Answering ‘How’ at NAISAK

Answering ‘How’ at NAISAK Dear Parents and Students Last week, I talked about our purpose as a school and how we are passionate about equipping our students for success in the twenty-first century by bringing the best of the world to Al Khor

 Answering ‘How’ at NAISAK

Dear Parents and Students

Last week, I talked about our purpose as a school and how we are passionate about equipping our students for success in the twenty-first century by bringing the best of the world to Al Khor.  After establishing our ‘why’ last term where we reaffirmed our beliefs, we will spend this term considering ‘how’.  This will take the form of a curriculum review where we consider a number of questions related to our curriculum on offer. 

We want to investigate how we can include our students whose mother tongue is Arabic in our International Primary Curriculum (IPC) lessons.  We also want to consider ways of delivering our curriculum in a topic-based approach, allowing students to make connections between subjects.  The approach to teaching in both the IPC and the International Middle Years Curriculum (IMYC) lends itself to student-centred learning through challenging ideas that link all subject learning to a conceptual theme.  It is worth mentioning that there is also an International Early Years Curriculum (IEYC) that has been recently launched. 

This approach is increasing in popularity, as it helps to prepare students for success in modern society.  Countries, such as Finland, are in the early stages of embracing this approach at a national level - topic based curriculum.

An enquiry-based approach to learning is not something that is new.  The International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) and Fieldwork Education have been advocating enquiry-based learning for years.  I am drawn to the IEYC/IPC/IMYC model through Fieldwork Education, as it allows for the discrete teaching of subjects like mathematics and English.  The Fieldwork curricula allow for the academic rigour of the National Curriculum of England and all of the benefits from an enquiry-based programme.  Additionally, the IEYC/IPC/IMYC offer a curriculum opposed to a framework for delivery. 

I am very excited about the future direction of the school and look forward to the curricular enhancements we will be making over the coming months.  Please do not hesitate to contact me if you would like to share your ideas, comments or ask questions.

Dave Pontich

Principal