Pirates Capture Imagination of Early Learners
Early Years teachers Flora Grant and Karen Trussler have one group of children creating a desert island out of shredded paper and PVA glue. Another group are eagerly writing messages which they drop into plastic bottles on strings that are then thrown ‘overboard’ for other children to reply to. Other children are role playing walking the plank in a pirate ship they’ve built from large wooden blocks. And yet others are creating their own treasure maps having brainstormed collaboratively all the things they might include, from beaches, rivers and palm trees to treasure! Later in the afternoon, there’s all hands on deck for the clean-up before the entire crew sit down to listen to Pirate Flora reading Tim Ted and the Pirates.
All this activity is kicking off four weeks of cross-curricular learning themed to the subject of treasure which will involve all the foundation subjects as well as make significant links to numeracy and literacy, and all the learning goals are cross-referenced to meet National Curriculum guidelines. “Using the IPC has helped us to give more structure to our learning,” explains Flora once all her little pirates have headed home. “Amongst all the staff we’d felt for a long while that the QCA units sometimes just didn’t work and so it was decided, across the school, to replace them with the International Primary Curriculum.
“We could immediately see the benefits across all the ages. The IPC incorporates all the different learning styles so children are able to learn in the way that suits them best. It’s more fluid in its approach and much less restricted to paper and pen but even so, there’s so much learning going on. There are so many activities that involve imaginative and creative learning, group learning, and freedom to investigate and enquire. It’s great for our able and talented children because it encourages them to take their learning another step forward, and it’s engaging everyone because the themes are so relevant for our children today.”
Treasure is just one of the IPC’s thematic units, but there are plenty more to choose from; a total of 16 Early Years IPC units in fact, all spanning between four and six weeks of learning, all cross-curricular, all relevant for children of every ability. Others include Clothes, Up and Away, All About Me and Shopping. But it’s not just the appealing range of units that is exciting children and teachers alike. “It’s the way that the IPC is so focused on helping children become better learners,” says Gaynor Coles, Early Years coordinator at Albert Primary School in Penarth, South Wales; the first school in Wales to take on the IPC back in 2005. Gaynor describes some of the learning that went on when her class did the Treasure unit: “Following the Entry Point - which was a fantastic treasure hunt down to the beach with everyone dressed as pirates - came the Knowledge Harvest.” Here the children are encouraged to think for themselves; to say what they already know about the theme and decide what they want to find out more about. IPC encourages mind-mapping, even at the Early Years stage, to achieve this process. “When we mind-mapped our Treasure unit, the children, with a little gentle direction from me, decided they wanted to find out all about pirates,” explains Gaynor. “It was they who decided what they were going to learn about. That’s what engages the kids. They really believed that they were deciding what they wanted to learn.
“We also looked at treasure from various other perspectives. We made our own treasure islands and decided where in the world they could be. We visited a local jeweller and were able to look at treasures from around the world including gold and pearls. We discussed what we understood by the word ‘treasure’ and the children made their own treasure boxes and filled them with their own personal treasures. The children were then videoed standing up and telling the rest of the class what they’d put in their treasure box and why. Imagine getting an infant to stand up and talk in front of a video camera for five minutes! They all did it!
“The children love their IPC work because it means something to them; the learning makes sense and it’s a blend of learning that they will take with them into Key Stage 1 and beyond.”
Gaynor is referring to the knowledge, skills and understanding that are introduced within the IPC’s Early Years’ learning tasks that children will go on to develop and master as they progress through their primary education and beyond. “The IPC’s Early Years curriculum is influenced by two fundamental ideas,” explains director of the International Primary Curriculum, Steven Mark. “First, the results of lessons learnt from over a decade of research into the brain and the development of brain-friendly learning and teaching strategies, and second the key concepts of independence and interdependence which underpin our view of what it is to have an international mindset.”
The reason for the global perspective is that the IPC was originally commissioned and created to provide a rigorous, learning-focused and engaging internationally-minded curriculum for a group of flagship international schools. However, since its introduction in 2000, the IPC has become the curriculum of choice for a growing number of international and national schools, including over 680 schools in England and Wales alone as well as schools in 58 different countries around the world.
“The IPC focuses on a combination of international, personal and academic learning for children worldwide,” continues Steven. “It’s a current and highly relevant curriculum that is continually evolving. No one can properly predict the nature of work that will be available for today’s primary age children by the time they are adults. Many of the jobs they will have don’t even yet exist; especially in the fields of ICT, technology and science. So the IPC focuses on developing adaptable and resilient, globally-minded learners prepared for the fast-changing world that they’ll be living and working in.” And that means as early as Early Years. “The sooner that children believe that learning is fun, that it’s relevant to them, and that it’s meaningful, the more they will benefit, the more they will enjoy their time in school and the more likely they will become lifelong learners,” he says.
Flora Grant from Kentish Town Primary couldn’t agree more: “The IPC is not only getting our children excited about their learning, it’s getting the parents involved too. The children are going home enthusiastic about what they’ve done with their days. I’m seeing more extended learning with the family which is sparked directly from the children’s enthusiasm of what they’re doing in the classroom. That’s helping parent’s attitudes which can sometimes be very rigid based on their own experiences of school. Once they see their children’s enthusiasm for what they are learning and see the skills that they are developing, they become much more interested themselves. Now there isn’t a single parent here that doesn’t know exactly what their child is doing.”
As for supporting teachers, Gaynor Coles at Albert Primary says the teaching framework that backs up each IPC unit gives her more time to focus on the creative side of her teaching. “Much of the lesson planning is already done for you but it’s done in a way that allows you to make it as creative, as fun and as relevant for your own class as you want. I use the IPC plan as the start point and then go where I and the children want to take it. It’s wonderful to let our imagination and our interest lead our learning.”
The IPC is a curriculum designed for all primary age children, from Early Years to early Secondary. To visit an IPC school near you or for a free sample unit and more information about the IPC go to www.internationalprimarycurriculum.com or call IPC at 020-7531-9696.
