Abacus uses the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme (PYP) as its curriculum framework and has been an authorised IB World School since May 2012. The school will have its first evaluation visit from the IBO in 2017.
HOW DO CHILDREN LEARN AT ABACUS?
Children at Abacus develop their knowledge, skills, attitudes and understanding of concepts through guided inquiry. Classrooms foster curiosity and promote discovery by making learning relevant to the “real world” and challenging for each student. We start from children’s prior knowledge and build on each student’s strengths, experiences, and cultural and linguistic background to support learning. We encourage children to become independent learners and critical and creative thinkers who are empowered to take action.
Class teachers in each year group work as a collaborative team, supported by specialist Mandarin teachers to provide a transdisciplinary curriculum. Children create new understandings by drawing links between and across the traditional subjects.
WHAT IS THE CURRICULUM?
The curriculum is made up of three parts:
What do we want to learn? |
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The Written Curriculum |
This includes:
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How best will we learn it? |
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The Taught Curriculum |
This includes:
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How best will we learn it? |
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How will we know what we have learned? |
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The Assessed Curriculum |
This includes:
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The curriculum framework consists of five essential elements:
- Concepts
- Knowledge
- Skills
- Attitudes
- Action
The knowledge component is developed through inquiries into six transdisciplinary themes of global significance, supported and balanced by six subject areas.
This diagram shows how all of these elements fit together to develop the curriculum framework.
At the heart of the curriculum is the Learner Profile which is a set of attributes that the IBO and Abacus believe are demonstrated by internationally minded people. All members of the Abacus community are encouraged to model these attributes and foster their development in others.
Information on this page was taken in part from: “Making the PYP Happen” 2009
For further information, please visit: www.ibo.org