International School of Stuttgart | PARENTS INQUIRING INTO THE PYP

International School of Stuttgart > learning at ISS > the primary years > the IB Primary Years Programme > PARENTS INQUIRING INTO THE PYP

PARENTS INQUIRING INTO THE PYP

On September 11 a group of over 25 parents gathered in the cafeteria to find out more about the Primary Years Program that we offer in the Lower School. They came from a range of countries and backgrounds and they had had different levels of exposure to the PYP, but at the end of the morning there was a sense of common understandings about what our goals are for the development of their children and how we go about implementing these in the Lower School.

We explored together the following questions:
# What is so special about the PYP?
# Why you should know more about it?
# What it has to do with life-long learning and global citizenship?
# How it supports the learning of important skills?
# How it can help your child to be successful?
# How you can help your child?

The key idea that we inquired into was:
The PYP is an international curriculum framework that promotes student-centered, relevant, significant, challenging and engaging teaching and learning.

We began the morning by exploring the groups we belong to and connecting this to how teachers use such information to work with different groups of children at different times in the classroom. We went on to look more closely at the role of the Learner Profile and the PYP Attitudes in defining our learning experiences.
The curriculum was then broken down in its three fundamental parts, which we call the written, the taught, and the learned curriculum. We looked at the school’s Program of Inquiry and at a Unit of Inquiry. After that we thought about how we have best learned and then watched a video of an inquiry-based lesson which helped us to have a better picture of what learning in the classroom actually looks like and how it connects to the learning expectations,in terms of the content and skills teachers set for the units. It was evident that the children can come to their own meaningful understandings without always needing to be told by others.

Last but not least, the action component was our final focus. At ISS, we hope that the children will take action on their learning and become contributing, empowered members of whatever community they belong to. The idea that action does not have to be grandiose, but rather can happen all around us on a daily basis is an important one for us all to remember and to keep our eyes open to. It was reiterated how important it is for parents to give feedback to teachers about the “actions” they see their children taking outside of school.

The response to the workshop was very positive and several parents requested follow-up sessions, which is great! Therefore we will be offering a session that will focus on Assessment on Thursday November 13. Registration forms will be going out next month. Anja Junginger, our PYP Co-ordinator is looking forward to continuing the discussion and hopes that many parents, old and new, will be able to attend.