The IB Curriculum

The IB Mission Statement

IB mission statement The International Baccalaureate aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. To this end the organization works with schools, governments and international organizations to develop challenging programmes of international education and rigorous assessment. These programmes encourage students across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right

IB programmes aim to provide an education that enables students to make sense of the complexities of the world around them, as well as equipping them with the skills and dispositions needed for taking responsible action for the future. They provide an education that crosses disciplinary, cultural, national and geographical boundaries, and that champions critical engagement, stimulating ideas and meaningful relationships.

The Learner Profile

The IB learner profile places the student at the centre of an IB education. The 10 attributes reflect the holistic nature of an IB education. They highlight the importance of nurturing dispositions such as curiosity and compassion, as well as developing knowledge and skills. They also highlight that, along with cognitive development, IB programmes are concerned with students’ social, emotional and physical well-being, and with ensuring that students learn to respect themselves, others and the world around them. IB educators help students to develop these attributes over the course of their IB education, and to demonstrate them in increasingly robust and sophisticated ways as they mature. The development of these attributes is the foundation of developing internationally minded students who can help to build a better world

The 10 Learner Profile

Inquirers : We nurture our curiosity, developing skills for inquiry and research. We know how to learn independently and with others. We learn with enthusiasm and sustain our love of learning throughout life.

Knowledgeable: We develop and use conceptual understanding, exploring knowledge across a range of disciplines. We engage with issues and ideas that have local and global signicance.

Thinkers: We use critical and creative thinking skills to analyse and take responsible action on complex problems. We exercise initiative in making reasoned, ethical decisions.

Communicators: We express ourselves confidently and creatively in more than one language and in many ways. We collaborate eactively, listening carefully to the perspectives of other individuals and groups.

Principled: We act with integrity and honesty, with a strong sense of fairness and justice, and with respect for the dignity and rights of people everywhere. We take responsibility for our actions and their consequences

Open Minded: We critically appreciate our own cultures and personal histories, as well as the values and traditions of others. We seek and evaluate a range of points of view, and we are willing to grow from the experience

Caring: We show empathy, compassion and respect. We have a commitment to service, and we act to make a positive difference in the lives of others and in the world around us.

Risk Takers: We approach uncertainty with forethought and determination; we work independently and cooperatively to explore new ideas and innovative strategies. We are resourceful and resilient in the face of challenges and change.

Balanced: e approach uncertainty with forethought and determination; we work independently and cooperatively to explore new ideas and innovative strategies. We are resourceful and resilient in the face of challenges and change.

Reflective: We thoughtfully consider the world and our own ideas and exprience. We work to understand our strengths and weaknesses in order to support our learning and personal development.

The IB learner profile represents 10 attributes valued by IB World Schools. We believe these attributes, and others like them, can help individuals and groups become responsible members of local, national and global communities

Key Elements of the IB Programme

A broad, balanced, conceptual and connected curriculum

IB programmes offer students access to a broad and balanced range of academic studies and learning experiences. They promote conceptual learning, create frameworks within which knowledge can be acquired, and focus on powerful organizing ideas that are relevant across subject areas and that help to integrate learning and add coherence to the curriculum. The programmes emphasize the importance of making connections, exploring the relationships between academic disciplines, and learning about the world in ways that reach beyond the scope of individual subjects. They also focus on offering students authentic opportunities to connect their learning to the world around them.

At International School Älmhult offers two of the four IB programme

The Primary Years Programme(IB PYP) program provides a coherent educational framework for students aged 3 to 11 that focuses on the development of the whole child in the classroom and in the world outside.

The Middle Years Programme (IB MYP) is an international concept based course for student aged 11 to 16 . It provides a framework of academic challenges that encourages students to become critical, reflective inquiries

Approaches to teaching and learning

Approaches to Teaching

The same six approaches underpin teaching in all IB programmes. The approaches are deliberately broad, designed to give teachers the flexibility to choose specific strategies to employ that best reflect their own particular contexts and the needs of their students.

In all IB programmes, teaching is:

• based on inquiry: A strong emphasis is placed on students finding their own information and constructing their own understandings.
• focused on conceptual understanding: Concepts are explored in order to both deepen disciplinary understandings and to help students make connections and transfer learning to new contexts.
• developed in local and global contexts: Teaching uses real-life contexts and examples, and students are encouraged to process new information by connecting it to their own experiences and to the world around them.
• focused on effective teamwork and collaboration: This includes promoting teamwork and collaboration between students, but it also refers to the collaborative relationship between teachers and students.
• designed to remove barriers to learning: Teaching is inclusive and values diversity. It affirms students’ identities and aims to create learning opportunities that enable every student to develop and pursue appropriate personal goals.
• informed by assessment: Assessment plays a crucial role in supporting, as well as measuring, learning. This approach also recognizes the crucial role of providing students with effective feedback.

Approaches to Learning

Our focus on approaches to learning is grounded in the belief that learning how to learn is fundamental to a student’s education. The five categories of interrelated skills aim to empower IB students of all ages to become self-regulated learners who know how to ask good questions, set effective goals, pursue their aspirations and have the determination to achieve them. These skills also help to support students’ sense of agency, encouraging them to see their learning as an active and dynamic process. The same five categories of skills span all IB programmes, with the skills then emphasized in developmentally appropriate ways within each programme.

The five categories are:

• Thinking skills—including areas such as critical thinking, creative thinking and ethical thinking
• Research skills—including skills such as comparing, contrasting, validating and prioritizing information Key elements of an IB education Approaches to teaching and learning 6 What is an IB education?
• Communication skills—including skills such as written and oral communication, effective listening, and formulating arguments
• Social skills—including areas such as forming and maintaining positive relationships, listening skills, and conflict resolution
• Self-management skills—including both organizational skills, such as managing time and tasks, and affective skills, such as managing state of mind and motivation.

The development of these skills plays a crucial role in supporting the IB’s mission to develop active, compassionate and lifelong learners. Although these skills areas are presented as distinct categories, there are close links and areas of overlap between them, and the categories should be seen as interrelated.