Music education begins in Early Years, allowing students to develop an appreciation and love for music whilst also improving their musical skills. Weekly specialist music classes are offered, where students explore performing (vocal and instrumental), improvising and composing, and develop their aural awareness of the elements of music – pitch, rhythm, dynamics, tempo, timbre, texture and structure. Education in Music greatly enhances students’ understanding and achievement in a range of non-musical subjects, both through fostering children’s natural social tendencies and by honing their time management and discipline skills. Students learn collaboration by performing in large and small ensembles, as well as having the opportunity to offer solo performances. They investigate a broad range of styles from various cultural traditions around the world, different historical periods, and contrasting genres with the aim to develop their overall awareness, understanding and appreciation of music.
The main purpose of art education is to develop creativity, individuality and expression through art making. Art plays a vital role in developing students holistically. It fosters cultural awareness, promotes cultural practices and help students grow socially, emotionally and psychologically. Through the creative processes, students not only learn the skills and knowledge about the arts but also learn to recognize and appreciate the diverse cultures and perspectives.
At ISA Tianhe, every student is an artist in the art room. They are the ones who possess all the creative ideas to express through various mediums and so, have the agency over their learning. The PYP visual art programme engages students in the creative processes through which they explore and experiment in a continual cycle of creating and responding. Using variety of materials and techniques that are taught through demonstrations, students explore, create and reflect on the artistic choices they make as they convey meaning, share cultures and develop sense of self and expand their knowledge. Through responding to their own, famous artists’ and their peers’ artworks, they demonstrate IB PYP’s transdisciplinary elements aiming to develop holistic life-long learners. They practice their approaches to learning skills, especially social and communication skills and display learner profile attributes such as reflective, open-minded and caring.
Students also inquire into and express their understanding of some of the central ideas and lines of inquiry explored in their homeroom units of inquiry within the school’s PYP transdisciplinary programme. Following the UK standards, students are also taught artists, architects and designers around the world to learn about the history and to increase cultural collaboration and understanding.
The art programme at ISA Tianhe is student-centered, providing learners at different stages of development with the experiences that will further their knowledge, concepts and skills to guide students to grow as a member of the global community and promote international mindedness.
Nowadays, information technology characterized by computer and network technology has been widely applied in various fields of society. In order to cultivate the young generations who can keep pace with the times, ISA Tianhe has established the IT to largely popularize the information technology knowledge to students, so that students have the ability to acquire, store, process and transmit information. Meanwhile, students are encouraged to apply the knowledge they have learned to their daily life so as to have a more profound and intuitive understanding of information technology in practice.
From Early Years 3, students participate in the Information Technology classes. The school provides students with the equipment and software resources for teaching. In the classroom, games are mainly used to stimulate students’ interest in learning and exercise students’ hand operation ability. At the same time, the curriculum of Early Years also lays a good foundation for their primary lessons so that they can learn more complex software or programming in primary.
In PE lesson at ISA Tianhe, students learn about their own well-being, and that of others and society, in health-related and movement contexts. Our PE lesson seeks to instil skills such as collaboration, teamwork, resilience and commitment in students. Integrity, respect, and a sense of fairness are additionally vital development areas that arise from participating in PE.
Early Years PE at ISA Tianhe utilises a ‘carousel’ method, enabling pupils to access a variety of activities, thus enhancing their capabilities across a range of skills. The activities within the carousel will primarily be multi-skill activities. Multi-skills enable the teacher to provide a wide range of non-sport specific games and activities, which allow the pupils to develop their skills and attributes. These can then be applied to a range of sports.
Primary PE includes striking and fielding, multi-skills, movement composition, games (moving and handling, invasion, and net), as well as athletics. The PE curriculum is designed to assist students develop their physical, technical, tactical, mental, and personal-social skills, and develop an appreciation and understanding of physical activity.
Reading plays a crucial role in IB learning. The school deeply understands that for students to be more interested in reading, we must first offer them a comfortable and stress-free environment. There are over 12,000 books in the library. Whilst most are in English, others are in Chinese, Italian, French, Spanish, Korean and Arabic and Japanese.
Each class has one library lesson per week and the library is available for the students during lunch breaks or other free time. Students are encouraged to borrow books on a daily basis. Through using the library, ISA Tianhe students continually develop as inquirers to read both for enjoyment and to deepen their subject knowledge. Noted authors visit ISA Tianhe to directly engage with students and also encourage a love for literature.
