Updating our approach with the IB PYP

Teaching young children might seem easy – after all, we all guide our kids at home, helping them learn good manners, stay safe, and be kind. So how hard can it be to teach reading, math, or science to a six-year-old?

Actually, it’s a lot more complex than it looks.

Behind every playful classroom scene – the questions, the stories, the experiments – is a teacher who is carefully guiding your child’s learning using a well-structured and thoughtful approach. In every moment, the teacher is assessing, interpreting, and evaluating a student’s actions and behaviours, and responding in a way best suited to that child. That is the immensely technical process that teachers go through – invisible to the rest of us. The context within which they do this is the curriculum set out within the school.

At SIS, we follow the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (IB PYP), a world-renowned learning framework that not only challenges students but also pushes teachers to constantly grow and adapt.

Recently, the IB made some exciting updates to the PYP. These changes are designed to make learning even more meaningful and relevant for students, while giving teachers better tools to support them. Our SIS teaching team has been working hard to put these updates into action across all our classes.

Here’s a quick look at what’s changed:

Updated transdisciplinary themes

The main topics that connect different subjects – called transdisciplinary themes – have been updated to be more action-focused and easier to understand. They help students see how people and the world are connected.

Clearer ‘big ideas’

The “big ideas” students explore in each unit are now known as ‘specified concepts’. The understanding of these is supported by ‘additional concepts’. Every class focuses on the former, and the additional concepts allow teachers to deepen the students’ understanding. This helps students make clearer links between subjects.

New subject guides

The new guides, as before, focus less on what children learn, and more on how they learn. There is a stronger focus on building skills they can use across different subjects, like problem-solving and asking great questions.

Early Years improvements

For our youngest learners, there’s more emphasis on learning through play, following their own interests, and taking meaningful action. It’s all about helping children become curious, confident learners from the very beginning.

Celebrating different cultures and ideas

The updated curriculum makes more space for different ways of understanding the world, including indigenous knowledge and cultural perspectives. This helps students develop a more inclusive and global outlook.

More student voice and action

Students are encouraged to take the lead in their learning and take action on the things they care about. It helps them become more independent, motivated, and socially responsible.

These updates were introduced in April, and we’ve already started putting them into practice. For example, we’re revising our unit plans and subject materials to reflect the new focus on learning methods and real-world understanding.

If you would like to learn more about the IB PYP and how it shapes your child’s learning experience, feel free to reach out to our PYP Coordinator, Saima Asif, at s.asif@intsch.se.