Shanghai is a wonderful city , but what should you choose for your kids ?
What choice you Have ?
A Chinese Kindergarten ?
OR
Wellington's approach to kindergarten in Shanghai
Kindness, Curiosity and Creativity Wellington's approach to
kindergarten in Shanghai. The start of a child’s formal education is a time of great
change and one that is defined by a constant stream of new challenges.
Kindness, Curiosity and Creativity: Wellington's approach to kindergarten in Shanghai
The following sections briefly summarise
the core components to our Pre-Prep educational approach, many of which differ
from comparable international
kindergarten education in Shanghai.
The Curriculum: Giving every pupil the means to succeed
Pre-Prep schooling is an extremely
important time in a child’s development, as it represents their introduction to
formal education and allows them to acquire a wide range of both social and
academic skills. It’s also a new experience for parents, who will see their
children head off to school for the first time and will watch them discover a
world of new opportunities. Throughout the Early Years and KS1, it’s vital that
both teachers and parents work together to encourage their children and help
them adapt to their new learning environment.
Our approach to Early Years teaching
Here at Wellington College International
Shanghai, we follow the UK’s Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum, which is
organised into seven key learning areas. The prime areas focus on a child’s
personal, social and emotional development, their physical development and
their communication and language skills. The remaining areas of the curriculum,
known as the specific areas, focus on their ability to understand the world
around them; their mathematical and problem-solving skills, their creative
talents in expressive art and design and finally their enjoyment of literacy,
which is developed through their exposure to stories, rhymes, songs and poems.
Our approach to KS1 teaching
KS1 is the time we continue to develop
their understanding of the core values as they undertake a change of
curriculum. We follow the UK national curriculum in literacy and mathematics as
well as using an UK approach to the teaching of phonics. We also follow the
International Primary Curriculum (IPC) which is a comprehensive, thematic,
creative curriculum with a clear process of learning and with specific learning
goals for every subject, for international mindedness and for personal
learning.
The IPC has been designed to ensure rigorous
learning, but also to help teachers make all learning exciting, active and
meaningful. Children learn basic key skills in history, geography, ICT, art,
technology and science, which introduce them to all disciplines and help them
form the beginning of their own learning journey.
By ensuring children are exposed to a wide
range of subjects, we allow them to experience things they may have previously
overlooked. This, in turn, may well influence later academic subject choices.
At this stage, our pupils will also start
to develop formal methods for recording mathematical calculations. All KS1
children take part in mental mathematics challenges, concrete mathematical
experiences and learn to record their findings more formally.
Mathematics
activities are designed to be fun, challenging and have a real purpose, with an
emphasis on problem solving. Children have opportunities to revisit different
areas of mathematics each half term and build on previous knowledge. Basic
concepts are cemented at this crucial stage and become the building blocks for
all future learning.
Faculty: Instilling the right attitude towards learning
Every child in the Pre-Prep School has a
class teacher and teaching assistant. In pre-nursery, due to the age of the
children, we have three teaching assistants in the classroom. The class teacher
teaches the main parts of the curriculum and leads the pastoral role. The class
teachers are supported by other specialist teachers, who take a larger role as
the children get older. This allows children to become familiar with a variety
of adults, which promotes their independence and adaptability skills.
All our class teachers are trained to the
highest standards and are experienced in teaching the English curriculum. Many
of our teachers have degrees in Early Years and primary education, which are
supplemented by formal teaching qualifications. As with other international kindergartens in
Shanghai, the teaching body of our staff reflects the international
profile of our pupils, with teachers joining us from Europe, America, Asia, Australia
and New Zealand. We ensure that our teaching staff embody the values and high
expectations of Wellington, while encouraging them to bring their own
personality and interests into the classroom, in order to make them effective
holistic educators.
Creative learning opportunities and events
Alongside a robust yet flexible curriculum,
our younger pupils are also exposed to a wide range of truly engaging
opportunities to take learning outside of the classroom. From exciting music
and theatre productions, to whole-school events designed to draw the Wellington
community together, Pre-Prep pupils are given every chance to take their
learning to entirely new and unforgettable places.
Our Pre-Prep pupils always represent an
important part of our whole-school events. We believe that it is essential to
get children involved in such occasions early on, as this inclusive approach makes
them feel rightly valued as individuals and as part of our tightly-knit
community. This short roundup of some of the Pre-Prep pupils’ impact on some of
our most notable annual events serves to highlight how our school endeavours to
give its younger pupils the chance to demonstrate their artistic and academic
skills, inline with the very best of international kindergarten education.
- Christmas shows: Our annual Christmas Concerts give the younger pupils the chance to demonstrate their excellent singing voices and choreographed group dances, usually while performing classic Christmas carols and festive songs.
- Chinese New Year: Pre-Prep pupils joined the entire College in celebrating Chinese New Year, performing their very own traditional songs and dances, complete with gorgeously vibrant and colourful costumes and artwork.
- Science Week: Intellectual curiosity starts at an early age in Wellington, as the last two Science Week events have both witnessed our Pre-Prep pupils eagerly and attentively watching experiments being performed, before diving in themselves to get a hands-on scientific experience.
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Instilling admirable values from an early age
Alongside the development of academic
skills and capabilities, another facet of Wellington’s holistic education
approach is to instil in every pupil a set of values that will positively shape
their character and help them become the very best versions of themselves. The
Wellington College Values are those of courage, integrity, kindness, respect and responsibility, and the
process of instilling and developing these values begins the moment our pupils
join us, from the Early Years right up until they complete year 13.
As well as including Pre-Prep pupils in school-wide
events, we are always thinking of new and exciting ways to develop these
admirable character traits. One recent success story in this regard is our
class teddy bear initiative, with each Pre-Prep class naming, dressing and
accessorising their bear before taking them on adventures far beyond the
classroom. By giving each pupil the chance to look after the bear, we are
reinforcing their sense of kindness, respect and responsibility. Similarly, our
Pre-Prep teachers are actively involved in instilling a sense of good manners
and politeness in their pupils, in order to further strengthen the Wellington Values
that we hold in extremely high regard.
Parental support: Involving the parents at every stage
Finally, our approach to Pre-Prep education
includes developing a triangular pupil-parent-teacher relationship that is
stronger than you are likely to find in any other international kindergarten in Shanghai. We believe
that parents must continue to be an active part of their children’s education
during their formative school years, since what they learn in school should be
reinforced at home, and vice versa.
To that end, as well as regular parental
conferences and meetings to discuss progress and avoid any potential
difficulties or conflicts, we are continually trialling new methods of
encouraging positive parental involvement in Pre-Prep education. One of our
most recent and successful initiatives is the “Parent Reader” training
programme.
The idea was born out of our parents’
evident willingness to support their children with reading activities during
school time. In order to encourage and harness that willingness, we started a
training session with the aim of showing parents some of the basic expectations
of phonics, sight words and general reading skills that their children were in
the process of learning. Parents were taught to recognise some of the most
valuable reading milestones and to praise their children whenever they attained
them, in order to identify and reinforce the importance of their breakthrough.
In a very short space of time, what began as a parental support for reading
session quickly evolved into something much more ambitious and involved, with
pupils’ additional language, writing and oral-based skills being addressed and
explored at home by parents eager to help their children develop in any way
they could.
Continually developing our approach to Pre-Prep education
While we are rightly proud of the evident
success of our approach to giving young pupils the best possible start to their
formal education, we apply the same expectations to our teaching staff as we do
to our pupils. Therefore, utilising the same standards of intellectual curiosity
and inspiration that we aim to instil in our pupils, we are continually seeking
to deliver better, more relevant and more engaging methods of holistically
educating the children in our care. It is this driving aspiration to constantly
improve that has allowed Wellington to develop one of the best international kindergarten
educations in Shanghai.
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