Here are a few alumni who represent what it means to be an IB graduate, and what it means to put the skills learned in the IB into practice.