Skip To Main Content

Primary Years Program (PYP)

classroom

What is the PYP?

The IB Primary Years Program (PYP) creates a framework to develop knowledgeable, inquiring, and caring young people who will help create a more peaceful world through their intercultural understanding and respect. Student learning occurs through inquiry, allowing students to learn while building on their knowledge. Student-centered instruction is designed with a hands-on approach, encouraging students to create meaning and understanding. The goal is to develop lifelong learners through the process of inquiry.

 

What the PYP offers students

Learning opportunities are encouraged to be student centered, work within global contexts and cultures, and explore content that meet rigorous standards. IB offers a framework for students to learn through cycles of inquiry, action, and reflection.
 

The Pillars of the PYP curriculum Framework

The transdisciplinary model extends across all three pillars of the PYP curriculum framework: 

  • The learner: describes the outcomes for individual learners and the outcomes they seek for themselves (what is learning?)

  • Learning and teaching: articulates the distinctive features of learning and teaching (how best to support learners?)

  • The learning community: emphasizes the importance of the social outcomes of learning and the role that IB communities play in achieving these outcomes (who facilitates learning and teaching?)

The PYP encourages students to appreciate knowledge, conceptual understandings, skills and personal attributes as a connected whole.  As a collaborative group, we have developed a program of inquiry organized by six transdisciplinary themes: 

  • Who we are.

  • Where we are in place and time.

  • How we express ourselves.

  • How the world works.

  • How we organize ourselves.

  • Sharing the planet.

Students are provided with authentic learning experiences within these themes.  Students explore real-world problems across all subject areas (math, language arts, science, social studies, performing arts) and are given opportunities to reflect on their learning and take meaningful action in their communities.

PYP Framework

The Learner Profile

Students at Estrella Mountain Elementary School are taught the responsibility of displaying the learner profiles. It is our character program and the heart of our IB program.