Mind Map: The PYP curriculum

The PYP curriculum is made up of three parts:

• Written curriculum
• Taught curriculum
• Assessed curriculum

This assignment asked us to connect aspects of the three curricula together. I sketched a rough visual for how I think the three curricula interact during the teaching process.

The visual is rough and the metaphors not entirely connected, but it has helped me visualize the PYP curricula together.

 

Edit:

How does the interaction of written and taught curriculum support students learning and lead to the development of the IB Learner profile?

 

By teaching the 5 essential elements of written curriculum (Knowledge, Concepts, Skills, Attitudes, & Action) through inquiry, the central strategy of taught curriculum, students are active practitioners of the strategies that will lead to them developing into IB Learners.

Because the taught curriculum guides students through difficult open-ended processes, like exploring, making connections & predictions, questioning, researching, discussing and taking & explaining positions, and the written curriculum is designed to support those Inquiry-based activities, students will be active practitioners of skills and attitudes that reflect all of the aspects of the IB Learner Profile.

By emphasizing the importance of major concepts and skills over content, students will be capable of tackling any number of academic subjects. They will have the ability to ask the questions that will clarify and get to the heart of their learning materials as well as the ability to discover the answers to their own questions.

Instead of focusing on content standards, the concept-based PYP curricula ensure that students who go through the program will be capable of being all of the following:

• Inquirers
• Knowledgeable
• Thinkers
• Communicators
• Principled
• Open-minded
• Caring
• Risk-takers
• Balanced
• Reflective

 

In addition, the Attitude and Action pieces of the written curriculum, especially,  extend past the academic areas of the students’s lives because they teach students how to conduct themselves when facing challenges in a way that is useful in non-academic and extracurricular situations. Students will be used to feeling and expressing positive attitudes to themselves, their classmates, and their environment because it is an noted valuable asset to the classroom. Students will also feel empowered and be able to determine what actions are appropriate in their environment. All of these abilities are valuable in and out of the classroom.