International Baccalaureate (IB)
Inquiry-driven learning helps students make connections, think critically, communicate with confidence, and understand the world around them.
At Pine Street School, the International Baccalaureate provides a framework for learning that encourages students to ask questions, make connections across subjects, and apply what they know in meaningful contexts. As students grow, they take increasing responsibility for their learning, developing the independence, curiosity, and skills to keep learning well beyond the classroom.
Pine Street School is an authorized IB World School for the Primary Years Programme and an MYP Candidate School following the Middle Years Programme framework in Grades 6 through 8.
What Is the International Baccalaureate?
The International Baccalaureate is an internationally recognized approach to education built around inquiry, conceptual understanding, and connections across disciplines. Students build knowledge and skills within individual subjects while also learning to bring those subjects together around larger questions and ideas.
Teachers provide direct instruction where it is needed, while giving students opportunities to research, investigate, discuss, design, create, present, and reflect. This helps students develop strong academic foundations while understanding how what they learn connects to the world around them.
The IB Learner Profile
The IB Learner Profile describes the qualities students develop throughout their education.
Primary Years Programme (PYP)
The Primary Years Programme (PYP) guides learning from Preschool 3 through Grade 5. Students explore broad ideas through Units of Inquiry that connect subject areas while continuing to build knowledge and skills in mathematics, literacy, science, social studies, languages, the arts, and other disciplines. As children move through the PYP, they become increasingly independent in asking questions, gathering information, considering different perspectives, communicating their thinking, and reflecting on what they have learned.
In Grade 5, students bring these skills together through the PYP Exhibition, an extended inquiry in which they investigate an issue or idea of importance to them and share their learning with the school community.
A Unit of Inquiry in Action
One of the clearest ways to understand the Primary Years Programme is to see a Unit of Inquiry in action. During Pine Street School’s Marketplace unit, students explore how goods and services are created, exchanged, and valued within a community, then develop their own businesses for a student-run marketplace.
Students begin by considering what people need or want and developing a product to meet that need. Mathematics becomes part of the work as they calculate costs, set prices, manage budgets, make change, and track earnings. In literacy, they write advertisements, product descriptions, signs, and persuasive sales pitches. Through social studies, they examine how markets function and the role businesses play within a community. Art and design shape products, logos, packaging, and displays, while Spanish or Mandarin may become part of how students present their ideas and interact with customers. Along the way, students divide responsibilities, listen to feedback, make decisions together, and adjust their plans when something does not work as expected.
The unit culminates in Marketplace Day, when students open their businesses to the school community, welcome customers, explain their products, and manage real transactions.
Middle Years Programme (MYP)
In Grades 6 through 8, students continue within the Middle Years Programme (MYP) framework at Pine Street School, a candidate school for MYP authorization. Learning becomes more interdisciplinary and increasingly independent.
Students study Language and Literature, Language Acquisition, Individuals and Societies, Sciences, Mathematics, Design, Visual and Performing Arts, and Physical and Health Education. Within and across these subjects, they investigate ideas through global contexts, conduct research, develop and test solutions, communicate their thinking, and reflect on their progress. The MYP also places increasing emphasis on the Approaches to Learning, including thinking, research, communication, social, and self-management skills. These skills help students become more deliberate about how they learn and prepare them for the greater independence of high school.
In Grade 8, students complete the MYP Community Project, a sustained inquiry that asks them to identify a need, develop a plan, take meaningful action, and reflect on the process.
A Connected Journey
The transition from the PYP to the MYP builds on what students already know how to do. Transdisciplinary learning develops into interdisciplinary learning. PYP Units of Inquiry give way to MYP Global Contexts. Action develops into Service as Action. The Grade 5 Exhibition prepares students for the greater independence of the Grade 8 Community Project.
Across both programs, students learn to ask stronger questions, connect knowledge across disciplines, and take greater ownership of their work.
The International Baccalaureate is an internationally recognized approach to education built around inquiry, conceptual understanding, and connections across disciplines. Students build knowledge and skills within individual subjects while learning to apply them to broader questions and meaningful contexts.
Pine Street School is authorized to offer the Primary Years Programme from Preschool 3 through Grade 5. The Middle School is an MYP Candidate School following the Middle Years Programme framework in Grades 6 through 8 while pursuing authorization.
The Primary Years Programme guides learning from Preschool 3 through Grade 5. Students build knowledge and skills in literacy, mathematics, science, social studies, languages, the arts, and other disciplines while exploring larger ideas through transdisciplinary Units of Inquiry.
In Grades 6 through 8, students follow the Middle Years Programme framework. They study individual subjects in greater depth while continuing inquiry, interdisciplinary learning, research, reflection, global contexts, and increasingly independent work.
No. Teachers provide direct instruction where it is needed, then give students opportunities to investigate, discuss, design, create, present, and reflect so they can apply and extend what they have learned.
Transdisciplinary learning means students build knowledge and skills within individual subjects, then connect and apply them through a shared Unit of Inquiry.
For example, in Pine Street School’s Marketplace Unit of Inquiry, students apply mathematics to calculate costs, set prices, manage budgets, make change, and track earnings; literacy to write advertisements, product descriptions, signs, and persuasive sales pitches; social studies to examine how markets function; and art and design to create products, logos, packaging, and displays.
The unit culminates in a student-run marketplace, where students explain their products and manage real transactions.
The IB Learner Profile describes qualities students develop throughout their education, including being inquirers, thinkers, communicators, knowledgeable, principled, open-minded, caring, balanced, reflective, and willing to take thoughtful risks.
The Grade 5 Exhibition is the culminating experience of the Primary Years Programme. Students identify an issue or idea that matters to them, develop questions, conduct research, work with mentors and experts, take informed action, and present their learning to the school community.
The Grade 8 Community Project is a sustained inquiry centered on service as action. Students identify a community need, investigate it, plan and carry out a response, reflect on the process, and present their work to the school community.
Both programs develop the IB Learner Profile and Approaches to Learning. Transdisciplinary inquiry develops into interdisciplinary learning, PYP themes develop into MYP Global Contexts, and the Grade 5 Exhibition prepares students for the greater independence of the Grade 8 Community Project.