IB MATTERS August 2011
Al Zahra College aims to develop faithful, knowledgeable and wise citizens who take responsibility for creating a better and more peaceful world. We will challenge our students to become active learners and critical thinkers who promote
intercultural understanding and respect.
IB MATTERS
g the A monthly publication about triallin Primary Years Program (PYP) and the Middle Years Program (MYP) at Al Zahra College.
The International Baccalaureate
Trialling IB at Al Zahra College
The International Baccalaureate (IB) is an exciting set of educational programs offered in more than two thousand school schools in over 120 countries around the world. The programs focus on student-centred inquiry-based learning and global concerns. They challenge students to think in sophisticated ways about the connections between ideas in different areas of study. They put learning into an international context.
In 2011, Al Zahra College is a Candidate School for the PYP and a Candidate School for the MYP. The goal is for Al Zahra College to eventually offer all three programs to our students. NOTE: AZC is undertaking a trial implementation of PYP and MYP. Authorisation can take several years and cannot be guaranteed.
PYP & MYP @ AZC
The initial planning for PYP and other possible IB programmes at AZC began back in 2003.
In 2009, AZC registered as an Interested MYP School in preparation for the commencement of Year 7 in 2010. In 2010, AZC was accepted as a Candidate MYP School.
Following first-hand experience with all three programmes (PYP, MYP and DP) in Qatar, Dr Darvall recommended trialling its implementation at AZC. In 2008, AZC registered with IB as an Interested PYP School.
Information sessions are conducted to facilitate parent understanding of what PYP and MYP are all about - bringing learning alive. Following a preliminary visit in 2009, AZC was invited to become a Candidate PYP School. During 2010, AZC completed a Pre-Authorisation visit that considered our preparedness for authorisation as a PYP School. At this stage, and with a lot more hard work, we plan to seek authorisation in late 2011.
Visualising Our World Year 5 and selected students spent a day learning to visualise the world through the lens of a camera. We thank the Moran Group for this opportunity.
The focus for this year’s Interschool Harmony Project is a photography exhibition which will be held on 26 October at Kingsgrove Community Centre. The Year 5 Moran Photography Day was an important foundation for our efforts.
Imagination and lots of it in Year 1
In Year 1, we have been very busy preparing for the end of our fourth unit, Imagination. We have all worked really hard in preparing our masks and the discussion, play, song or poem that accompanied them. All of our presentations were a success, and when we watched them on our classroom iPad, we could reflect on our performance and decide what we could do to improve, ready for our final assessment.
Have a look at some of our masks! Mariam Sayed Ahmed was really eager to complete her summative assessment task. After having been given the task, she came back to school the following day, ready to perform her puppet show! Take a look at the puppets and the puppet theatre! Malakie Hammoud was selected by Mariam to help with the performance. What a fantastic effort!
Al Zahra College
THE LEARNER PROFILE Risk-Takers
Caring
Communicators
Thinkers
Reflective
Open Minded
Inquirers
Balanced Knowledgeable Principled the The IB Learner Profile is that attributes and descriptors that IB define the type of student hopes to develop through its ). programs (for example, MYP
AL ZAHRA COLLEGE 3 - 5 Wollongong Road, ARNCLIFFE. NSW 2205 P: (+61) 2 9599 0161 F: (+61) 2 9599 0162 E: info@azc.nsw.edu.au W: www.azc.nsw.edu.au