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Straits International School (SIS) in Rawang are on the way to completing their first year with the International Primary Curriculum. A year full of learning, challenges, and excitement. The school began by attending the workshop: Level 1 Implementing the IPC, which helped them gain insight into the IPC. Pearline Silvanathan, Year 2 Teacher and now IPC coordinator started her own research, collaborating with other schools on how they implemented the curriculum, how to start the process and how the school could progress from there. Ms Pearline was fortunate enough to have many contacts in Malaysia and was able to attend school meetings, visit other schools to get ideas, as well as communicate and exchange ideas with them.

Pearline shares Straits International Schools’ IPC journey so far, the challenges faced and how she overcame them.

Before IPC

Five months before we decided to roll out the curriculum, we set up meetings with the KS1 teachers to share the plan and then conducted three workshops consecutively, which allowed everyone to do research and ask questions. With the KS1 team, it was quite challenging, as we were doing all the workshops and planning virtually. It was difficult to have in-depth conversations, as there was so much to cover, but with virtual meetings, it is better to keep them straight to the point. Now that we are back in school, we allocate time every week for feedback and updates. We also had a couple of sessions for the parents, so they are aware of our implementation before we started IPC in KS1.

MyFieldwork (curriculum portal) is a great resource for us, we can select units that are applicable to each year group, and it provides learning goals, which help teachers to have a particular focus. It also gives an overview of the goals that were accomplished over the year, which allows us to focus on the goals that were not achieved, therefore creating a plan for the future. 

The challenges ahead

This year’s planning was different to previous years. Dealing with the virtual learning whilst implementing a new curriculum was sure to be challenging. However, we initially looked at the long-term plan, looking at all the subjects in IPC that linked themes and connected them with Literacy. It was not easy to do at first with Mathematics, but this will be an area that we will be looking at as a team once everyone is confident with the core subjects in IPC. We also tried to fit some of the units that would fall well into the events that will be happening in the school or around the world so the children can make the connections. 

We enjoyed using the plans from MyFieldwork and we found that most of them keep the students on their toes. The activities are hands-on and as with any program, lesson time required a lot of preparation. Sometimes we had to tweak the lessons according to the resources available, and luckily our parents were accommodating by bringing in resources from home.

Why the IPC

As a teacher, I feel that this curriculum pushes me to go beyond my comfort zone to ensure that my students are fully engaged, making it as fun as possible and at the same time expanding their knowledge, skills and understanding. Some of the most memorable activities from our recent unit was interviewing some of my friends from all over the world, where they learnt about how different lives are in other parts of the world. They were quite astonished by the differences, as most of them have not had the chance to travel for some time.

The IPC has many benefits, such as allowing students to participate in rigorous learning, creating international, global, and intercultural awareness, making the curriculum as exciting as possible for the children to enjoy, and providing teachers with everything that will make a curriculum work its very best.

It’s been a pleasure working with Fieldwork Education and I know that I can always ask questions when I need clarification. I am looking forward to our school’s development in the IPC and hoping that we get through the accreditation process once we are ready for it.

Heritage International School won the “Climate Action Project Schools of Excellence” award this November 4th, 2021. The school was chosen out of 250 top institutions that all aim to vary students’ behaviour and societies’ mindset regarding climate through education.

The Climate Action Project is a free global climate initiative that allows students and teachers to collaborate on environmental topics. Involving 2,700,000 students, 146 countries and with 1 mission in mind, the project explores the causes and effects of climate change and helps students understand what steps we can all take to create climate solutions.

We were delighted to hear that one of our International Primary Curriculum schools won the School of Excellence award for their climate project. We couldn’t be prouder to shout about this accomplishment and how much the school deserves such an award. Hear from the teachers themselves who put the work in and lead the climate project.

Hear from Tatiana Popa, Head of Global Education and the Hybrid Learning Coordinator

Hear from Inga Corlateanu is an IPC Coordinator and English teacher 

Delivering the best opportunities

Heritage International School is an institution where educational programmes get beautifully intertwined to deliver the best of opportunities to our disciples. We aim to develop the whole child here that will become a responsible citizen of the world, have a global view on things and will thrive in a diverse, colourful, and sustainable world. Heritage is the first and only school in Moldova that is part of Fieldwork Education, offering the International Primary Curriculum for our younger students. The curriculum offers educators the possibility to involve students in many global collaborative projects that would not only benefit the student, but also the environment.

How we began tackling Climate change

This year has been marked by important events for the future of our planet. The COP26 conference in Glasgow is one such example. Climate change is a topic discussed and acted upon in many spheres of our lives, and no single person can affirm that it is being tackled enough.

As the Climate Action Project country ambassador for Moldova, I spent the summer of 2020 promoting this important environmental project in the news media, on radio channels, getting official support of the Ministry of Education, as it was launched that summer in Moldova.

In our first year, there were around 120 Moldovan educators, and approximately 300 teachers that joined this global initiative in 2021. We contacted the Minister of Environment and President Maia announced a nationwide tree-planting campaign, inviting schools, students, and educators to be part of the movement.

Using the International Primary Curriculum to create awareness

As a school community, Heritage International School found it instrumental to have the right academic paths to integrate the Climate Action Project into everyday lessons, be it in primary, through the IPC or English lessons, Science, English, Biology, Civic Education, or other subjects in secondary.

Our students learned about the causes and consequences of climate change, they did research and shared with classrooms around the world, as well as with educators in global webinars, such as one for COBIS about sustainability projects at our school. The IPC curriculum offered a hands-on approach that allowed students to be creative when exploring the world around them, their outcomes are tangible, beautiful, and impactful.

They created courses of action, planted trees, designed flyers, shared with the community, wrote articles in the Heritage Globe newspaper, and our teachers shared the project during international conferences.

How our Climate Action Project soared

I was selected with a group of Heritage students to speak live in front of tens of thousands of attendees at the Climate Action Day 2020, one team from each continent. Six Heritage students represented Europe at the big event, speaking about their findings in the project and the climate situation in Moldova.

This year, our students wrote messages to world leaders, asking for climate education in schools and for actions to be taken globally. These messages were exhibited on a huge wall in the Blue Zone at COP26 conference in Glasgow, with the help of the World’s Largest Lesson. How proud we all were! They also interviewed family and friends, did research, and then shared findings with classrooms worldwide.

In tackling climate change, our students learned that sustainability starts with small steps, that’s why we implemented some changes in the school. We organised ‘Stop Plastics’ flash mobs, ‘Fridays for Future’ silent strikes, we banned the use of plastic cups in the school, only offering fresh water and invited students to bring in their reusable bottles.

Furthermore, we made a school survey and introduced meat-free Mondays, so we show more care for the planet. Also, we introduced the Earth Project app for the school which calculates our carbon footprint and avoided the use of plastic every week. Heritage students understand that it must be an overall commitment with everyone involved to make visible change.

Winning the Climate Action Project School of Excellence award

After two years of hard work in the Climate Action Project, we were thrilled to be selected among the 250 schools in the entire world to receive the title of Climate Action Project School of Excellence. With 2.7 million students and teachers in the project, our hard work paid off – after thorough evaluation, our school received this prestigious award, announced by Cartoon Network during the Climate Action Day 2021 webinar.

Heritage International School shares its commitment to make the world a better place for everyone now, but also for the future generations, and this award received in November 2021 only showcases our actions taken daily at our school.

Developing creative learning skills

As teachers we help students understand the world in which they live, grow, and develop as personalities. We cannot detach kids from what is happening around us and them, just because they are too young, as these are issues that they will also one day face. We must teach children to be aware that what happens to the climate is a common problem of all mankind, regardless of age, nationality, religion, etc.

At Heritage International School, we began implementing the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) five years ago, right from the moment it first opened its doors to students. It was something new for the Republic of Moldova, as we are the first and until now the only one, that integrates this curriculum that comes to help students develop learning skills in an interactive, creative, and comprehensive way.

If we look at the units in the curriculum that Fieldwork Education offers us, we realise that many of them address the issue of global warming, climate change, deforestation, melting glaciers, and all those issues that are now so current and require the involvement of all of us.

Bringing the Climate Action Project and IPC together

Last year we saw a presentation on the Climate Action Project, and we realised that it fits like a glove, as we had already done so much research in this area and we know a lot about the stringent problem of climate change, plus we could participate with other schools from more than 140 countries – an impressive number. This also confirms that this is a global problem, we must all come together to solve and there is no country in the world that is not affected by the effects of climate change.

The learning objectives of the IPC and those of the Climate Action Project are very similar and aim at the same purpose: to raise awareness of the global problem, bring into school’s real-life situations and make students identify solutions. Therefore, there was no difficulty in integrating the proposed activities during the project into our classes.

The students found identifying the causes and effects of climate change much more interesting, and this meant it created higher impact on their awareness, because they were getting acquainted with the answers given by children from all around the world. They were able to see that the opinions, definitions, effects, and solutions are similar, and they complement each other no matter where you are from.

Interacting on a global scale with other schools

The students had the opportunity to discuss with their peers from Romania and India. They shared impressions, asked questions, drew conclusions, and tried to identify common solutions. What surprised me was that they really understood the gravity of the problem and that we humans, from youngest to oldest, are responsible for what is happening in the world related to climate change.

Participating in live events and listening to prominent personalities such as HRH Prince William and HRH Princess Esmeralda, helped them comprehend that climate change is everyone’s problem and only together there can be identified small steps that will bring major positive changes.

Consequently, by implementing the IPC and participating in such projects, we educate people who become aware and responsible people. From an early age, they begin understanding that they can do something to change because they are the change, we live in the same world, we are the people of the world.

With a world that is increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, we know that our learners will grow up facing challenging circumstances. To enable them to flourish and overcome, their dispositional qualities must be a key area of focus for teachers and school leaders. Whether consciously or not, personal learning cultivates within us a mindset to approaching challenges, and they strongly shape our attitudes and capabilities as thinkers and learners.

As the International Primary Curriculum is used in over 90 countries, developing a common understanding of what the Personal Learning Goals look, sound, and feel like has been a key driver in our ongoing development of the curriculum. We have developed a matrix of indicators that describe each Personal Goal in relation to increasing maturity and breadth of experience. These provide learners and teachers with detailed illustrations of what is expected from each Personal Learning Goal.

Personal learning cannot be confined to curriculum specific activities or moments on the timetable. To be successful this learning needs to pervade across all aspects of the curriculum and the school community. Opportunities for learning about these attitudes and the behaviours that result from them should be capitalised on, as they provide models and exemplars that help children to develop their understanding of what is expected of them when they are learning to be adaptable, thinkers, respectful, empathetic, communicators, collaborators, ethical or resilient.

Learning about these qualities should be embedded in planned experiences. For instance, when learning about figures from the past, children could explore which ideals the person demonstrated and the challenges they also faced.

Children should understand that for most of us, constantly exhibiting these high standards is not realistic. Learning from our shortcomings through reflecting on what prevented us from making the best choice is essential for the ‘learning to be’ aspect and will contribute to our own self-awareness and personal development.

Unplanned opportunities to learn about these dispositions will occur regularly. This could be through current affairs or local and global events. Children may raise questions about who is and is not demonstrating the Personal Goals in the world beyond their classroom. For example, who at Cop 26 showed empathy, respect, or resilience to help improve our world?

‘Learning to be’ focuses on children practising and taking ownership of the Personal Learning Goals by aiming to be a communicator, resilient, ethical etc., both in the classroom and beyond. Personal learning is not confined to a specific time, place or subject. All 8 IPC Personal Learning Goals are applicable within all aspects of the curriculum, school, and life experience.

Whatever your vision for the people you are trying to develop, a description of what you are aiming for, and a plan for how you set about achieving this, are essential. It needs to be inclusive of all learners and all adults in the learning community.