Beyond the Classroom: KSI Montenegro’s Year 5 & 6 Head to Vučje for Discovery Week
From Monday 21st September, KSI Montenegro’s Year 5 and Year 6 students are swapping their regular timetable for three days of hiking, teamwork, and a night or two away from home. Discovery Week takes our Primary Years Programme (PYP) students to Vučje, where the school day gives way to hands-on, experiential learning in a completely different setting.
It is a short trip on paper: three days, two nights. But for many of our Year 5 and 6 students, it is one of the more formative weeks of their year.
Why an IB school builds a week around this
The IB Primary Years Programme is built on the idea that real learning does not stop at the classroom door. Skills like communication, collaboration, and independent thinking are named explicitly in the PYP curriculum, but they are best developed through experience, not worksheets.
That thinking lines up with where global education research is heading. The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report has repeatedly flagged curiosity, lifelong learning, resilience, and cognitive flexibility as among the skills that will matter most for the students of today by the time they enter the workforce. A week of hiking, problem-solving, and living alongside classmates is, in a very direct sense, practice for exactly that.
What the week looks like
Students travel out together on the Monday morning, settling in with team-building activities before an evening of games and a movie night. Tuesday is spent almost entirely outdoors, hiking and exploring the natural surroundings of Vučje, with an evening karaoke session giving the trip a lighter, communal feel. By Wednesday afternoon, students are back in Tivat in time for a normal school dismissal, with a reflection day at school on Thursday to help them process the experience before the week wraps up with KSIM Sports Day on Friday.
It is a simple structure, deliberately so. The value is less in any single activity and more in the cumulative effect of three days spent navigating a new environment together.
Growing up a little
For a ten or eleven-year-old, a few nights away from home is a genuinely big step, and it is normal for students to feel a little uneasy about it beforehand. Our staff build in support for exactly that: familiar faces from school, a group of classmates going through the same thing, and a schedule with enough structure to feel safe and enough freedom to feel like an adventure.
Students who take part typically come back a little more confident and a little more independent than when they left, which is really the point of the week.
Part of a bigger picture
Discovery Week does not happen in isolation. It follows on from the start of our Term 1 Extra-Curricular Activities programme, and it leads straight into KSIM Sports Day and, next month, International Week. Taken together, these are all part of the same idea: that a well-rounded education happens across a school year, not just inside a classroom, and that students grow through doing things, not just being told about them.
If you are exploring international schools in Montenegro and want to understand how the IB Primary Years Programme translates into real experiences like this one, our admissions team is always happy to talk you through it, and to arrange a visit so you can see it for yourself.
