The Academic Programmes at La Garenne International School
Enabling each individual student to achieve academic success and develop a passion for lifelong learning and discovery are key objectives of La Garenne. The boarding environment ensures the stability and structure necessary for each child to thrive and develop. Parallel to this, the academic life of the school provides each individual student with stimulating and challenging programmes of study. The small class sizes favour a personalised approach to teaching, based on inquiry and investigative learning.
While their learning is structured and guided according to individual needs, the students are encouraged to take increasing responsibility for their own learning as they move up the school. All the students also study French at levels ranging from beginners to first-language speakers.
La Garenne is a Candidate School for the IBMYP and IBDP Programmes. This school is pursuing authorization as an IB World School. These are schools that share a common philosophy—a commitment to high quality, challenging, international education that La Garenne believes is important for our students.
Only schools authorized by the IB Organization can offer any of its four academic programmes: the Primary Years Programme (PYP), the Middle Years Programme (MYP), the Diploma Programme, or the Career-related Programme (CP). Candidate status gives no guarantee that authorization will be granted. For further information about the IB and its programmes, visit http://www.ibo.org.
As a candidate school, from September 2019, La Garenne will be introducing the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme (IBMYP). Over the coming years, this internationally-recognised programme will be taught from MYP 1 - MYP 5 (Grades 6-10).
We are preparing for an authorization visit for both the MYP and Diploma programmes during the school year 2020-2021.
The MYP curriculum framework consists of eight subject groups, providing a broad and balanced education for the 11-16 age group. In the final two years (MYP 4 and MYP 5), flexibility within the choice of subjects allows students to follow their personal learning goals and future educational plans.
The MYP requires at least 50 hours of teaching time for each subject group, in each year of the programme. At La Garenne, most subjects are allocated significantly more teaching time.
The subject groups are listed below. Further information on the subject groups can be found via the links provided.
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/language-and-literature/
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/language-acquisition/
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/individuals-and-societies/
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/science/
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/mathematics/
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/arts/
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/physical-and-health-education/
https://www.ibo.org/programmes/middle-years-programme/curriculum/design/
Each MYP year group also undertakes a collaboratively planned interdisciplinary unit that involves at least two subject groups. They also produce a long-term project, for which the students have personal responsibility in their choice of topic and how they are going to complete and present their work
Teaching and learning in the MYP programme aims to provide context to student learning, making it relevant and useful. Global contexts underpin teaching and learning. These are:
- Identities and relationships
- Personal and cultural expression
- Orientations in space and time
- Scientific and technical innovation
- Fairness and development
- Globalization and sustainabile
