elementary primary years program (PYP) IB curriculum

[Anonymous]

We have been looking a various elementary schools for our rising 2nd grade student and have come across some schools which use PYP elementary IB curriculum. It's difficult to figure out what exactly this curicullum actually covers - most of the documentation is around themes - but they don't list the specific skills acquired in each grade / subject like the state standards do? Does anyone have personal experience with this curriculum at FCPS and if so, how does it track the regular ES or GT ES curriculum? (It's a bit easier to do the comparison between high-school-level IB and AP courses in terms of content and expectations.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have been looking a various elementary schools for our rising 2nd grade student and have come across some schools which use PYP elementary IB curriculum. It's difficult to figure out what exactly this curicullum actually covers - most of the documentation is around themes - but they don't list the specific skills acquired in each grade / subject like the state standards do? Does anyone have personal experience with this curriculum at FCPS and if so, how does it track the regular ES or GT ES curriculum? (It's a bit easier to do the comparison between high-school-level IB and AP courses in terms of content and expectations.)

I am also interested to find out about the IB PYP. How good is the PYP at Randolph Elementary school?

[Anonymous]

With the exception of foreign language requirement and some character education (PYP attitudes and profile) IB PYP isn't really a different curriculum. It's more of a philosophy and pedagogy. Basically, it requires teachers to organize all of the social studies and science content that is required by the school/school system into 6 integrated themes per year for each grade level (with exceptions for the early childhood grades) and facilitate inquiry learning where students development their own questions and design their own projects for each unit.