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Archarn Terry joins a meeting of seventh grade editors, writers and reporters of a celebrity fashion magazine. The subject is English, but the skills involved go across the curriculum. — PANITI BOONMA |
By far the best known of these programmes is the IB diploma for the final two years of secondary school. This has become the curriculum of choice for many of the top international schools in Thailand, including a surprisingly high proportion of those delivering the British national curriculum from years one to 11.
Several international schools in Thailand have also adopted the IBO’s primary years programme (PYP), but only one, the New International School of Thailand (NIST), delivers all three, including the middle years programme (MYP).
Over the past year, the learning post has visited several IB diploma and PYP programmes. Last month, we paid a visit to NIST to get an inside look at its MYP curriculum.
Similarities and differences
 A peer teaching session in preparation for a quiz. — TERRY FREDRICKSON |
The MYP at NIST takes some time to grasp and it’s best to begin with the basics. The programme covers years seven through 11 for students between the ages of 11 and 16. For the most part, the subjects and content are much the same as you would find in any other quality school, a fact reassuring to the many Asian parents who send their children there.
"It’s not a programme where you’re throwing out the baby with the bath water," says Vice Principal Diane Lewthwaite. "The programme still has subjects that are specific. You still have the students going to the subject areas during the day. You still have exams."
 NIST Vice Principal and MYP coordinator Diane Lewthwaite. — TERRY FREDRICKSON |
Like some other international school programmes at this level, Lewthwaite says, the MYP offers an internationally recognised certificate. But unlike the British IGCSE courses, the MYP is not recognised by the Thai government as a path to early entry into local universities. Consequently, NIST does offer a limited number of IGCSE courses for students wishing to take that path.
Few do. And, says Lewthwaite, they shouldn’t. They’re not ready. "It is an exceptionally bad idea," she says. "Firstly, they are not mature enough as individuals and secondly because there is two years worth of secondary education that is missing."
Where the MYP clearly differs from many traditional programmes is its attempt to weave the process of education into a coherent whole. There are three core principles, says Lewthwaite: MYP students will become interculturally aware, they will learn to communicate in a variety of ways and they will learn to understand the linkages between subject areas they study.
"The MYP takes a very holistic approach to education," Lewthwaite explains. "It says that you can’t compartmentalise knowledge. Traditional subjects actually do interact upon each other and it (the MYP) encourages that. Skills that you take from one subject, you can use in another area."
Finding linkages
To ensure the linkages between subject areas are explicitly made, the MYP has defined five areas of interaction: approaches to learning (ATL), community service, health and social education, environment and homo faber (literally "human the maker", it deals with human creativity and its impact).
Although these are not subjects – only ATL involves a dedicated hour a week class time – each area has its own coordinator to assist teachers in making appropriate linkages and to organise student activities. It is then up to the individual content teachers to develop the links as they deliver their curriculum.
Pia Jeppesen’s eighth grade math class provides an interesting example of how a mundane subject like number ratios can provide the basis for an enlightened interdisciplinary activity.
 An inventive use of mathematical ratios illustrates that the Barbie doll’s proportions may not be a thing of beauty after all. — PANITI BOONMA |
"I saw a worksheet where it was just ‘if you were Ken or you were Barbie, what would your adult sizes be?’," Jeppesen explains. "I took it on from there and thought there’s such a lot in this – you can really extend this into other areas. It’s great fun. It takes about four or five lessons, so there’s a lot of group work and discussion that goes on, working in a team."
The activity began with a discussion of Ken and Barbie themselves. The students agreed that the dolls seemed ideally proportioned. Next, they took careful measurements of the dolls’ dimensions. Using their knowledge of ratios, they then worked out what these dimensions would be if the dolls were adult-sized.
That could have been the end of it, but Jeppesen went several steps further adding two more areas of interaction. First, in groups, the students were asked to produce a life size paper drawing of the adult-sized Ken and Barbie (homo faber). Then, they re-evaluated their initial concept of "ideal" dimensions (health and social education).
"The fact that they do the ‘before and after’," says Jeppesen, "really shows to them, in my opinion, how ridiculous the dolls are proportioned in respect to our adult sizes. It’s one of my favourite activities and I tend to do it at the start of the year because it gets the kids together and talking and working as a team."
Approaches to learning (ATL)
ATL, says coordinator Malcolm Nicolson, "is the most central area of interaction. It is in every single lesson of every single subject. So every teacher is a teacher of ATL and every student is a student of ATL.
"What we’ve done at NIST," Nicolson continues, "is to break down ATL into five skill or theme areas: research skills, communication skills, thinking skills, self-management skills and social skills. We have then divided each of those areas into the many sub-skills which come into it.
"We try to be very conscious that in every lesson we are teaching, as well as teaching our subject content we’re teaching skills. That’s the key to it. It’s teaching skills.
Humanities teacher Graham Rogers, who doubles as coordinator of the area of interaction dealing with the environment, regularly adds ATL components into his geography lessons. For example, in one group exercise, he has group members practice note-taking skills with a variety of short passages which they then teach the other group members in preparation for a quiz – thereby developing their social skills.
"The biggest emphasis," according to Nicolson, "is the teaching of the thinking skills. Students are aware of their own learning styles, how they learn best, they’re aware of different types of thinking."
English teacher Carolyn Dixon has taken a special interest in learning styles and has incorporated a learning style model into her teaching. Her seventh grade class is a good example.
"There are 49 different elements that influence the way children concentrate," she says of the classroom environment in her seventh grade class. "That’s why in the social environment of the classroom I have some people working in pairs, some are in teams. They can sit on the floor if they want to or work at their desks. I like music in the background. It switches them on, even though they’re not doing anything with the music, actually it has an effect on their concentration."
One of their seventh grade projects this term is the production of a magazine. This activity, in addition to its academic value, incorporates all five major elements of ATL. Thinking skills come into play in choosing a topic, determining the readership, and tailoring the magazines’ contents to fit that audience. Students use their research skills to find material for their feature stories. Writing involves communication skills, and working independently as a group requires social skills and self-management.
Dimensions of creativity
The magazine project is also a good example of homo faber in action. Given the chance, young students can come up with some remarkably creative ideas. One group in Dixon’s seventh grade class, for example, designed their magazine to be a composite of two popular cartoons, the Simpsons and Garfield.
Why the composite? Garfield was becoming a bit stale, the group reasoned, and adding the Simpsons would liven things up.
Another group focused on witches. Among the advertisers their magazine attracted were a broomstick company and a company selling voodoo dolls (very reasonable at 99 baht a piece). There was also an advert for hate spells for situations when "somebody likes you but you really can’t stand them."
Homo faber, says coordinator Nick Daniel, goes beyond the simple creation of a product, however. It includes analysing the creativity of other people.
"We approach it from a number of directions," Daniel says. "There’s the product, the context in which it’s made, the impact it has on individuals and society, the process by which it’s made."
The product’s origin and development are also fruitful areas for study, Daniel says. "Origin refers to how the product is initiated, who initiated it, the historical background that led up to the creating of the product. Development really refers to the future, what will happen, how we will develop it in future years."
"Not all of these aspects are necessarily relevant," Daniel explains. "Teachers will look at this and they will pick and choose the things that they think are important."
Breaking down barriers
"The whole MYP philosophy is about breaking down barriers," says David Monk who supervises the homeroom programme. An important part of this programme, he says, is breaking down barriers, not just within traditional subjects, but within the NIST community as well.
"We run quite a unique programme in that in years seven, eight and nine students are in the same homeroom. And then at ten and eleven our students are also in the same homeroom.
"Our homeroom operates with a maximum of 14 students," Monk explains. "So, if we take seven, eight and nine as an example, there would be four or five students typically from each year level. The work within a homeroom programme is designed to get those students working together.
"We’ve always said that this is a really friendly school and it is, but often the kids don’t even know the kids in their own year level and so we set this up to try and get them working together and having our younger students responding to the role model set up by the older students," Daniel explains.
 Community awareness is an important theme in the MYP. Here NIST students help out at Klong Toey kindergarten. — Courtesy of NIST |
Each homeroom participates in a variety of activities of their own choosing. One of the main activities for the younger students is participation in NIST’s community service programme.
"Our students are presented with all of the information that the Bangkok Post publishes on the ‘We care’ website," Daniel says. "We give each homeroom all of the information of virtually every single organisation that operates in Bangkok and the Bangkok area. As a homeroom, they sit down, they look at it and they choose a project and an organisation that they’d like to support."
Community service projects are done outside of class time, but, as coordinator Martin Grist explains, there is also an in-class element to this area of interaction.
"The community service aspect is awareness of community. In humanities, for example, they might be studying water usage in Bangkok. What are areas where there are problems?
"There’s also an action part to it," Grist continues, "which could be purely within the school. For example, in science that could be doing an experiment which they then teach a younger class. There might be a class of younger students that come up [to this class].
"Science students could make some toys dealing with forces and they make those toys for the year two students here at school, so they are able, on a very rudimentary level of understand what forces are about."
The environment is another area of interaction which helps foster community awareness. This term Graham’s geography class, for example, has considered the flood situation in Thailand and looked at deforestation during a visit to the northern provinces.
The class has also been studying sustainable and "not-so-sustainable" models of farming.
Another one of the homeroom activities is participation in intramural sports. This brings them into the domain of health and social education coordinator Karen Grossart.
"It’s not just about being able to perform," she stresses. "Some students will never be top performers. But what we’re trying to get them to appreciate is that you can learn a skill – or even how you can learn how to organise a tournament."
Personal project
 Priyanka Deshmukh is designing a public park for her personal project. — PANITI BOONMA |
"The personal project," says coordinator, Leanne Shirtliffe, "is essentially the culmination of the MYP, an independent project that (11th grade) students do on their own time. They have a supervisor and they can develop whatever they want. If they want to learn to play the guitar, they can learn to play the guitar.
"Probably the best thing about the personal project," observes Shirtliffe, "is that process counts. It is actually possible that they could not be as successful as they had hoped on their project, but if they reflect on it adequately, they can still achieve a good result.
"Once they finish their project," Shirtliffe explains, "they write a personal statement which is roughly about 1500 words which explains the process, what they would have done differently, which areas of interaction it relates to, and essentially how they went about it. It’s assessed internally and then it gets sent away to the IBO for moderation."
This year’s projects are as varied as the students themselves. One student, for example, is writing a flute composition; another is using computer-aided design to create a model for an inner city park. One student is writing an introspective autobiographical novella while another has reached out to women in an Indian slum to teach them doll-making skills. Still another is looking into the inner workings of an AMD computer processing unit.
But the personal project is really a story in itself, one the learning post fully intends to cover next spring when the finished projects go on display to the public.
terryfrd@ksc15.th.com |