Today's Topics:
1: Important Reminders
2: Curriculum Focus - Metacognition
3: House Points
4: Learning Highlight & Photos!
Important Reminders
Summer school registration is OPEN!!
March 25 to April 1 - Spring Break (NO SCHOOL)
April 1 - Teachers' Professional Develpment (NO SCHOOL)
April 29 - Open School
2024-25 School Year Calendar is here!
2022-23 Yearbook Order deadline: April 7
Curriculum Focus - Metacognition
Two weeks ago, we started to share more information about the four areas that come under the heading of “Progressive Pedagogies” for IPC and IMYC learners. These methods remain very alive in our High School classes too. As a reminder, these areas of learning are:
Metacognition
Experiential and Active
Brain-based
Today’s curriculum focus takes a deeper look at “metacognition” within Hope’s Teaching and Learning Practices.
For Hope learners, metacognition is the opportunity for students to reflect on what they are learning, how they are learning, and how their learning might be improved.
At the start of a unit, teachers will introduce a Knowledge Harvest to the students to support with metacognition. The Knowledge Harvest allows the students to see what they already know about a particular topic, and throughout the unit, they can return to the knowledge harvest to connect their existing knowledge to their new knowledge. The Knowledge Harvest also presents opportunities for the students to make notes of questions they have about the topic, encouraging independent investigation.
All main learning activities in our IPC and IMYC classes follow a “Research, Record, Reflect” cycle, meaning that students have multiple opportunities throughout a unit to take time to reflect on what they have just learned, as well as considering how they would like to improve in the future, and continue to add questions they would like to explore as a result of their reflections.
Through the use of assessment rubrics, students at Hope are also able to have an opportunity to explain and justify their own learning to themselves, their peers and their teachers. As the students at Hope get older, they will be able to explain in more detail how they have achieved their assessment result, demonstrating that they have self-awareness of their progress with a given skill.
In our report cards that get issued at the end of each semester, we also keep the concept of metacognition alive by identifying a student’s successes, as well as providing advice on areas of development, which the students can reflect on and identify how they could improve with the key skills over time.
We encourage parents to also discuss the successes and next steps at home, as this helps to embed metacognition practices at home too.
House Points
Dragon: 5128 ➜ 5344
Phoenix: 4858 ➜ 5329
Basilisk: 4429 ➜ 4714
Hydra: 4285 ➜ 4645
Learning Highlight - Hope Family Day
Hope Family Day has become an annual tradition at Hope International Academy for families and students to come together to foster positive relationships and friendly competition amongst each other while enjoying the games the secondary students prepared.
Each year the games for the event are designed and created by the secondary students (grades 6-12). They are challenged to follow the design process and complete a playable game.
During Design Class, the students researched, planned, designed, built, tested, and iterated upon their project. Throughout the multiple weeks project, the students faced numerous obstacles and challenges. Their resilience and effort were evident on the day of the event. All the games were fun and unique! Great job, secondary students!
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