The special feature of the primary school of the Berlin Cosmopolitan School, in contrast to most public schools in Berlin, is that the PYP (Primary Years Programme) of the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) forms the basis for the curriculum alongside the Berlin framework curriculum.

The Primary Years Programme (PYP)

For further information on the PYP, please see the Primary Years Programme (PYP) page.

The PYP is a programme developed for three to twelve year olds by the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) and is characterised by the following:

International mindedness

This programme emerged as a combination of successful national curricula and the experiences of international educational institutions and was developed specifically as a curriculum for international schools leading their students to the IB Diploma Programme. The PYP curriculum also enables students to transfer schools easily on an international scale. As BCS is an international school (we currently have students from more than 40 countries), this is of particular importance to our highly mobile families.

Learning based on questioning and inquiry: Inquiry Based Learning

The focus of PYP, and therefore BCS, is on knowledge and experience-based learning, developing the best methods of acquiring knowledge and engaging with things that people want to know more about. PYP is thus based on children’s natural curiosity and is a discovery programme that focuses primarily on scientific exploration as the central approach. The PYP concept focuses on the children as explorers, both in and out of the classroom. Pupils are encouraged by teachers to be curious, to ask questions and to find ways, using different learning strategies, to find answers to these questions and in this way find meaning in what they are learning. The teacher does not act as a carrier of ready-made declarative knowledge. This learning strategy is called searching autonomous learning and characterises the whole programme. Thus, the most important difference of PYP from the classical education models is that it is not about knowledge accumulation and knowledge reproduction, but about the development of a deep understanding of the most important concepts and contexts. The way to achieve this is not through demonstration but through enquiry, exploration and experimentation with the active participation of the learner.

Cross-curricular connections

PYP aims to make connections between students’ existing knowledge and their new understanding of the world. Traditional academic subjects (mathematics, languages, arts, natural and social sciences) are part of the programme, but are taught by drawing on interdisciplinary themes. This transdisciplinary programme allows students to see existing interrelationships and connections between academic knowledge and builds a solid foundation of all basic skills and life skills to best integrate into the global world.

The IB Learner Profile

In the PYP, the focus is on children and their holistic individual development, with emotional, physical, social and cognitive needs of children playing a significant role alongside academic skills. To this end, certain personality characteristics are fostered that create a foundation for the students’ later “international mindeness” and form the so-called learner profile.

Summary

The read as follows our MINT activities form the MINT focus of BCS Primary School:

In mathematics lessons, pupils are given the opportunity to develop the knowledge and skills they need to apply mathematics in practice and to recognise links between mathematics and other subject areas.