Newsletter // September 2021

In the Elementary School this year, teachers will work with the IB consultant to begin preparing for the 2024 evaluation visit. As a teaching team, they will review the new Programme Standards and Practices in conjunction with their 2019 PYP Authorization Report to choose areas they can improve upon. The emphasis will be placed on those areas which they feel would have the most positive impact on student learning (for example, assessment practices or collaborative planning).

For each identified area, they will create a ‘’Programme Development Plan’’. The duration of each plan is expected to be between 1 and 3 years. However, they aim to have their first plan ready to implement in January 2022. By June 2022, they plan to begin the next step in the process – the Self-Study Questionnaire. Just as they expect their students to continually reflect and improve, they hold themselves to the same rigorous standards.

The first Unit of Inquiry this year is 'Who We Are'. This broad topic allows Elementary students of all ages and levels express and expand their ideas about who they are and what their position in the world is. Since our student population is so international and diverse, this unit gives each student a voice and agency to inquire about their own world.

Many interesting activities have happened so far

this semester. First, students were curious about the older students in the school community. They wanted to know more about their values and beliefs, so they decided to interview them. They bravely asked Middle and High School students about their cultures. In Spanish and Catalan, students learned the vocabulary for the parts of the body and went on a field trip to learn more about the local Catalan traditions surrounding the Barcelona festival, La Merce.

At ES American School we constantly update and enrich our curriculum to provide the very best opportunities for our students' futures. As mentioned in the newsletter introduction, we have added several new electives in high school and also additional AP courses. Some of the AP courses, specifically AP Calculus and AP English Literature, now take place during core curriculum time. This enables many of our students to take an increased number of AP courses that provide the challenge and rigor of college level work while providing them the opportunity to achieve college credits before graduating high school.  

Digital Citizenship and Culture replaced our high school Journalism elective as it enables students to dive further into exciting areas such as fake news, media literacy, and other useful  21^st century skills. They will still be creating our beloved magazine that is released each semester.

Our new 2D Art course is a student favorite and strengthens our curriculum links with our sister school in Naples, Florida. This is essential for those students who wish to do a semester exchange program or just let their creativity flourish and shine!

In middle school, in addition to providing projects and alternative assessments in their core classes, students in the enrichment program are learning a variety of useful and exciting skills. Currently they are studying photography skills such as the rule of thirds and how to use line, texture and color to tell a story. On September 30th, they took an excursion, along with the 2D Art students, into Barcelona to further develop their skills and put their creative energy to work.