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Razum International School is a primary school in Singapore that opened in August 2019. As the school was a start-up and the staff were all new to the International Primary Curriculum, this was a challenge that I can confidently say we have overcome. Over the past 2 years, we have learnt so much about the IPC. When we first heard about the IPC, we were super excited to have planned units that were enquiry based and had loads of cross-curriculum links. Then once we started looking at the units, we realised that although the lesson ideas were there we did need to think about several things before starting, the biggest being:

1. Do we plan the whole unit before we start?

2. Do we have the budget to buy the resources we need?

1. Do we plan the whole unit before we start?

We started by looking through the unit in its entirety and started to plot our lessons over the term. As new teachers to IPC, we were getting to grips with our new curriculum. We had dedicated 4 days before the children started back, to work on the IPC planning for Term 1. However, we knew moving forward that we wouldn’t have these dedicated planning days at the beginning of each term and therefore it would need to become a large part of curriculum meetings before the term ended.

We then decided we didn’t need to have everything perfectly planned before the unit started. We needed to make sure of a few things. Firstly, that we knew the basic overview of the unit. Secondly, we had dedicated enough teaching time to cover the unit. And thirdly, we knew what resources were needed and to have them ordered.

Going into term 2 we printed the unit out and then used sticky notes to look through the unit and identify the important points and create a resources list. Over the term, we planned week by week what each lesson would be. This way of planning worked a lot better for us and is how we have continued to work.

2. Do we have the budget to buy the resources we need?

IPC tasks are enquiry based which means they are designed to be hands-on and this requires resources. As a start-up school, we were starting from scratch. We have learnt over the past 2 years a few things:

• Create a list about 3 to 4 weeks before the unit starts. This allows time for research and delivery

• To keep the cost down, try to find recyclable materials to use

• Use Facebook Market Place, Carousel or Op Shops as they often have brand new items for a fraction of the price

• Some items will cross over units but different Mileposts will help with sharing resources

• Look for items that cross over to other units

• Order early as things may take time to be delivered

• There is no need to have everything straight away, you can add to your resources over time

• Keep things organised in labelled tubs and keep a good resources list

The IPC is a fantastic curriculum with an amazing set of units for children to learn so many wonderful things. I think new schools need to take their time and go step by step. With every unit, we have made so much progress with our teaching, planning, resourcing etc and we hope these tips can help other schools in our international community.

World leaders could certainly learn a thing or two from listening to the suggestions of children in solving world problems! Not only did our first global summit demonstrate this – it flagged up many other surprise benefits. In this blog post, it’s my pleasure to share our journey into how and why we felt we needed to connect children around the world.

The inspiration for hosting virtual global summits to connect children arose for a variety of reasons. After reviewing our definition of International Mindedness to include a greater focus on taking action to make positive changes, we explored opportunities and platforms to enable the learner voice.

At Nexus, we are extremely proud to call ourselves an inclusive school and we wanted to find an avenue for those really deep thinking learners to connect with others to share their views, find answers and really have their own thinking challenged. A real life context for developing personal goals is always at the forefront of our minds and we thought what better way to practice effective communication skills than to speak to a global audience?

In school we have been developing curriculum links with the Sustainable Development Goals to develop deep authentic, life changing learning opportunities and realised a summit would provide a wealth of discussion topics to create awareness and action.

What really pushed our creative thinking was of course Covid! The pandemic has forced us all to think outside the box, to use innovation to find ways to ensure learning continues but in different ways. Feedback from the whole school community along with worldwide research pointed to the huge concern regarding well-being and the lack of connection learners were having with their peers.

The summits have contributed to the development of all areas mentioned above. What we hadn’t realised at the time was the excitement this brought to the organisers and all of the learners involved globally. Feedback has been extremely positive and I was left thinking – why hadn’t we thought of this before!

The second time we ran the summit locally to connect Malaysian schools, saw entries flooding in from a range of children – not only the truly confident speakers but the learners who had been interested in the first summit and were now clearly pushing themselves out of their comfort zone, wanting to try something new. This further inspired my own thinking and reminded me of the importance of finding opportunities for everyone to step outside comfort zones. Being scared, but in a good way with excitement and challenge can really support well-being.

Our first topic was to share challenges faced in different countries due to the pandemic and solutions to share on staying happy and well. We had attendees from fifteen different countries and it was fascinating to hear the different stories. One child had just recovered from Covid and was intrigued as to why some countries had not been hit as hard. One learner had set her alarm for 3am in Turks and Caicos to represent her school.

A teacher, based in the UAE was moved enough to exclaim just how brave and resilient the children were. We were left with a very positive feeling of hope and the learners were truly inspirational. My favourite quote was from a ten year olds opening speech “We are a generation who not only survived but thrived during this unusual year. We need to show the world that we have got what it takes to beat this crisis. We are not the new normal we are superhero normal!”

We are repeating the summit locally now to connect schools in Malaysia and plan to share a global summit termly. Our next summit on 22nd April will focus on “Why is it so important to embrace diversity”. Children will explore what diversity means, what a world without diversity would be like and what to do if they see someone being treated differently because of their differences. We felt the preparation for this would be a great focus topic for schools and links well to the SDGs .The summit is open to all schools with learners from Year 4 to Year 6 (aged 8-10).

As an international trainer for the IPC, this year has been full of changes, just like so many teachers in schools around the world. We have changed the way we train from face to face to an online, blended course, and on reflection, it’s been really positive. Along with this change, the IPC has seen many changes as part of the IPC2020 review that is now supporting and benefiting many teachers and schools worldwide.

The IPC encourages learners to be globally competent, future-ready, socially conscious and motivated to positively contribute within a local and/or global context. This is done by using the new goals organised by strands, showing vertical progression for all learners.

One of the changes as part of IPC2020 is that the Learning Goals of the International Curriculum are presented as a matrix or grid, intended to support teachers in knowing where learners’ development has come from and/or where they are going to. The grid format indicates the sequence of progression through the mileposts of the international curriculum, within an area of learning, while demonstrating what progress looks like throughout.

Another element that I want to celebrate is that the assessment for improving learning toolkit has been updated. The mastering is the aim for all learners, along with a new column of innovating. Remember that the aim of rubrics is to improve learning and support you as a teacher.

The last change I want to mention is the brilliant new SDG Challenge Series that aims to further develop learner agency and global competence by providing exciting and relevant challenges linked to the Sustainable Development Goals. The SDG Challenge Series outlines global issues for learners to respond to, requiring problem-solving and applying all the Personal Learning Goals.

Like our learners, we are continually reflecting on our service and responding to your feedback on the IPC platform or via Twitter. We looked at the Milepost 1 units to make them even better through the constant self-evaluation, and we are currently reviewing units in Milepost 2 & 3, so watch this space!

At The Grange Institution (TGI), Singapore, our future-focused curriculum supports our unique Cre8tors-in-Action© educational philosophy aimed at developing Global Citizens by equipping them with the following 8 core competencies:

Construction & Design

Respecting the Environment

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Active Citizenship

Teamwork & Partnerships

Original Ideas

Recognising Issues

Service Leadership

To model effective collaboration with real-world partners, and to showcase original ideas, TGI has an exciting partnership with VERE360 to create immersive educational content for our students. VERE360 was our perfect partner of choice as the company was founded by two amazing young entrepreneurs, who were the kind of persons we hope our TGI students would aspire to become in the future.

VERE360 complements the school’s current ways of teaching with virtual reality experiences, so that our students can see what they learn come to life immediately! From our experience, virtual reality can empower teachers to conduct highly engaging lessons that leads to possibly greater retention of knowledge. In this article, we share a few humble examples as part of our beginning efforts with the IPC and VR.

Example 1: “What’s in your head?” 

Complementing the Milepost 1 and 3 – Brainwave Units

This VR experience brought our students inside our heads! Students played with a 3D modelled puzzle where they could take apart parts of the brain to learn about the parts’ functions. Afterwards, the students put the parts of the brain back together, learning  about the basic anatomy of the brain. Here is a demo of the 3D modelled content that was used for the lesson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?…

Example 2: “A Day in the Life of a Water Droplet” 

Complementing Milepost 2 – On Tap

This Year 3 lesson helped students recap what they have learned previously about the water cycle. Using virtual reality, the students tracked the journey of a water droplet that went through the processes of evaporation, condensation and precipitation. This lesson helped students consolidate their knowledge of the water cycle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?…

Example 3: “Greek Pottery Story – Icarus” 

Complementing Milepost 1 – The Stories People Tell

In this Unit of Learning our Year 1 students explored stories as a clue into our civilisation and our culture. The teacher and the students explored different countries from around the world. This VR experience encourage them to find out about stories through a non-book medium and the use of shadow puppetry showcased another way many civilisations told stories as part of their cultures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?…

Note: The above experience might be limited unless viewed using a VR headset.

As you can see, our VR content is still developing and while it still has an amateurish feel to the final creation, we are nevertheless very proud that it is a true collaboration between our teachers and the VR designers. There are lots of easily available VR contents in the market; however, what we truly value in this TGI and VERE360 partnership, is that we can truly customise the content to suit the IPC learning taking place.