At The Cedar School we have introduced a few new subjects for our lower secondary students with the aim of equipping them with the skills they need to succeed in the 21st century.
1. PSHE
Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) Education is a new subject introduced into the curriculum to broaden the definition of education to include teaching and learning beyond traditional academic subjects. The PSHE curriculum affords our students the opportunity to develop the knowledge, skills, and attributes they need to stay safe, healthy, and balanced and develop fully as individuals in all domains of their life.
2. Digital Literacy Skills (DLS)
Digital Literacy Skills (DLS) has been embedded into the curriculum at The Cedar School. The Cambridge Lower Secondary Digital Literacy Curriculum Framework contains learning objectives that provide a structure for developing learners’ digital skills and encourages learners to become active users of a wider range of digital devices, and to see each new encounter as an opportunity. They become increasingly autonomous in their learning and develop the skills to make responsible decisions about how to use digital tools and how to stay safe online.
3. Physical Education
Physical Education plays a vital role in enhancing students’ health and fitness, supporting curriculum delivery and contributing to a positive school culture. The Cedar School emphasizes the importance of incorporating Physical Education in all levels from Grade 6 to 11 and ensures it offers an experiential curriculum that is contemporary, relevant, challenging, enjoyable and physically and mentally active. All strands develop knowledge, understanding, skills, values and attitudes that enable learners to become competent, confident and creative movers.
4. Global Perspectives
Cambridge Global Perspectives is an innovative and stimulating skills-based programme which places academic study in a practical, real-world context. It gives learners the opportunity to develop the transferable skills that they need to be successful at school and university, as well as in their future careers. The emphasis is on developing students’ ability to think critically about a range of global and local issues where there is always more than one point of view.
5. Art and Design
The Art & Design curriculum allows learners to express themselves as they reflect upon their experiences and learnings. It gives them an environment to foster creativity and imagination and then encourages them to express it like an artist. In this subject, learners research upon the works of artists and discover their preferred way of transferring creative ideas into drawing. The subject takes a pragmatic approach and gives students access to new technical skills. Some of the major strands used in this subject include experiencing, making, reflecting, thinking, and working artistically.
6. Music
The Cedar School is launching a new syllabus for Music for all grades in the new academic year (2021- 2022). Music fosters creativity and builds confidence. Music broadens learners’ experiences as they make, create and explore their own music along with music from different cultures, times and places. It sparks imagination, requires problem solving and builds intellectual curiosity, as well as developing physical coordination, empathy and emotional intelligence. The curriculum emphasizes musical exploration with opportunities for learners to perform and present their music at every stage of development.
7. Beable/World of Works
Cedar School will be one of the first schools in Pakistan to be introducing Beable-World of Work as part of our primary curriculum after it’s worldwide recognition in international schools. Students can pursue their postsecondary education goals, based on their interests and what’s going to ultimately make them happy and gainfully employed.
Beable is a revolutionary, multidimensional system that connects literacy to life readiness, delivering a tailored solution for each and all students. It assesses and addresses the multiple aspects of a child: their passions, strengths, literacy goals and career goals.
It individualizes a learning plan for each child and prescribes reading sessions and scaffolds to ensure that they reach their goals. It provides career exposure based on their aptitudes and builds their soft skills at the same time. It applies a ‘just-for-you’ blend of instructional methodologies, including selecting differentiated content in the classroom and self-selected, personalized reading outside the classroom.
BeableIQ applies multiple assessments to understand the whole child and set multiple goals aligned with career goals such as Lexile Placement Test, RIASEC Career Indicator, Profile Survey and Reading Topic Picker. It then identifies Lexile and skills gaps based on the levels required to meet students’ college and career goals.
Beable incorporates differentiation, individualization, and personalization, providing an individualized path to literacy and lifelong success for every student.
The Beable profile page helps build student teacher connectedness which is essential to student achievement.
Beable uses core academic content as the vehicle for differentiated instruction and Lexile level acceleration, ensuring that students regardless of their reading ability, gain knowledge to pass content area assessments and build literacy skills. It provides machine generated translation to over 100 languages and has a built- in dictionary.
Beable also offers a comprehensive career curriculum built on the World of Work framework. World of work curriculum leverages research on vocational psychology, that student's interests should influence their career aspirations. Under this premise, even grade 4, 5 and 6 students can find their place in a world they will one day inherit. This course exposes students to a range of careers and helps them explore opportunities through hands on experience, meeting people who work in the field and practicing skills related to each profession. In grade 4-6, lessons on the physics of energy were tied to teaching kids how to be theme park engineers, and language arts and math lessons were anchored in running and marketing a profitable startup. This helped students rise to the occasion of learning about themselves and stay engaged.
Students natural interests and abilities/talents become more apparent whether it is writing, drawing or a head for numbers while resulting in a class that is less stratified by academic ability. It also puts value on deep personal introspection, encouraging kids to consider how Cedar School can support their future selves.
This curriculum will inculcate in students to work independently, recognize their own strengths, solve Issues on their own and increase collaboration with one another.
