ACADEMIC OVERVIEW
OVERVIEW IN
THE PREP SCHOOL
The Prep School operates on a two-week
cycle of lessons, with each week being
designated as Week A or Week B. Every day,
the pupils will have five lessons, each of which
is an hour long, followed by a further two
hours where they will participate in the
Co-Curricular Activity programme
(shortened to one hour on a Friday).
The CCAs cover academic (prep, pastoral,
enrichment and support) alongside physical
and creative activities.
The Prep School’s foundation is the English
National Curriculum, suitably enhanced and
taking into consideration our international
context and the needs of our pupils.
In addition to the English National
Curriculum, the learning in years 3-5 is
supplemented by the International Primary
Curriculum. This overlaps with years 1 and
2 in the Pre-Prep, which enables us to give
cohesion and continuity to the younger pupils
before they commence year 6 and the more
rigorous academic challenges. Further details
of the IPC can be found on page 16.
The Lower Prep (years 3-5) is class-based,
with the class teacher being with the children
for much of the working day, though several
lessons are taken by subject specialists
including Chinese, art, drama, music, PE and
swimming. Once the children move to year
6 and above they, in effect, begin ‘secondary
education’, as all lessons are then taught by
different subject specialists. For pupils in
Upper Prep, they move fully into the house
system where they are supported by their
housemaster and team of house tutors.
Further details of the house system can be
found in a later section of this booklet.
English, mathematics and Chinese are the
subjects central to our curriculum in the
Prep School, an overview of each subject is
set out below.
ENGLISH
We aim to expose the children to a wide
range of contexts and learning experiences
giving learners a secure foundation of English.
This will pave the way for independent and
lifelong learning and effective communication
of knowledge, ideas, values, attitudes and
experience. We promote a balanced use
of approaches appropriate to the needs
of second or foreign language learners to
facilitate effective learning.
The Prep School follows the English National
Curriculum structure for Key Stages 2 and
3, and teachers inspire the pupils by creating
a language-rich environment and innovative
lesson plans through planning a cross-
curricular approach to learning, and making
use of community resources to enable learner
participation in life-wide learning activities.
The needs and requirements of every child
are considered and work is differentiated
accordingly. We believe ICT is an integral part
of the curriculum and enables children to
research, create and present their work in a
wide range of formats.
Children are encouraged to become
independent thinkers and to express
themselves thoughtfully and articulately both
orally and through creative writing in a ‘Big
Write’. The aim of a ‘Big Write’ is to raise
attainment levels in speaking, listening and
writing. A ‘Big Write also emphasises the ‘talk
for writing’ concept. Therefore, pupils are
taught to speak standard English in order to
help them make fewer spelling and grammar
mistakes in their inspired written work.
Our objective is to provide children with
the tools necessary to become confident,
independent and successful readers, speakers
and writers through studying engaging
and appropriate texts, analysing language,
discussion, debates, research, role-play, drama
and assessment.
Teachers continuously assess the children’s
learning to gain insights into their strengths
and weaknesses, to aid planning and to
provide feedback and to enable further
progress in their learning. Children are
also involved in the assessment process by
peer reviewing work, offering constructive
criticism. This form of assessment improves
pupils' understanding as well as improving
their metacognitive skills.
All children are encouraged to choose a
wide range of fiction and non-fiction books
from the school library to broaden and
develop their own reading. Each year group
is allocated an hourly session per week in
the library where they also participate in
structured, guided, reading sessions. The
librarian provides classroom teachers with
relevant books to enhance the topic and
cross-curricular links.
MATHEMATICS CHINESE PREP SCHOOL PLANNERS
Mathematics in the Prep School is taught with
the needs of our international community in
mind. Children need to be prepared for their
eventual transition either to our own Senior
School (where the IGCSE and IB are taught)
or to other schools with different courses.
As such, we endeavour to stretch children
as far as possible with a wide-ranging and
comprehensive syllabus that supports ongoing
mathematical development. All pupils in the Prep School study Chinese
intensively, with children in years 2-6 receiving
nine hours of instruction per fortnight. Pupils
in years 7-9 all receive a minimum of seven
hours per cycle with the option for native
speakers to increase this to eleven hours
per cycle. Pupils are set, based on their prior
learning and experience of the language, and
each year group is taught in a minimum of
three streams. Prep is set twice-weekly, to
the tune of 20-30 minutes per piece. Writing
practice makes up the bulk of prep tasks,
although sometimes children will be asked
to complete a reading assignment, watch or
listen to a dialogue, memorise vocabulary or
produce work for display purposes. All teachers, children and parents are
expected to use the planners freque