Holiday of a lifetime
“It was one of those moments when, as a teacher you wanted to cork it and keep the moment forever,” says Liz. She is describing the day when she had ninety parents queuing up, enthusiastically waiting to take part in a travel event their children from Years 5 and 6 were participating in; the culmination of six weeks of thematic learning with the IPC Holiday unit.
Choosing what to learn based on the theme is one of the initial processes of every IPC unit and is known as the Knowledge Harvest. Each new unit is launched with an exciting event or activity to immediately engage the children and establish a common experience that all the children can draw on throughout several weeks of learning around the theme. This is followed by the Knowledge Harvest where the teacher identifies what the children already know about the theme and what they would like to learn more about. Each unit then goes into a series of subject learning tasks all linked to the theme, each task allowing for adaptability to meet the interests and the specific needs of the children. This, says Liz, is something that the teachers at SS Simon and Jude find particularly beneficial: “There’s a very effective learning structure to the IPC with an excellent range of rigorous activities provided in each unit but these activities are flexible, allowing us to adapt the activities to suit our school and our children. The IPC provides the structure and the starting point and we’ve found this incredibly helpful.”
The engagement by the children in Years 5 and 6 continued throughout the entire six weeks of their learning on the theme of Holidays. This involved blocked subject learning so instead of one lesson of geography per week, the children were doing several days of discrete geography all connected with the theme before moving on to several days of discrete history, art, ICT and so on. Liz says this was a dramatic shift in learning delivery but one that proved successful. “In this way the children were able to acquire the subject knowledge very quickly and were then able to start applying the skills. There was lots of time to get into developing the skills because we didn’t have to spend so much time recapping and reminding children of what they’d done in the previous lesson; it was just a continuation of geography learning from one day to the next.”
The development of skills is something that the school sees as vital for the children. “The skills they are learning with the IPC are skills ready for life beyond primary school,” explains Liz. “We don’t know what jobs or technology will be around when these children are adults so a grounding of skills that they can apply to different situations is what is essential and the IPC is helping them to apply skills to lots of different, very relevant situations; skills such as researching, presenting fact sheets, reading maps, accessing the internet and so on. The international focus of the IPC is also important for our children, many of who may eventually move away from Bolton and some will likely work abroad. Through the IPC, the children are approaching everything they learn from a local and an international point of view. It’s opening their eyes up to a wider perspective beyond Bolton. They’re not just learning about the differences between one country and another; they’re also looking at the similarities, which is so important. Because there are schools all over the world learning with the IPC, our children will begin to realise that children in places like Africa and Asia are learning exactly the same things as they are; that’s a very powerful thing for our children to discover; to see that we’re part of a much wider world.”
The engagement of the parents was one aspect of the IPC that Liz and the staff at SS Simon and Jude never predicted. “When we invited the parents in for the travel show at the end of the unit, we had a back-up plan in case no one turned up,” says Liz. “It was incredible that so many parents came along! I cannot tell you how fantastic it was watching the children being so proud about their learning and the parents excited to know what it was that their children were all talking about. Even the banter between the staff and the parents was tremendous; it broke down so many barriers. But the one thing that shone through was that all the parents took their children’s learning seriously. They really were interested in what was going on.”
Liz says the IPC has also grabbed the attention of the teachers. “The buzz in the classroom is what we went into teaching for and we can see that it’s not something that’s going to go away. Because of the range of units and the way we can personalise the learning to suit our children, the IPC will always be varied so that will keep that excitement alive. Now every child in our school has the chance to be creative, to develop skills for the future and to grab hold of their own learning within a rich curriculum. We can already see that the IPC is encouraging our children to develop the skills and interest in lifelong independent learning inside and outside the classroom. It’s innovating, exciting and it can’t fail to help every one of our children for their future. The response from the parents, the reaction and engagement of the children, the excitement in the staffroom, the collaboration of children, of teachers and teaching assistants; the IPC has lifted everyone and everything.”
The International Primary Curriculum is the fastest growing independently owned primary curriculum in the world today and is considered by many educationalists in the UK and worldwide to be the most internationally-minded and learning –focused curriculum available for primary children. It is now the curriculum choice of over 690 primary schools in England and Wales who join schools in 59 countries around the world learning through the IPC. To visit an IPC school in your area call the IPC at 0207-7531-9696 or visit their website.
