The Primary Years Programme, or PYP for short, is organized around six units of inquiry with the following 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.

For those of you brand new to the International Baccalaureate framework, let's look at an example of how one of these units of inquiry recently came to life in our Early Childhood Education program.

Our K3 (aka Kindergarten) French class recently delved into the unit "How we express ourselves."  The central idea they considered was "people use their imagination and their experiences to create stories." Students explored the creative process by tapping into a neat initiative that seeks to reinforce the practice and love of reading in both French and English.

The Prix Albertine Jeunesse is a reader’s choice award in which children ages 3 to 14 years vote for their favorite book from a selection of works of Francophone youth literature. Our students worked on the book of one of the four 3-5-year-old 2023 winners in class. They invited the co-author/illustrator of the book, La Lumiere Allumee, Aude Maurel, to join their class via Zoom. 

 La Lumiere Allumee or "Who left the Light on" is a book about tolerance and non-conformism. It shows children that it is possible to live together without necessarily living the same way or having the same house. Aude Maurel took the time to explain her drawing technique that gives the story images that speak for themselves.

Each unit of inquiry builds a student's conceptual understanding by allowing them to inquire into subject-specific content in greater depth, and situate it within real-life contexts.

We'd love to show you PYP in action in our classrooms. Please join us for a campus tour!