The Curriculum
For the Early Years Foundation Stage, NGI School offers a curriculum, which is founded on strong educational principles, in order to ensure capability and success for the children as they enter their next phase. It also allows the children to absorb a broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for future progress through school and life in general. We acknowledge that your children learn and develop differently at varying rates. Therefore the NGI School framework covers both aspects of educating and nurturing all children in the early year's settings. We aim for your children learn to be assertive and independent through forming positive relationships.
Area of Learning
* Literacy.
* Language and communication (Arabic and English).
* Mathematics.
* Art and design.
* Physical development.
* Music.
* Personal, Social and Emotional Development.
At the Primary Stage, subjects studied at this level include Arabic, English, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, ICT, Art, French/German, Physical Education, Music, character education and religion.
At the Intermediate Stage (Prep.); Grades 7 and 8 are prepared for University of Cambridge’s International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) courses. At this level, the subjects studied are similar to those in the elementary Stage but science is divided into Chemistry, Physics, and Biology, which are taught as separate subjects by specialized teachers in those fields.
IGCSE and A level (Advanced Level) courses form the main core of the curriculum at the Secondary Level (Grades 9 to 12). In addition to the mentioned subjects, we also include business related subjects such as Economics, Business Studies, and Accounting in our curriculum.
English at IGCSE is offered as a first language. While teaching the English language focuses on the skills of reading, writing, speaking and listening, we promote the practices of language through a wide range of activities allowing students to communicate and project their linguistic competences. In addition, Computer Studies at IGCSE is offered as either Computing or Information Technology.
NGI School finds itself recognized as an attached examination center by the University of Cambridge, the University of London, and the Oxford University examination boards for IGCSE and A Levels.
English in the New Generation
Our school is committed to internationalism and we have differentiated instructions within the parameters of the programme to tend to all individual needs of each student. In order to achieve excellence in meeting the academic standards for all students, we provide English programmes that use a combination of pull-out and in-class support for students who has not yet shown their competencies in the four language skills of listening, speaking, reading or writing English at the appropriate level. There is an additional fee for such programmes as specialized teachers are hired to further guide English language acquisition as well as mastery.
This programme is compulsory upon conditional admission for students that do not demonstrate language proficiency as English is the language of instruction at school. The programme is offered from KG2 (in-class only) to Grade 5.
Character Education Programme
We offer a special programme for building character, following ethical values and promoting social skills, all in which to help create future leaders. The curriculum is developmentally appropriate, and is grounded on the following four pillars:
* Respect and dignity.
* Responsibility and independence.
* Honesty and trust.
* Humanity and tolerance.
The programme includes many other additional values and skills that can be grouped under these four pillars such as honoring parents, self-awareness, self-control, emotional intelligence, and more.
Students are expected to become involved in many character building activities during special sessions, assembly times and breaks to implement the core values that can better shape their lives as well as find their own place within NGI School’s culture.
Assembly Time is a fifteen-minute session that takes place at the beginning of the school day where all students have their breakfast together in each class under the supervision of their designated teachers. During this time, they discuss behavioral and ethical issues they may do inside or outside the class. Students would also be encouraged to participate in team building activities. Our staff members in NGI School are well informed of this programme’s necessity and are always willing to give support for its goals to be achieved, solidifying the relationship between students and staff members in one collaborative community.
Teaching and Learning Guidelines
Our programme emphasizes on the way its content is being taught. Asking students key questions that require critical thinking is the driving force behind our programme to build connections between students’ experiences in real life and their acquired knowledge from their education. Therefore, we establish our approach of teaching and learning through inquiry-based learning.
We promote an appropriate range and balance of teaching as well as grouping strategies in order to allow flexibility between individual, and group work in the classroom. We train teachers to produce efficient educational material and encourage them to apply innovative teaching techniques. In our teaching strategies, we encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning. An important approach in this context is blending learning where teachers facilitate many different digital resources for learning, and a sequence of tasks are designed to be given to students to reach the deserved learning outcomes, and this is what we call a flipping classroom.
Engaging students in learning is becoming more and more of a critical endeavor. We believe by embracing technology and what it can add to their educational experience, we will be able to raise their interest in further taking responsibility as well as getting motivated to achieve learning outcomes.
Using technology and digital tools are important methods enable students create quality-learning experiences. And so, we ensured to provide rich, diverse and flexible learning opportunities for a digital generation.
Assessment
We believe that assessment can be used to improve our educational programms by providing constructive feedback for teachers, students, parents, and administrators. We do not believe that testing is the only method of assessment. We ensure to use a diversity of assessment tools and observations to document where a student is in relation to the expectations set, according to his age at a certain time every academic year. Our students are evaluated on their procedural and conceptual understanding of each standard through many opportunities of group and individual work, observations, performances, presentations, and projects where their learning is demonstrated.
We create a range of assessment strategies with students to monitor their progress and guide future planning and better practices for the school and all of its stakeholders. A progress report is issued at the end of each semester. This provides enough information about our students’ achievements through personalized comments and grades in all of their taken subjects. It enables them to figure out their areas of strength as well as areas needed for development.
Student Led Conferences
For years, parent-teacher conferences have been the primary means of parent-teacher communication, however, we decided to take on a new initiative. We believe student-led conference is great opportunities to not only communicate progress but for students to have the opportunity to personally demonstrate this progress to their parents. It allows the student an opportunity to reflect on his goals and what he/she has accomplished with his or her attained knowledge and skills from different subject areas.
Homework
Homework is assigned on a daily and occasionally on a weekly basis. The purpose of homework is to reinforce concepts that the students learned in class, to practice their skills, to challenge their thinking and to prepare them on their educational journey.
Homework durations should takes half an hour to two hours depending on the age group at hand. All homework assignments are to be completed and submitted on time. In addition, students may be in charge of completing steps towards long-term projects. We encourage parents to engage with their children’s assignments for support and guidance in order to strengthen their relationship.
