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The Primary Years Programme at Quarry Bay School

QBS uses the International Baccalaureate’s Primary Years Programme (PYP) as its curriculum framework and has been an authorised IB World School since May 2010. The school will have its first evaluation visit from the IBO in the 2012-13 school year.

How do children learn at QBS?

Children at QBS 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 teachers in the areas of Performing Arts, Physical Education, Information Literacy and Mandarin to provide a transdisciplinary curriculum. Children create new conceptual understandings by drawing links between and across the traditional disciplines.

What is the curriculum?

The curriculum is made up of three parts:

What do we want to learn?
The written curriculum

This includes:

  • Scope and sequence documents – these documents outline the conceptual understandings and learning objectives students learn while at QBS

  • Programme of Inquiry - This is the overview of all units of inquiry the students will engage with over 6 years at QBS

  • Units of Inquiry - These are the six detailed planners which make up each year group's programme

How best will we learn it?

The Taught Curriculum

This includes:

  • Learning engagements that make use of structured inquiry
  • Learning skills that enable children to take ownership over their learning
  • Developing attitudes
  • Understanding concepts

How best will we learn it?
  • Learning knowledge
  • Developing the attributes of the learner profile
  • Taking action

How will we know what we have learned?

The Assessed Curriculum

This includes:

  • Formative assessment - finding out what students know in order to plan the next steps in learning
  • Summative assessment - the culmination of teaching and learning where students demonstrate what they have learned
  • Recording - how we collect and analyse evidence of learning
  • Reporting - how we communicate information about learning

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.

Transdisciplinary Themes

Subject Areas

Who We Are

Where We Are in Place and Time

How We Express Ourselves

How We Organise Ourselves

How the World Works

Sharing the Planet

Language

Mathematics

Social Studies

Personal, Social & Physical Education

Arts

Science

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 QBS believe are demonstrated by internationally minded people. All members of the QBS 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

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QBS Programme Of Inquiry - April 2010 [short version].pdf182.65 KB