The IB Primary Years Programme (PYP) is the curriculum framework for International Baccalaureate primary schools, designed for students in Preschool through 5th Grade. The curriculum and teaching approaches seek to grow the intellectual, emotional, and physical potential of each child in a secure and stimulating environment. Founded on a philosophy that recognizes a child’s natural curiosity, creativity, and ability to reflect, the PYP generates a stimulating and challenging learning environment to nurture those assets and foster a lifelong love of learning in every child. The PYP fosters the development of thinking, communication, socializing, research, and self-management skills in addition to academic skills.  The PYP also prepares students to become active, caring, learners who demonstrate respect for themselves and others and have the capacity to participate in the world. Students are encouraged to put the knowledge, concepts, skills, attitudes they have learned into action via projects, service, presentations, and application to real life contexts.

In the PYP, students explore units of inquiry through key concepts. Units of Inquiry interweave core subject areas such as mathematics, language arts, science, social studies, arts, and physical education. The six transdisciplinary themes that guide units of inquiry and compose a year of study are: Who we are, Where we are in place in time, How we express ourselves, How the world works, How we organize ourselves, and Sharing the planet.

ISB’s Program of Inquiry (POI) is the matrix of all units of study from Pre-K 3 to 5th Grade. The 43 units were designed and are revised every year by the ISB faculty and the PYP coordinator to reflect the six transdisciplinary themes that are common to all PYP schools in the IB world network. The content of a unit is created through the investigation of a central idea and its connected key concepts that provide space for questioning, active learning, engagement, and the development of skills.

Middle Years Programme (MYP) is a curriculum framework designed by the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO) and implemented at ISB for students in 6th through 8th Grade. A challenging framework that encourages students to make practical connections between their studies and the real world, the IB’s MYP is inclusive by design — students of all interests can benefit from their participation and develop strong critical skills. Our MYP classrooms are student-centered and interdisciplinary, and learning is explicitly linked to the world around them. Participation in a target language is required, and a variety of formal and informal assessments are used to inform teaching and learning. MYP learning experiences use global points of view to promote awareness and understanding of other cultures, the human condition, and the shared human experience. ISB’s MYP curriculum framework comprises eight subject groups, providing a broad and balanced education for early adolescents. Students take the core courses of Language and Literature, Individuals and Societies, Mathematics, Sciences, Physical Education and Health, Language Acquisition, Visual Arts, Performing Arts and Design. Students also complete the Community Project, the 8th Grade culminating project that is related to a service they are providing in their community.