Photo Courtesy/James Cullum, Falls Church Patch

Thomas Jefferson fourth grade teacher Cindy Bragg (far right), along with two of her students, Niharika Singhvi and Adele Peng (in lifevests) participated in a " Grasses for the Masses" planting this past Saturday.

"We had been growing the grasses in our classroom since February. This projects connects with our watershed/natural resources curriculum in 4th grade" Ms. Bragg said.

The month of March brought official news that Mount Daniel and Thomas Jefferson Elementary have been authorized to offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) Primary Years Programme (PYP) to all students in our school community. After several years of striving to attain this goal, we can all take pride in the many commendations reported by authorization teams that visited each school during the past December.

What is inquiry-based instruction and how is it related to the Primary Years Programme?

Inquiry-based instruction is a teaching technique that challenges students to observe, think, and question. This instructional approach advocates the development of a carefully structured classroom environment where students are taught how to pose their own thoughtful and significant questions about content they are working on. These questions are then used to generate learning within the school’s curriculum. This teacher-guided and student-centered approach is based on research that directly links student learning to the quality and quantity of student involvement in the educational program.