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Te Kura o Paeraki - Mt Pleasant School

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IB - PYP - ???

Sue Ashworth - May 4, 2016

We're into our third year of IB ... where are we now?

We’re in our third year now of implementing the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (PYP). It has been a busy but very exciting process and last month we submitted our application to become a fully authorised IB school. Early in November the IB will send a team of facilitators to visit our school for two or three days to assess how well we are meeting the IB Standards and Practices. This is a very similar process to an Education Review visit, which will occur early next year.

We appreciate this information may seem a little dry, but we just want to give you a better understanding of the background and nitty gritty of what PYP is all about. We will also be holding some parent information sessions – dates to be confirmed.  HOWEVER in our future newsletters, we will be sharing snippets of what is actually happening in our classrooms to keep you even more informed and excited about what is happening for your children. 

 There are a lot of terms used in IB that you may hopefully hear your children talking about. We thought we would put together a glossary of these for you and pop a few at a time into each newsletter.

Glossary of IB Terms:

Mt Pleasant Mission Statement

Mt Pleasant School Community will work together to provide learning opportunities that will enable students to develop as creative and inquiring individuals who are inspired to be lifelong learners and globally responsible citizens seeing opportunities to make a difference to their world.

IB Mission Statement

The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect.

To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment.

These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

Learner Profile - The IB learner profile is the IB mission statement translated into a set of learning outcomes for the 21st century. It is what we want our students to “be”. The following are the set of attributes that make up the learner profile:

· Inquirers

· Knowledgeable

· Thinkers

· Communicators

· Principled

· Open Minded

· Caring

· Risk-takers

· Balanced

· Reflective

POI – Program of Inquiry - All of the Units of Inquiry (UOI’s) from each year level constitute the school’s Programme of Inquiry (POI). There will be one from each transdisciplinary theme per year to help build students’ understanding of the “big ideas” that the theme uncovers. You can access the POI from our website.

Transdisciplinary Themes – There are six transdisciplinary themes that are repeated throughout the years. Each year level addresses different aspects of the themes. The themes are global and explore the commonalities of human experience. [Who we are, Where we are in place and time, How we express ourselves, How the world works, How we organize ourselves, and Sharing the planet]

I’ll add some more in our next newsletter but if you have any questions at all about IB please feel free to send me an email - suea@mtpleasant.school.nz