For these little ones, eating lunch in Kesinee’s spacious colourful central hall must seem a bit like having a banquet in the courtyard of a fairytale castle. In fact, stimulating the imagination is an important part of the curriculum. |
She has a point. Kesinee is relatively small with slightly fewer than 200 students, and it focuses strictly on educating young children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade – an age range from two to eleven. Located in Kesinee Ville Estate in Bangkok, the four-year-old school is housed in a single fully air-conditioned building resembling a storybook castle.
Kesinee comes with surprisingly strong credentials for such a new school. Its Primary Years Programme (PYP) is fully authorised by the International Baccalaureate Organisation. The school is also closely affiliated with Washington International, a long-established IB school in the US capital.
Kesinee has already begun the rigorous three-year process to obtain accreditation from the European Council of International schools (ECIS). Unlike the IB authorisation process, Holloway explains, accreditation goes beyond the curriculum to every single aspect of the school". One of the primary concerns, she says, is health and safety.
Inside the PYP
To understand Kesinee and how it might differ from other primary programmes, it helps to have basic understanding of the PYP. The PYP is really a curriculum framework which schools can adapt to the needs of their students. It is consistent enough to allow globally-mobile families to easily transfer their children from one IB programme to another. But it is also flexible enough that teachers can play a major role in course design.
In describing a school curriculum it is hard to avoid resorting to lists – lists of goals, courses, learning outcomes and so on. This normally makes for dull reading, but the ambitious PYP lists are somewhat of an exception.
Take for example, the learning outcomes – the qualities PYP seeks to instill in its students. The goal of the PYP, the guidelines state, is to create "internationalists" who are knowledgeable, principled, caring, open-minded, well-balanced, and reflective. In addition, PYP students are to be inquirers, thinkers, communicators and risk takers.
The core curriculum is inquiry-based with students and their teachers exploring six basic questions: Who are we? Where are we in time and space? How do we express ourselves? How does the world work? How do we organise ourselves? How do we share the planet?
Answering the questions is done through themes which differ from level to level. For example, first year kindergarten students answer the question "Who we are?" by exploring how they are special. In the second year they look outward at their community.
It really takes a classroom visit to see how everything fits together. The Learning Post team had an opportunity to do just that a few weeks ago and here is an inside look at what we were able to observe.
Mid morning in K2
 ABOVE: Team teaching is the norm at Kesinee. Here, Rachel LaForce reads to a class of kindergartners while June Van den Bos awaits her turn to dramatise the story. INSET: Today’s topic is haircuts and Van den Bos helps a student "write" an illustrated story about a haircut of her own. |
By now, all 24 of the kindergarten two children know Kipper very well. He’s a popular character in the British-based Oxford Reading Tree programme which is used at each level of the Kesinee curriculum. Today, it was Kipper’s turn to get a haircut and teacher Rachel Le Force was talking them through what happened in the barbershop.
Although the book had no words, only pictures, it soon became clear that this was a reading readiness lesson. After the story was finished, the children added some of the key words their teacher had written for them in little thought bubbles. "The purpose in doing that is to help the kids make connections between oral language and written language," explains Le Force.
To help the students identify with the story, the lesson included a short haircut drama conducted by the class’s second teacher June Van den Bos. Team teaching is the norm at Kesinee with joint planning and shared responsibilities for classroom presentation.
Interestingly, neither teacher appeared to make concessions for the fact that many of the children were still relative newcomers to the English language. They spoke to them as they would to a class of native speakers. "We want the environment to be as natural as possible with our speech," explains Le Force. "It’s a very important part of language acquisition to be able to hear people talking within a normal context."
Two teachers mean two rooms, but since the class is integrated, the rooms are connected. The rooms are organised into different learning areas with places where the whole class can congregate and smaller areas for group activities.
Much of the learning takes place through "structured" or purposeful play. This can be independent or teacher directed. On the day of our visit, we saw a small group of children playing a word recognition game with Le Force while Van den Bos helped another group "write" illustrated personalised stories of haircuts they or members of their families had experienced. Another group played with Lego blocks and still another group was busy standing around a tub of water washing a doll’s hair. This was one of the many activities the class has carried out this year as part of its theme-based exploration of the uses – and misuses – of water.
Kesinee teachers and their students have a lot of flexibility in how they choose and implement such themes. "The theme can change direction because of what the children what to know and because of what they already know," says Van den Bos. "There’s no point in working on something that they already know. We want to build on that. And that’s the whole theory behind the PYP. They have a lot of input into where the theme is directed. It’s student driven."
Late morning in Grade 1
 Everything is ready for first grade scientists to conduct an experiment to determine which material would make the best umbrella. Even at this young age, children learn the importance of manipulating only a single variable. |
The previous day the first graders had finished reading Robin Hood. Part fairy tale and part history, this favourite classic provides excellent material for stimulating the imagination of young children.
Today, the students were putting their imaginations to work in another way. With their teacher Vern Huen, they were considering possible entries for their diaries. How about this one?" he suggests. "Dear Diary. Something really funny happened today. I …" Judging from their enthusiastic responses, this activity was clearly going to work well when the students were left on their own.
What’s interesting here is the children were being asked to imagine that they were writing their diaries seven hundred years ago in the time of Robin Hood. This is a good example of how PYP theme-based learning can be used to integrate topics which, in many schools, would normally be taught as discreet subjects – in this case literature, writing and social studies (history).
 Class participation is not a problem with these first graders who are having a good time imagining what it was like living in the days of Robin Hood. |
And there’s more. "The PYP unit is ‘just imagine’" explains the class’s second teacher Claire Williams. "It’s all about stories, but we’re trying to fit in social studies into the theme. Also our science unit at the moment is materials. So, how do we make materials? How did people make materials a long time ago? How did they make clothes. They had to weave them. They had to do it by hand."
To find out how, her students got the chance to try their hand at weaving. Not surprisingly, this activity also had several purposes. "It fits in with fine motor skills. It kind of ties in with a lot of things, but mainly history, says Williams. "At the moment we’re looking at Robin Hood and how he would have made his clothes.
"Why Robin Hood? Robin Hood is a nice story and a lot of children know the character. We’re trying to get them to think about the character’s role in stories. Robin Hood is a nice one because it also fits in with the Oxford Reading Tree."
This is not to say that all PYP teaching is theme-based, however. "A lot of subjects you have to teach discretely, says Huen. "We try to integrate as much as we can but its not always possible."
 This first grade lesson in weaving is great for developing motor skills, but it fits into social studies, literature and even science. |
How do you assess children in this kind of learning environment? "We’ve got different ways of doing it," explains Williams. "Sometimes in science we photograph activities. We can go back to the photographs and we can actually see which children are working well together – which children are choosing their own equipment, which children are carrying out investigations and which ones are not really getting involved."
"It’s an ongoing assessment," adds Huen. "We look at their bookwork, we do a lot of observation and take anecdotal notes. Sometimes we video – a drama or role play."
What’s missing are formal tests and student rankings. "We don’t make comparisons between children when we’re marking their work," says Huen. "We just compare the child’s previous work to what they’re doing now."
Afternoon in Grade 5
 Today, fifth grade teacher Jerry Campbell is consultant. Her he helps Aim Lusawat carry out a series of temperature calculations. Meanwhile Ploy Buasaeng (inset) organises her report on the characteristics of temperate climates. |
That afternoon, fifth grader Ploy Buasaeng was working on a project. Like her five classmates, she had chosen an area of the world and was finding information on its climate, land forms, ecosystem, flora and fauna as well as the buildings and structures typically found there.
Ploy chose London, so she was focusing on the characteristics of a city in the temperate zone. She had almost enough information to begin her report which she expected would run about three pages.
Aim Lusawat was consulting with teacher Gerry Campbell on how to calculate the average annual temperature of his chosen town, Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories. One thing for sure, it was going to be cold since Yellowknife is located in the tundra.
Where did Aim get his information? "From the Internet," he said. "I used a search engine. I used Google. Mr Gerry told us to use ‘Yellowknife’ and then ‘climate’. We typed both words and then we searched." Does he use any other search engines? "Sure, he replied. "All the Web and Yahooligans."
Since fifth grade is the highest year at Kesinee International, all the children and their parents are busy deciding where to transfer to next year. According to Prinicipal Holloway, the school has arranged a number of visits for parents to other international schools – both IB and non-IB – in the Bangkok area and she says the reception they have received has been excellent.
Are the children well prepared to make the move? "Absolutely," says Campbell. In fact, they may even have advantages over many other students, he says, especially their adaptability. "You can plunk them down anywhere," he says.
Their confidence level is high, he says, as is their ability to solve problems. "So when they are faced with a new situation, they can usually figure it out for themselves.
"Last year," he continues, "I took grade four to Washington DC. We did an exchange with our affiliate school and they were in classes half a day in Washington and then we took them out. They fit right in with no problem."
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |