MYP at STC
This year we started teaching the IB Middle Years Programme (MYP) to our Year 7 students. This is a course which has been several years in the making at STC with staff working incredibly hard on developing an engaging and challenging programme for our students. As we near the end of Term 1 I would like to take the opportunity to provide a summary of the highlights from the programme this year.
Most recently we have provided our parent community access to SMART, our home for all learning resources at STC. You can visit this site to view the units students are currently learning, resources and assessment tasks associated with the units and other information centred on your child’s learning journey at STC. All parents have been sent an email inviting you to login to SMART. If you have any queries, or need assistance please contact its@shatincollege.edu.hk.
We hosted our MYP consultant at the end of October, receiving some very positive feedback about our version of the MYP. Every school delivering IB programmes needs to be authorised to be able to offer the programme and there is a process over several years to receive this authorisation. We are currently in the candidate phase, this is where the school is approved to deliver MYP while receiving extra support from an IB consultant. Our consultant meet with staff, students, parents and visited classrooms to gain an understanding of how we are implementing the programme. His feedback was very positive and he commended the whole community for how we have engaged with MYP and the quality of learning experience we offer at STC. He also highlighted some areas we need to address in order to become an authorised school in 2020 and we now have an action plan in place which will address his observations.
Finally, a real highlight for our students was the CAS week, in the second week of October. This year we brought in ISTA, an external agency, to run a theatre workshop. They designed the experience to be embody the philosophy of the MYP programme and students were empowered to take ownership of the week, designing costumes, sets and more.
The topic for this year’s Year 7 CAS Week was ‘Ignite and Fly’ and the aim of the week was to create a performance based on ideas suggested by the mythological creatures which represent our tutor groups. The students were guided by a team of professional actors and had to create a series of performances in three days, transforming spaces within the school into magical and mythical landscapes using recyclable materials. Students worked collaboratively in their tutor groups their Houses and as a Year group every day.
The week was designed with the intention of fostering a whole year group identity, encouraging students to make creative decisions and to learn to work as a team. Students were also taught specific skills in workshops which ranged from skills as diverse as puppeteering, stage combat and learning sign language. The final performance on Thursday evening was mesmerising and incredibly atmospheric as parents, led by paper birds, visited the various installations and watched a series of very different and imaginative choreographed performances. It was a fun and magical celebration of the arts and a fantastic demonstration of what can be achieved through hard work, teamwork and the imagination.
Mr Thornton
