National and International Education at Eyüboğlu Schools IB PYP IB MYP IB Diploma Programme

The Primary Years Programme

The Primary Years Programme (PYP) is taught in Grades Reception - 5 at Eyüboğlu Schools. This section is composed of two parts: firstly there is a description (largely in the words of the International Baccalaureate Organisation itself) of what PYP is; secondly, we show how PYP fits into the context of Eyüboğlu Schools and the National Curriculum.

What is The Primary Years Programme?

The Primary Years Programme aims to synthesize the best research and practice from a range of national systems to create a transdisciplinary curriculum which is relevant, challenging and engaging for learners in the 3-12 age range. PYP explicitly states the need for the development of not only knowledge but also appropriate concepts, skills and attitudes. Rather than specifying areas of knowledge to be covered, it sets out to create an ethos where learners and teachers alike are actively engaged in inquiry; it strives towards developing an international person, a person who meets the following learning outcomes:

Student Learnıng Outcomes

• Inquirers Their natural curiosity has been nurtured. They have acquired the skills necessary to conduct purposeful, constructive research. They actively enjoy learning and the love of learning will be sustained throughout their lives.

• Thinkers They exercise initiative in applying thinking skills critically and creatively to make sound decisions and to solve complex problems.

• Communicators They receive and express ideas and information confidently in more than one language, including the language of mathematical symbols.

• Risk-takers They approach unfamiliar situations without anxiety and have the confidence and independence of spirit to explore new roles, ideas and strategies. They are courageous and articulate in defending those things in which they believe.

• Knowledgeable They have spent time in our schools exploring themes which have global relevance and importance. In so doing, they have acquired a critical mass of significant knowledge.

• Principled They have a sound grasp of the principles of moral reasoning. They have integrity, honesty and a sense of fairness and justice.

• Caring They show sensitivity towards the needs and feelings of others. They have a sense of personal commitment to action and service.

• Open-minded They respect the views, values and traditions of other individuals and cultures and are accustomed to seeking and considering a range of points of view.

• Well-balanced They understand the importance of physical and mental balance and personal well-being.

• Reflective They give thoughtful consideration to their own learning and analyse their personal strengths and weaknesses in a constructive manner.

In PYP, the school's curriculum includes all the student activities, academic and non-academic, for which the school takes responsibility, since all they have an impact on student learning. PYP strives for a balance between the search for understanding, the acquisition of essential knowledge and skills, the development of positive attitudes and the opportunity for positive action. In terms of achieving this balance, PYP emphasises five essential elements of the curriculum:

Essential Elements

• Concepts
• Knowledge
• Skills
• Attitudes
• Action

Concepts: What do we want the students to understand?

There is a set of eight concepts in the curriculum: These concepts are:

• Form
• Functıon
• Causatıon
• Change
• Connectıon
• Perspectıve
• Responsıbılıty
• Reflectıon

Knowledge : What do we want the students know about ?

Rather than designing a fixed syllabus, PYP has set out to identify themes - areas of knowledge- which:

• have significance for all students, all cultures;

• offer students the opportunity to explore knowledge which is of genuine importance in understanding the human condition;

• address the fields of knowledge which form the traditional disciplines but present these in a way which transcends these disciplines, thus facilitating transdisciplinary planning and teaching;

• will be revisited throughout the students' years of schooling, the end result being an articulated curriculum content, from pre-kindergarden to secondary school. These themes as well as the student learning outcomes, provide the organising structure for the school's framework of content, or programme of inquiry.

The ORGANISING THEMES around which knowledge is organized in PYP are:

Who we are

An inquiry into: An exploration of the nature of the self; of our beliefs and values; of our personal health: physical, mental, social, spiritual; of our families, friends, communities and cultures; of our rights and responsibilities; of what it means to be human.

Where we are in place and time

An inquiry into: An exploration of our orientation in place and time; of our personal histories and geographies; of history and geography from local and global perspectives; of our homes and journeys- actual and spiritual; of the greater journeys of humankind- the discoveries, explorations and migrations; of human achievements and the contributions of individuals and civilisations; of the descent and ascent of humankind; of the state of the race.

How we express ourselves

An inquiry into: An exploration of the ways in which we discover and express our nature, ideas, feelings, beliefs and values through language and arts.

How the world works

An inquiry into: An exploration of the physical and material world; of natural and human-made phenomena; of the world of science and technology.

How we organise ourselves

An inquiry into: An exploration of human systems and communities; of the world of work, its nature and its value; of employment and unemployment and their impact, both personal and global.

Sharing the planet

An inquiry into: An exploration of our rights and responsibilities as we strive to share finite resources with other people, with other species; of individuals and communities, human and animal; of the relationships within and among them.

Skills: What Do We Want The Students To Be Able To Do ?

The search for understanding is essential to the beliefs of PYP. However, the emphasis on the development of conceptual understanding does not preclude a recognition of the importance of developing skills. The construction of meaning and, therefore, understanding is complemented by the students' acquiring and applying a range of skills. These skills are best developed in the context of meaningful situations such as those offered by PYP's units of inquiry.

In order to conduct purposeful inquiry and in order to be well prepared for further education and for life beyond school, students need to master a whole range of skills beyond those normally referred to as basic. These include skills which transcend the individual disciplines.

Skills

Social Skills

• Accepting responsibility

• Respecting others

• Cooperating

• Resolving conflict

• Group decision making

• Adopting a variety of group roles

Research Skills

• Formulating questions

• Observing

• Planning

• Collecting data

• Recording data

• Organising data

• Interpreting data

• Presenting research findings

Thinking Skills

• Acquisition of knowledge

• Comprehension

• Application

• Analysis

• Synthesis

• Evaluation

• Dialectical thought

• Metacognition

Communication Skills

• Listening

• Speaking

• Reading

• Writing

• Non-verbal communication

Self-Management Skills

• Gross motor skills

• Fine motor skills

• Spatial awareness

• Organisation

• Time management

• Safety

• Healthy life style

• Codes of behaviour

• Informed choices

Attitudes: What Do We Want The Students To Feel ?

While recognising the importance of concepts, knowledge and skills, PYP believes that these alone do not make an internationally educated person. It is vital that we also focus on the development of positive attitudes towards the environment and towards learning.

PYP does not believe it effective to rely on these attitudes' being fostered in an implicit way, as some form of hidden curriculum. It is essential that we address them consciously, professionally and explicitly within the written curriculum, that we design activities which promote positive attitudes and that we consider attitudes when we are designing assessment strategies.

What attitudes does PYP suggest that schools should encourage?

We want students to develop:

• Appreciation
• Commitment
• Confidence
• Cooperation
• Creativity
• Curiosity
• Empathy
• Enthusiasm
• Independence
• Integrity
• Respect
• Tolerance

Action: How We Want The Students To Act ?

PYP believes that international education must extend beyond intellectual attainment to include not only responsible attitudes but also thoughtful and appropriate action. Schools can and should meet the challenge of offering all learners the opportunity and the power to choose their actions, to act and to reflect on these actions in order to make a difference in and to the world.

• PYP believes that very student, every year, has the right and the duty to be involved in such action.

The Primary Years Programme at Eyüboğlu Schools

At Eyüboğlu Schools, the Primary Yeas Programme is taught with sensitivity to the framework of National Curriculum requirements. The fact that PYP is an international programme does not prevent us in any way from raising in a secular fashion young people who are in tune with their own language and culture.

Even though there is subject matter which is compulsory all the topics stipulated by the ministry are covered in a spirit of trans-disciplinary inquiry. Ministry units of work are woven into school's programme of inquiry, around the six PYP themes to ensure that at all times our children are seeking the answers to the big questions in life rather than merely trying to memorize knowledge for its own sake.

In this way, Ministry of Education obligations are seen as the minimum requirement, upon which with the help of PYP a richer and stronger fabric of meaning can be woven. We would like to give an illustration of how this works.

An Example PYP Unit at Eyüboğlu Schools

In Grade 3 all Turkish children follow a unit of work on "force and movement", based on requirments of the national curriculum. At our school the content of this unit is covered in the following way, so that the expectations of the national curriculum are met but so that at the same time the unit comes alive as an inquiry experience.

Firstly, to engage the curiosity of learners, an idea, the "central idea" of the unit, is formulated in such a way as to lead the learner into the subject matter. "For objects to move, they need a force to act upon them."

In order to explore this central idea, teachers guided their pupils through a series of activities and inquiry that resulted in learning about the following three areas:

The motion of objects;

The effect of force on objects;

Where forces come from.

By working with different objects, such as balls that they themselves had made from different materials children were able to gain an insight into the relationship between force and motion. Because they felt and handled the objects, the learning that took place was experiential and much more likely to be remembered than if facts had just been read from a book or recounted to them by the teacher. Moreover, by looking broadly at the relationship between force and motion instead of at a list of smaller details children were able to learn holistically.

As well as observation and recording other activities included reading stories and doing dramatizations to raise awareness of force and motion in our everyday lives.

Towards the end of the unit, as one way of seeing what they had learned about how forces work, children designed their own new toy. Having built their toy, they wrote about it and presented it to the rest of the class. Meanwhile the teacher, in collaboration with the class, had developed a rubric for the evaluation of children's work in this project. Thus when they were making the toy each child understood clearly that they should be demonstrating the following:

• An understanding of the link between force and motion and thus an understanding of how their toy moved;

• An appropriate use of materials

Because they have been used to working with rubrics for all activities (group work, drama, written presentation, oral presentation or whatever), children knew clearly what was expected of them at all times. When they were working as a group they knew what behaviour the teacher wanted to observe because they were familiar with the groupwork rubric. Likewise, when they came to make their presentation their familiarity with the presentation rubric guided them in their efforts.

During the preparation and execution of a PYP unit it is very important to explore transdisciplinary links. For this to happen teachers of all subjects come together during the planning of each unit and together plan activities. A concrete example of this in the "Force and Motion" unit was the children writing, with their English teachers, on the theme of "What happens to a windmill on a day without wind?".

As an end of unit assessment activity, the children of each class assembled a "toy garden" and presented it to other classes..

At the end of the unit, the Grade 3 teachers came together to reflect on how it had gone and to think how they could make it a stronger unit next year.