Written by Melissa Shaw and John McEnhill (Primary Curriculum Coordinators)
We believe that in order for children to fully benefit from their education, there needs to be a close partnership between the parents and the school. YCIS has a well established and well researched curriculum which is challenging, rigorous and meets the needs of all students.
We make the curriculum and the teaching and learning taking place in the school readily accessible to parents so that they can understand what we are teaching their children. Rather than the response to “What are you learning at school?” being “Nothing”, parents are able to follow what their child is learning and have meaningful conversations with them at home. In this article we provide further information about our YCIS curriculum and how you can access it, to support your child at home.
Year Level Blogs
Every two weeks, each year level posts on their Year Level Blog the learning that will take place in the coming two weeks. This allows parents to know ahead of time what learning is coming up. Look out for these posts on alternate Fridays. Here is the link to the Year Level Blogs:
http://blogs.pd.ycis-sh.com/eceprimarynews/primary/
Yearly Overviews & Topics of Inquiry
Yearly Overviews provide you with a sequence of the topics that will be covered across all subjects for each year level. This is a great way to see how teachers provide authentic opportunities to integrate core subjects with specialist subjects as well as Chinese Studies.
The Topics of Inquiry document provides an outline of the various Science, History and Geography units for each year level. These have been designed to allow students to develop an understanding of the world, about themselves and others, where they are from and where they live. Parents may choose to use this document to front-load their child before the unit comes up – e.g. reading some books about the topic, or doing some research on the Internet. The teachers can provide more information about what they will be covering if parents are interested.
http://blogs.pd.ycis-sh.com/eceprimarynews/primary-curriculum/
Parent Curriculum Guides
Some parents are interested in learning more about the subjects we teach at YCIS, and what the specific outcomes and skills are covered for each subject at each year level. The full academic programme is also readily available and accessible to parents. Parents can access this specific information about each subject area in our Parent Curriculum Guides. The Curriculum Guides for Years 1-3 and 4-6 can be located in the following place on the blog:
http://blogs.pd.ycis-sh.com/eceprimarynews/primary-curriculum/
Our YCIS Curriculum has been developed to provide explicit teaching of skills and concepts that will allow students to transfer and apply their knowledge in various contexts, as well as be transferable when they move on to other locations in the future . We want our students to be able to think critically, understand different perspectives and be active participates and contributors amongst their peers and in the community. Our students achieve highly, due to our unique curriculum delivered by enthusiastic, highly trained teachers.