Enlivening Learning
This week Mr Horne is representing the school at the Annual FOBISIA conference. We are members of the Federation of British International Schools in Asia which gives our students the opportunity to access a range of events, from sports to the arts, and to compete and collaborate with the top international schools in the region. Therefore, the pleasure of writing this week’s letter falls to me.

We are always looking for new and exciting ways to enliven the learning experience for students. Year 6 to 12 students have recently returned from Project Week where, in addition to making a difference to others and developing their leadership skills, they were also provided with the opportunity to experience learning that when linked to reflection will have a direct and positive impact on their quest for academic excellence.

One example of this from the Senior School is how the Year 12 Theory of Knowledge (TOK) students have been developing Knowledge Questions, based on their real life experience on the trip. Taking this personal experience and applying their TOK skills has enabled them to create well formulated Knowledge Questions including:

• To what extent can we know that providing a service to others has the intended impact?

• How does emotion impact our abilities to develop knowledge when faced with situations that evoke a strong emotional response?

• To what extent can we know that money raised for charity gets to the people who need it most?

Another example of how we enliven learning for students came this week from Junior School. Students in Year 4 have been learning about the features of newspapers. To make the experience one that motivates and engages students, our Year 4 teachers created a range of stimulating experiences for students, including classrooms being vandalised, PC monitors stolen, reports of a Ghost spotted in B Block and the arrival of mysterious goo in a classroom. Students were all unaware these had been staged by teachers and were encouraged to take on the role of journalists and report on these events.

To help enliven the learning experience the teachers had set up their classrooms so students arrived to discover the situations for themselves and, with the support of other teachers who played the roles of eye witnesses or investigators of CCTV footage, students interviewed witnesses, investigated the scene, and wrote a newspaper article. This last step used all the features they had been learning about including, headlines, pictures, captions, who, what, where, when structures.

Making learning come alive and linking it to student’s real life experiences is just one way we create a learning environment where students are excited to learn.

Mark Wilson, Vice Principal