05.09.2023

What is the IB Continuum?

The International Baccalaureate represents a global network of schools that share the unified mission of empowering young people with the values, knowledge and skills needed to forge a more peaceful world. The IB’s main goal is to develop complete citizens with a global perspective, who understand the universal values of humanity and who take responsibility for their impactful actions on the planet.

As an IB, Beacon adopts the Primary Years Program (PYP) for Early Childhood Education and Primary Years. The school is in the process of applying for the Middle Years Program (MYP) and for the final years of Elementary School, and already offers the Diploma Program (DP) for High School students. These programs are in line with the values and mission of our institution.

An IB Continuum school is a school that offers all the IB programs: PYP, MYP, DP. There is also the Career-related Programme – the CP – which is an international education structure that incorporates the IB values into a single program that addresses the needs of students involved in more specific career-related education.

IB Learner Profile Attributes and Skill Development

As IB students, students are encouraged to be questioning, knowledgeable, thinking, communicating, ethical, open-minded, caring, courageous, balanced and reflective. These traits will help our students, as well as individuals and groups, to adopt global perspectives and act for positive change in the world.

In addition, students have opportunities to develop interrelated skills that will enable them to become learners who can lead and take responsibility for their own education. The development of critical thinking, research, communication, social interaction and self-management skills is fundamental to shaping active, compassionate students who are eternal seekers of knowledge.

Learning more about each IB program at Beacon

PYP

The Primary Years Programme (PYP), aimed at children aged 3 to 12, adopts a transdisciplinary, investigative and concept-driven teaching and learning approach. The program aims to transcend the conventional barriers between different areas of knowledge, allowing them to perceive and create genuine meanings about the world. Through enhanced critical thinking, students will be able to apply and share their knowledge and understanding with their peers, their teachers and the community.

Our program encompasses units of inquiry in which students build and deepen their understandings of world issues or problems linked to the PYP’s six transdisciplinary themes:

MYP

The aim of the Middle Years Program (MYP) is to foster active learners and young people with a global perspective who are able to demonstrate empathy for others and understand purpose and meaning relevant to both their personal lives and the community.

The program enables students to explore a wide range of issues and ideas of local, national and global significance. The outcome is the creation of young, creative and reflective thinkers. It also aims to help students develop their personal understanding, self-awareness and sense of responsibility towards the community and the world.

Through global approaches, MYP students deepen their understanding of common humanity and the relevance of participating in a peaceful society, contributing to a collective feeling towards the planet. This is achieved through the exploration of the following contexts:

The program encompasses eight areas of knowledge with an interdisciplinary approach, which complies with the National Common Curriculum Base (BNCC) in line with the IB’s curricular demands. The areas of knowledge covered in Beacon’s MYP are:

The final years at Beacon School are anchored in the three pillars of the MYP, which focus on the development of skills and competencies that articulate with the areas of knowledge:

Approaches to Learning Skills – development of learning skills to form the profile of balanced, empathetic and academically high-performing students. It is practiced in all subjects and reinforced in Study Skills (Y6 and Y7) and Lab Skills (Y8 and Y9) classes;

Service As Action – a program integrated with the curricular components offered by Beacon and which promotes the involvement of students in bringing solutions to problems faced by the local community, which can culminate in community or personal projects,

Community and Personal Projects – projects developed in the final year of the MYP.

DP

The Diploma Programme is a curriculum that spans a wide range of fields of knowledge, enabling intellectual, personal, and emotional student development. The curriculum structure consists of six domains of knowledge and the DP Core (Theory of Knowledge, Creativity, Activity, and Service, Extended Essay).

The DP Core is a mandatory stage for all students, providing them with the opportunity to acquire critical thinking skills related to the nature of knowledge, conduct an individual investigation, and additionally, take leadership in a community service project.

The studied subjects are categorized into six domains of knowledge:

Beacon offers various discipline options within each knowledge domain, and students choose to study three subjects at the standard level (SL) and three at the higher level (HL). Choosing a discipline from each group (except Group 6) is essential. These choices contribute to creating a highly varied and individually tailored student curriculum.

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