Elementary School
1st Year
First Year: Playful Learning and Literacy
1st year is a group of children turning 6 up to the 31st of March. At our 1st year routine, we value learning through play, and this happens in a context which is very meaningful for learning a second language.
Classes that happen in Portuguese focus in literacy, which guarantee many opportunities for our young learners to understand how our written language works. Little by little, the children learn to produce texts even before they are able to write conventionally. This means that even though children are unable to read and write autonomously and “correctly”, they may use more experienced partners, and also count on the teacher as a writer.
In many of the moments in our routine and in our projects´ research process, the children are invited to encounter new ways of relating to the world, new possibilities of reading and formulating hypotheses about phenomena, testing them, refuting them, having conclusions, with an active attitude when building knowledge. That is, a student who has a central role in his/her own learning process.
2nd Year
Second Year: Development of Awareness and Bilingualism.
2nd year is a group of children turning 7 by the 31st of March. The child, at this age group, starts to be more conscious of his role inside the institution – a student’s role. Little by little, he starts to perceive that, like others, he is inserted in a larger group, and thus acquires the notion of otherness.
From this notion, the child begins to interact as a member of the group, equally, gaining maturity in his self-regulation process. The total immersion programme lived to the moment makes it possible for the student to interact in a more globalized context, and the children become capable of dealing with cultural differences.
They become conscious that they are responsible for building a world in transformation, being more and more capable of interpreting, expressing and negotiating meaning. The development of these capacities implies going beyond grammatical competence, working on sociolinguistic and strategic competences.
In other fields of knowledge, students are motivated to transmit, share, build knowledge and be flexible towards others. Thus, they daily expand their capacities, being active in their own learning processes.
3rd Year
We understand that learning occurs through the multiple relations established by learners in the different fields of knowledge. At 3rd grade, our practice happens through the development of proposals which allow students to understand the world by means of dialogue and experiences enriching students´ repertoires, and promoting meaningful, consistent learning.
Under this perspective, the students´ protagonism is present and the teacher conducts the work closely.
Within the practices worked with students and their development and learning, are the Personal Work (moment in the routine chartering choice), class meetings, the Learning Center, homework, the bilingual immersion programme, the proposals in the diverse fields of knowledge, lessons with specialist teachers, and extracurricular activities filling the children´s routine with knowledge.
It is worth highlighting that all this is possible as we have an extended routine (8:00 to 3:00), and count on specialist multipurpose teachers. Our curriculum is divided into lessons in both English and Portuguese. In Portuguese, we adopt “Projeto Presente” resources, in which knowledge is seen as a web of meanings and relations. In English, we adopt Cambridge teaching resources, with almost 500 years of experience and expertise, providing students proficiency and abilities to deal with the English language.
4th Year
4th year’s pedagogical proposal is focused in knowledge acquisition so that the child, in an extended hour programme, comprising subjects which compose our curriculum, is able to develop competences and abilities. Leading figures, students are motivated to increasingly develop a creative process which is centered in new ways of looking at what seems known, and, advancing in their learning process.
Our routine is structured guaranteeing a full development in all fields of knowledge.
The work developed allows students to understand the many contents of 4th year, culture, expression and multifaceted communication characterizing our contemporary world.
Registering, arguing, requesting, reporting, students dialogue in a world with no borders.
5th Year
Throughout 5th year, we deepen knowledge giving each child a solid qualification and excellent second language fluency. It is time to have one more Cambridge exam certifying language proficiency and that bilingualism promotes excellence in the learning process. We work on projects with the aim of expanding the child’s culture, sensitivity and the capacity to deal with a variety of questions, promoting the expansion of what one can see, discoveries and new ways of acting in the world.
Proposals are developed from guiding questions directing students’ outlook to their capabilities, respecting differences and putting children in a central position in their own learning process.
During 5th year we work for autonomous, critical, participative students, who are capable of being active socially, showing competence and responsibility.
