Primary Years Programme

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At the International School of Nice, our early childhood and primary education follow the IB Primary Years Programme for children ages three to 11.

The primary school is where your child’s future starts. Through a learning environment that establishes collaboration, kindness, curiosity and independence, your child builds an exemplary foundation for their education.

A feature of the teaching in the primary school, which provides for each preschool year group and primary Grades 1 to 5, is that it focuses on the individual needs of the child.

Our team of experienced teachers provides a programme of study based on your child’s interests and curiosity. This makes learning meaningful and inspires children to take action on what they have learned.

Aligned with the PYP, our approach is one of the development of the whole child as an inquirer and as a compassionate, self-assured and engaged learner during their IB primary learning experience and beyond.

sample primary school timetable

 

Transdisciplinary Themes

The programme covers six transdisciplinary themes, designed to foster students’ conceptual understanding, underpinning each unit of work students explore within this inquiry-based learning framework:

A student sits at a desk while building a model

Themes

  1. Who we are
  2. Where we are in place and time
  3. How we express ourselves
  4. How the world works
  5. How we organise ourselves
  6. Sharing the planet

Students inquire into elements of these six transdisciplinary themes through the units of inquiry. Each unit of inquiry focuses on an aspect of a theme through the study of a central idea.

By the end of their primary years, students will have gained significant knowledge and understanding of the six transdisciplinary themes.

Our children are placed in homeroom groupings in the care of the main homeroom teacher, who actively engages them in developing skills and knowledge in and across all of the core subject areas of the PYP curriculum.

These subject areas include English language and literature, French, mathematics, science, arts, social studies and physical, social and personal education.

In the last year of the Primary Years Programme, our students demonstrate their independence, knowledge and skills through an in-depth personal project of exploration during their PYP exhibition. This is a culminating event that enables students to illustrate how they have developed attributes of the IB learner profile.

It also provides an opportunity for them to share their voice, vision and ideas with the school community during this celebration of learning that marks students’ transition into middle school.