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A preschooler concentrates on his Math Assessment, monitored by his teacher at Tessa International School.

Assessment in The IB PYP

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Although it is often perceived as a straightforward measurement of what students have learned, assessment in the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Year Programmes (PYP) extends beyond simple metrics. Rather, it is the feedback on the learning process. Effective PYP assessment is holistic, integrating a variety of purposeful strategies throughout the learning journey. It is also a collaborative process that involves students, teachers, families, and our community in meaningful ways. 

Grade 1 students in focus on their French Assessment aligned with the French School curriculum.

The prime objective of assessment in the PYP is to provide feedback on the learning process.

Why We Assess in IB PYP

From informal check-ins to school-required tests or projects, each assessment contributes differently to the ecosystem of a PYP classroom. At its core, PYP assessment aims to inform teaching and learning. 

  • For students, assessments allow them to reflect on their progress and therefore adjust their learning pathway to meet their goal. This is also part of their wider development of critical thinking and self-management. 
  • For teachers, assessments provide valuable insights that inform lesson planning and teaching strategies, enabling them to create an uplifting learning path forward. 
  • For families, assessment empowers parents with the knowledge of their child’s understanding and needs, supporting them to become active partners in children’s PYP journey and strengthening the school-home connection. 
  • For school, assessments guide school-wide decisions surrounding resources and curriculum, enhancing teachers and administrators’ collaboration to improve the learning environments. 

Understanding the prime objective of assessment brings clarity to teaching and learning, leading to the more actionable strategies as follows. 

What and How To Assess in IB PYP

The assessment approach (e.g. policy, processes, and practices) in the PYP is aligned with the program philosophy that inquiry-based learning is central to the curriculum framework. Therefore, the assessment evaluates both the process and products of inquiry, highlighting the Programme’s goal of continuing improvements for learners. In other words, when discussing “assessment,” we are telling the story of learning – where it began, how it evolved, how thinking shifted, and what understandings emerged.

Nevertheless, the question remains: How do we check for student understanding while they are still in the process of learning? 

To address this question, the latest PYP report, “PYP: From Principles into Practice (2018),” divides assessment into four dimensions: monitoring, documenting, measuring, and reporting on learning. Rather than being viewed as separate elements, these dimensions are integrated and flow together, reflecting learners’ process and progress in a whole image. 

4 dimensions of IB PYP Assessment weight differently, with a highlight on monitoring to collect students' learning evidence.

Each dimension has their own importance and value, providing a comprehensive view of students’ learning together.

This outline does not imply that summative assessments – more product-oriented evaluations such as End-of-Unit projects or single test grades – are entirely unimportant. Rather, these assessments are still relevant to students’ learning; they should be seen more as one of the opportunities to assess learning rather than the sole evidence. 

Assessment at Tessa

At Tessa International School, we believe in holistically-designed, developmentally appropriate assessments. Our assessments are thoughtfully designed to align with international and local curricula, including the U.S. Common Core Standards, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and the French, Spanish, and Chinese National Curricula.

Our assessments are designed to serve diverse purposes in relation to learning—namely, assessment of, for, and as learning. In other words, assessment is integral to students’ learning journeys, occurring throughout their educational experience in various forms and practices. Teachers employ a rich array of activities, strategies, and assessment artifacts to collect and record evidence on students’ learning.  Alongside teacher-devised assessment strategies, standardized tests are selectively incorporated based on subject area and grade level, forming a rich and balanced assessing approach that reflects validity and reliability.

Every trimester, report cards are issued to students from Nursery (PK2) to Elementary School Program (Grade 1 to Grade 5), tailored to document a detailed analysis and feedback of a student’s developmental performance.

“The reports reflect not only academic performance but also personal growth, such as collaboration, creativity, and responsibility, providing a comprehensive picture of each child’s development.  ”

– Our Assessment Policy: Report Cards. 

Our Grade 2 students collaborate on the peer assessment to develop their self evaluation and reflection skills.

Tessa incorporates a combination of teacher-devised evaluations as well as standardized tests for a valid and balanced assessment approach.

 

FAQs

Q: What is assessment in IB PYP? 

A: According to IBO, the PYP does not offer formal assessment. The prime objective of assessment in the PYP is to provide feedback on the learning process. Additionally, the PYP stresses the importance of students’ self-assessment and reflection. 

Q: How does the IB PYP assess students progress and development? 

A: PYP assessment focuses on continuous feedback through four dimensions: monitoring, documenting, measuring, and reporting on learning. This underpinned constructivist approach allows students to reflect on their learning and set goals for improvements. A variety of assessment methods can be employed, including formative and summative assessments, to gauge students progress in relation to their learning goals. 

Q: What is Tessa’s Assessment Policy? 

A: At Tessa International School, we believe in holistically-designed, developmentally appropriate assessments. Our assessment approach aligns with our integrated curriculum, involving the U.S. Common Core Standards, Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), and the French, Spanish, and Chinese National Curricula. With a consideration of valid, balanced, and reliable assessment evidence to best reflect students’ process and progress, we incorporate a combination of teacher-devised evaluations as well as standardized tests in our assessment practices. You can find more information here. 

 

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A student learns additions and subtractions with counting cubes.

Fostering Conceptual Understanding in Tessa International School’s Math Curriculum

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We are living in an era of extraordinarily rapid change, where technological advances and global events unfold at an exponential pace every day. Amidst these transformations, we see incredible opportunities for growth and progress in our teaching-and-learning approach, aligned with our mission to prepare students as future leaders who are always ready to move forward.

This is where conceptual understanding comes in. Instead of relying on rote memorization, conceptual understanding engages our students in meaningful Math learning experiences built around consistent concepts, helping them build solid knowledge with deeper comprehension.

Students at Tessa International School actively learn with encouragement from our Math Teacher.

Conceptual understanding helps students learn more flexibly and retain knowledge better.

What Conceptual Understanding Is

Conceptual understanding refers to the process of organizing and connecting seemingly isolated facts in a meaningful way throughout the learning process. This ability to arrange, structure, and integrate knowledge builds cognitive competence, facilitating appropriate retrieval and application across various contexts and disciplines.

In the field of Math, conceptual understanding involves comprehending mathematical concepts, operations, and relationships. When students grasp a math concept, they perceive their knowledge as part of a larger, connected whole, rather than as isolated facts or single approaches. Consequently, conceptual understanding often leads to students finding that there is less to learn, as they can identify underlying similarities in superficially different situations. 

Examples of Conceptual Understanding in Math

According to Adding It Up: Helping Students Learn Math (National Academies Press, 2001), in addition to fluently verbalizing relationships among concepts, another significant indicator of conceptual understanding is the ability to represent Math situations differently and recognizing how they can be useful for different purposes. 

Take adding and subtracting fractions as an example. Students demonstrate conceptual understanding when they are able to use real-life examples, visual models (such as number bars), and the common denominator method to arrive at the same answer. Using different representations shows how students progress from understanding part-to-whole concepts to applying algorithmic steps, which also can support them to draw connections with integration in calculus at higher levels in the future. 

A student learns additions and subtractions with counting cubes.

The degree of conceptual understanding is related to the richness and extent of the connections students have made.

Math Education at Tessa

At Tessa International School, we believe Math is more than just memorizing formulas. We ensure our students truly understand the “why” behind every concept and how it applies to their interactions with the world through an integrated curriculum of IB PYP Math and Singapore Math. 

IB PYP Math

Concept-driven learning is at the heart of the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IB PYP), and Math, rather than being seen as a series of equations and theorems to be memorized, is viewed as a way of thinking that helps learners make sense of the world.

In this philosophy, the development of conceptual understanding can start much earlier than we might imagine, as IB PYP emphasizes the importance of the realistic, relevant conditions in which students live. Students acquire knowledge and skills by abstracting from their real-life experiences into symbolic notations and validating their understanding through problem-solving, where conceptual understanding shines.

Singapore Math

To fulfill the above idea that Math is a way of thinking, we implement the Singapore Math approach from Preschool to Primary School at Tessa, which is known for its intentional sequencing of concepts. This approach purposefully and efficiently organizes the Math terrain for students, breaking down complex concepts into simpler parts to build a strong foundation for advanced study. 

One of the key features of Singapore Math methodology is the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) progression, based on the work of American psychologist Jerome Bruner. The three-step learning method introduces Math concepts in a tangible way and progresses through increasing levels of abstraction. As the name suggests, students gradually gain a deeper understanding of a concept at hand through three modes of representations:

  • Physical objects (Concrete), 
  • Visual diagrams (Pictorial), 
  • Math symbols and numbers (Abstract).

A core principle of this method is that learning is not linear but should be revisited and built upon, with a strong sense of connectivity and increasing complexity. While the Singapore Math approach refers to this as a strategy of mental Math, the CPA method indicates the reasoning, arranging, and communicating of understanding at a conceptual level. 

 

There are multiple reasons why we love Math – we admire its intrinsic logic and beauty, and we value the passions and curiosity it inspires. More importantly, learning Math not only helps our students become more academically successful problem solvers, but its insistence on conceptual depth also develops a sense of resourcefulness and confidence, preparing them to excel in more complicated adventures, both within and beyond the classroom. 

 

Are you ready to explore the only international leading private school in Hoboken?

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A parent engages in his son's sharing of his learning in IB PYP.

How to Support Your Child as An IB PYP Parent

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The International Baccalaureate (IB) is widely regarded as one of the most rigorous educational curricula worldwide, designed to develop “inquiring, knowledgeable, and caring young people who help create a better, more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect” (International Baccalaureate Organization, or IBO). While it offers significant benefits, it’s natural for parents to feel uncertain about what it involves and how to best support their child, especially in the early stages of the IB Primary Years Programme (IB PYP), when children are just starting to explore how they learn. So, how can caregivers support their child’s exciting and rewarding educational journey?

A parent engages in his son's sharing of his learning in IB PYP.

As a PYP parent, there are multiple specific ways you can support your child.

IB PYP at A Glance

IB PYP nurtures and develops young students, aged 3-12, as caring, active participants in a lifelong journey of learning. This Programme focuses a student-centered approach, with its framework emphasizing the central principle of agency, which underpins the three pillars of school life:

  • the learner
  • learning and teaching
  • the learning community.

Embedded within this framework is the recognition of the importance of fostering an individual’s self-efficacy. Students with a strong sense of self-efficacy are active participants in their own learning and take meaningful action within their learning community.

5 Tips to Support Your Child as A Learning Partner

As essential members of their child’s learning community, IB PYP parents play a key role in helping them deepen their learning. Here are five accessible ways, shared by the IBO, for parents to support their child’s learning at home. If you’re wondering how to better assist your child, these strategies will help you guide them in becoming lifelong learners, whether through formal learning connected to school or through incidental, unplanned learning from play, exploration, and life experiences.

  1. Take an inquiry stance. Parents are primary role models of their children, so your attitudes and positions can radically transform how children engage with the world. Instead of providing immediate answers to your child’s questions, encourage curiosity by responding with open-ended questions like, “What do you notice?” or “How might we explore that further?” This approach not only fosters critical thinking but also reinforces the value of inquiry-based learning through shared discovery. 
  2. Support your child’s agency. Empower your child by involving them in decision-making and encouraging their self-expression. Create time and space for their independent discoveries, and hold back from giving too many suggestions. By supporting their choices and emphasizing personal responsibility in their learning, you nurture children’s independence and self-confidence. 
  3. Support conceptual understanding. This notion is at the heart of IB PYP, where learning occurs through concept-driven Units of Inquiry within a transdisciplinary framework. During the Inquiry Learning Cycle, consider asking questions such as “What strategy did you use?” and “How and why did you do that?” These questions value their approach to the answers, encouraging children to articulate their reasoning and remain actively engaged in learning. More importantly, this process promotes them to connect ideas across disciplines and subjects, fostering a richer and more meaningful understanding of abstract concepts. 
  4. Prioritize reflection. Being reflective is one of the core attributes of the IB Learner Profiles, helping individuals become responsible members of communities. By encouraging children to think about their own thinking, you can help them develop metacognitive abilities and facilitate higher order thinking, including application, analysis, evaluation, and creation.
  5. Give feedback that goes beyond the moment. Comparing questions like “How are you doing?” with “What might come next? ”, you will find that the former may result in less thoughtful and forward-looking responses, while the latter shifts the focus from immediate, isolated outcomes to continuous learning. Whether during Student-Led Conferences or everyday learning moments, it is beneficial for parents to guide their children toward long-term growth and future inquiry.

IB PYP at Tessa International School

Tessa is proud to be an IB World School offering the PYP to students aged 2 to 10. Following its transdisciplinary framework, excellence spans across Science, Social Studies, Language and Literacy, Math, Arts, Social-Emotional Learning, and Physical Education, all while nurturing a lifelong love of learning in our students. 

As an international school offering bilingual education, the robust French National, Spanish, and Chinese Curricula as well as the US Standards are seamlessly integrated into our IB PYP Framework, formulating our distinctive educational approach. Students actively engage with dynamic unit topics through an immersive language experience grounded in real-life situations.

 

Are you ready to explore the only international leading private school in Hoboken? 

Contact Tessa International School to learn more! 

Utilizing Technology in Inquiry-Based Education

Utilizing Technology in Inquiry-Based Education

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Inquiry-based education, or IB education for short, is the natural process of learning through inquisitive behavior and deep curiosity. It is, essentially, learning by finding topics that pique children’s’ interests enough that they take the driver’s seat and discover new information through research and questions on their own.

IB Education in the Classroom

When utilizing inquiry-based education in the classroom, the first step is always to find the right topic to spark enough interest in students. Since motivation is the prime factor that drives their desire to initiate learning through IB means, it’s imperative to find the right angle for your lessons to keep them truly engaged.

Not only do educators need to have an exciting and relatable subject, but they also need to include innovative ways to continue beyond the piqued interest phase. Since the process of IB learning includes both exciting topics and continued questioning and research, it only makes sense to incorporate technology into your lessons.

Utilizing Technology for IB Education

With a growing number of educational programs and apps available every day, utilizing technology in the classroom is easier now than ever before. There are hundreds of tech choices available that will enhance an IB education experience and give children the tools they’ll need to problem solve and research.

“Children naturally explore and learn about their environments through inquiry, and computer technologies offer an accessible vehicle for extending the domain and range of this inquiry,” explain researchers from Mount Saint Mary College in the Early Childhood Education Journal article, March 2010.

How to Use Technology

Since the IB educational technique is a process for learning, not traditional information regurgitation, it will help children throughout their educational careers and beyond. The process involves noticing scenarios in detail, learning to ask imperative questions, researching those questions for solutions, and presenting the information to others in a way that is clear and concise.

Knowing this, it’s easy to understand how technology could aid students during this process. Depending upon which media outlet is chosen, technology can be used in practically every aspect of IB education. It can be used to supply intriguing scenarios for analysis through videos or puzzles, as well as provide unlimited research materials to help students find solutions to the problem areas they outlined in the earliest steps. Technology can even be used in the final steps – or the presentation portion of IB learning – which encourages students to explain their findings to others.

Technology and the IB Advantage

“Inquiry-based learning is a process where students become involved in their own learning. Inquiry-based learning builds on student passion and results in increased student agency,” explains professors at the University of New Hampshire.

IB education is a highly engaging teaching process because it is focused on areas that are highly interesting to students and hands them the keys to begin learning on their own. Adding technology to the mix only serves to strengthen this desire to learn. If you want to learn more about how Tessa incorporates IB learning in their early education classrooms, check out the Program of Inquiry here.

What Is Inquiry-Based Education?

What Is Inquiry-Based Education?

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As an educator or parent, few things are questioned more than how to spark learning interest in our children.  Trying to find what motivates our children to learn and avoid the dreaded “I don’t know” answers can be a daunting task. Because of this, many are turning to a technique known as inquiry-based education. So just what is inquiry-based education?

What Is Inquiry-Based Education

Inquiry-based (IB) education “is more than asking a student what he or she wants to know… it’s about triggering curiosity,” explains the George Lucas Educational Foundation. Essentially, IB learning places the responsibility of learning on the shoulders of the students rather than emphasizing teaching by the educators. In other words, it is finding a way to pique children’s natural interest to learn and using that as fuel to continue learning further.

By utilizing tactics that shift the learning process from the responsibility of the teacher to being led by individual students, IB education creates a more engaging educational experience. It is a strategy that goes beyond the books and encourages children to think freely and deeply to form their own understanding of various subjects.

Piquing Curiosity

The most important aspect of IB education is piquing the curiosity of students. Finding out what motivates them and getting children to take the reins of their own education is at the root of this learning process. So how do you go about triggering their drive to learn?

This is, perhaps, the most difficult aspect of IB learning, and not one that has a direct answer. For some, motivation can be as simple as keeping it relatable (scenarios about Christmas gifts or Halloween candy for example), while others have better luck using things that spark creativity or imagination (artwork, videos, puzzles).

“You have to model your own curiosity quotient – that hunger to learn that defines how we advance our knowledge of the world… think about your content area… What new piece of information might help you trigger your own enthusiasm that can then trigger your students’ curiosity?” writes Edutopia.org.

The Scientific Method

Once you have discovered what interests them, the next step in IB learning is to switch the focus from teaching to learning. How? Students are urged to come up with their most burning questions about the topic.

Think of the IB learning process in terms of the Scientific Method. First, ask students to observe the topic you presented to them and ask them to give it some thought. Once they familiarize themselves with the topic, have them form questions and think of possible answers to their questions. Ask them to come up with potential solutions or experiment with different outcomes of the scenario before taking another look at their progress and concluding what they’ve learned.

Step 1: Look at the Topic

If utilizing a method similar to the scientific method, once your students’ curiosity is piqued, ask them to take note of what they see. Have them document scenarios, write or discuss down details, and simply describe what it is that is in front of them.

This process will help them to better identify a topic and give them additional information for the next few steps. Encourage children to be as detailed as possible in their descriptions. This step is one of the greatest benefits of IB learning: noticing what’s around them and deciphering what aspects are most important to their scenarios.

Step 2: Question, Question, Question

After students have had ample time to note what is in front of them, the next step is to heavily emphasize their curiosity. This is done by getting them to begin questioning what they see. IB learning focuses on inquiry, or the desire to learn more, which begins by asking questions.

In this step, students are encouraged to think critically about the scenario in front of them and document any questions they may have. No question is off the table, and the more they question, the deeper their understanding will be so encouragement is the key. The most effective questions are the ones that drive students to have even more questions, so the focus of an educator in IB learning is more on sparking interest and less on giving answers.

Step 3: Research Their Questions

Once students have come up with their most intriguing questions, it’s time to find the answers. With IB learning, however, the students are in charge of finding their own answers. Dedicating class time and resources for children to conduct their own research is crucial to the process. This gives kids the means and the time to find answers to their own questions in a (somewhat) guided space.

The deeper the curiosity for their questions, the deeper the student’s drive to research and find answers. It is this drive and curiosity that will fuel their desire to truly learn a topic by their own inquiries rather than by traditional teaching methods.

Step 4: Hypothesize and Present

After students have used critical thinking to develop questions and research solutions to potential problems, it’s time to guide them into the hypothesis presentation stage. This is the part of the process that has students focusing on what they’ve learned and are tasked with organizing their findings to present them to others in the classroom.

Since learning is not only about discovery and critical thinking, but also about successful communication and understanding, it’s important that students be able to present what they’ve learned to others. This step forces children to understand the scenario even further, in order to find ways to share it and make sense of it to other students.

Step 5: Reflection and Critique

Perhaps the most important step of IB learning is the final phase – the reflection portion. It’s in this stage that students are asked to evaluate what they learned and to make note of any issues they came across in their research and presentations.

This step gets children to think more on what type of questions got them the furthest in their studies and which theories worked best as well. It can also help them to highlight areas that weren’t so helpful, giving them insight on what to try (or avoid) next time.

The IB Learning Experience

Overall, IB learning is simply learning that is driven by students’ own curiosity. It is highly effective because it gives students a sense of thoroughly understanding topics – or becoming experts, per se – and teaches them the art of deeper learning.

While there are no set formats for IB learning, the key is to find what motivates children and get them to think freely to develop a deeper understanding. The best way to do this? Get them asking questions and give them the resources to find their own answers. This is IB learning.

Join us at Tessa International School

Discover why our bilingual curriculum is recognized as one of the best. Learn how we combine academic excellence with engaging, interactive experiences that foster global awareness.

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Join us at Tessa International School

Discover why our bilingual curriculum is recognized as one of the best. Learn how we combine academic excellence with engaging, interactive experiences that foster global awareness.

Tessa International School

Office: (201) 755-5585 | Location: 720 Monroe St. Hoboken, NJ 07030