DP1 August – October 2023 Overview

Unit Title:

Identity and Mindset

ATL Skills:

Self Management

• Set goals, identify strategies & take action
• Think positively

Help Your Child By:

• Asking your children to plan and organize their learning to ensure they manage time effectively.
• Encourage and model a balanced lifestyle that emphasizes physical as well as mental health.

Group 1: Language A:

English Language & Literature

Teachers: Mark Moran

UnitTitle: Into the Wild

Concepts: Creativity

ATL Skills: Thinking

Help Your Child By:

• Encourage independent reading of all text types.
• Encourage them to review key vocabulary that is being used in class
• Encourage them to speak about what they are reading.

Group 1:

Chinese A: Language and Literature

Teacher:  Sophia Suo

Unit Title:

Voices of Resilience: Exploring Post-War Literature and Cultural Identities

Concepts:  Identity

ATL skills: Thinking skills

Help your child by:

• Exploring post-war literature and non-literature texts, to discover the trauma of war to people’s life and spirit;
• Understanding how the author convey the trauma by words and technics.
• Exploring the relationship between author, text and reader from the aspects of literary connotation and language style.

Group 1: Language A:

Korean Language & Literature

Teacher:

Mr. Keon Yang

Unit Title: Communication through text

Concepts: communication, creativity, identity

ATL skills

Communication skills

Help your child by:

You can help them share your reading list with them. Especially you can ask them to think about the theme of the text after reading

Group 2: Language B:

English B:  Ms. Cathy Qiang

Chinese B:

Chinese ab-initio:  Jasmin Sun

English B

Unit Title: Exploring identity

Concepts: identity, perspectives

ATL skills:

Thinking skills

• Ask open questions
• Make thinking visible
• Make a link to TOK

Communication skills

• Explain their understanding of a text or idea
• Give oral presentation without reading notes
• Monitor and check quality of writing

Help your child by:

• Encourage your kid to read in English on regular basis.
• Ask your kid’s understanding of texts learned in class and ask for explanation and connections in contextualized situations.

Chinese ab-initio:  

Unit Title: Pre-Unit 你知道吗

Concepts: Meaning

ATL skills:

Thinking skills

• Combine knowledge, understanding and skills to create products or solutions

Communication skills

• Give and receive meaningful feedback
• Use intercultural understanding to interpret communication
• Read critically and for comprehension
• Read a variety of sources for information and for pleasure

Help your child by:

Ask your kids to teach you some basic vocabulary and sentences in Chinese.

Watch Chinese movies with your kids.

Encourage your kids to communicate with Chinese people if there are in your community, or find an online Chinese friends.

Group 3: Business Management

Teacher: Na Meng

Unit Title: Introduction to Business Management

Concepts: Change, Ethics, Creativity, Sustainability

ATL skills: communication & self-management

Communication: In this unit, we will

• ask students to explain their understanding of a text or idea to each other
• provide opportunities for students to read and understand different types of texts

Self-management: In this unit, we will

• set deadlines for students to meet
• ask students to set their own learning goals
• give students feedback on their approach to a task
• help students to learn from failures or mistakes

Help your child by:

• Discussing real-world examples of different types of business organizations and their growth strategies.
• Staying informed about current events and trends in the business world, especially those related to the topics your child is studying. Share relevant news articles and encourage discussions about how these events might affect businesses and their strategies.

Group 3: Economics

Teacher: Eva Liu

Unit Title: Unit 2 – Microeconomics

Concepts: Change, choice, economic well-being, efficiency, equity, interdependence, intervention, scarcity, sustainability

ATL skills:

Thinking

• Critically assess decision making processes by using decision making mechanisms and considering market forces
• Application of theories to illustrate and calculate change in markets

Research

• Primary research on elasticity of demand for a select product within school community

Social

• Working collaboratively to inquiry about real world situations and assessment expectations

Help your child by:

• Encourage your child to discuss case studies from class and prompt them to critically analyse the positives and negatives of similar situations in daily lives
• Have discussions of current world events and their impacts on specific markets
• Encourage your child to take a step back to observe changes holistically, I.e. how some changes may influence more than just one group of people, but rather the society as a whole

Group 4: Biology

Teachers: Shameek Ghosh

Unit Title: Unity and Diversity (A)

Concepts: Form, function, change-students have learnt about the prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells, DNA and origin of cells.

ATL skills: Research-Work on specifically researching topics that have been covered in the class and communication by improving their subject specific vocabulary.

Help your child by: Encouraging to take responsibility in revising content that has been taught and engage in making their own notes.

Group 4: Chemistry

Teachers: Kelvin Tian

Unit title: S1 Models of the particulate nature of matter

Key Concepts:

Structure is one the two main concepts in the DP chemistry course, with the other being reactivity.

•       Structurein chemistry is concerned with the way in which the particles of a substance are arranged. In this course, you will learn the importance of how the structure of different substances can affect their physical properties, such as its melting and boiling points, as well as the chemical reactivity.

ATL skills:

Thinking skills – Applying key ideas and facts in new contexts.

Research skills – Comparing, contrasting and validating information

Help your child by:

Encourage the students to take more responsibility for their own learning, be proactive, and practice their self-management skills in making plans for learning and revision.

Group 4: Environmental Systems and Societies

Teachers:  Sunny Si

Unit Title:

Foundations of environmental systems and society

Concepts:  

System:  a system approach is a way to visualizing a complex set of interactions which may be ecological or societal.

ATL skills:  

Thinking

• ask students to formulate a reasoned argument to support their opinion or conclusion
• set students a task which required higher-order thinking skills (such as analysis or evaluation)
• help students to make their thinking more visible (for example, by using a strategy such as a thinking routine)
• require students to take an unfamiliar viewpoint into account when formulating arguments

Research

• Reward or encourage correct citing and referencing require students to practise effective online search skills (for example, use of Booleans and search limiters)
• provide opportunities for students to reflect on how they determine the quality of a source, or analyse contradictory sources

Help your child by:

Remind them to review regularly.

Encourage the students to enhance self-management skill by finishing all the assignments on time and read news or articles about the environmental issues.

Group 4: Physics SL/HL

Teacher: C Rothwell

Unit Title: Space and Time

Concepts: -Handling experimental error, vectors and  kinematics (SL).

                   -Special Relativity (HL)

ATL skills: Ask students to formulate a reasoned argument to support their opinion or conclusion.

Help your child by:  Encouraging them to do their homework on time.

Group 5: Mathematical Applications and Interpretation SL

Teacher: Chris Rothwell

Unit Title: Number and Algebra

Concepts: Geometrical and Arithmetic Series with finance applications

ATL skills:

–logically interpret mathematical questions.

-be able to understand some key mathematical terms.

Help your child by encouraging them to do homework on time.

Group 5: Mathematical Analysis and Approaches (SL)

Teachers: Jane Feng

Unit Title: Number & Algebra
Concepts:

Patterns, Generalization,

ATL skills:

Thinking skills – formulating reasoned arguments

Communication skills – explaining understanding of  a text or idea

Help your child by:

Encouraging self-directed learning by completing homework and reviewing

Group 5: Mathematical Analysis and Approaches (HL)

Teachers: Tanapat Treyanurak

Unit Title:  Number & Algebra

Concepts: Generalization, representation

ATL skills: Thinking skills – formulating reasoned arguments

Help your child by:

Encouraging resilience and self-directed learning: higher-level students should be able to uncover their own weaknesses, plan strategies to address these weaknesses, and eventually overcome these weaknesses.

Group 6: Visual Arts

Teachers:

Unit Title:  Bearing Witness

Concepts: Art journal; making comparative studies

ATL skills: Thinking

Help your child by: time-management, as they may feel overwhelmed at times; help them in keeping a project management table to properly plan each step and milestone of their unit.

English Theory of Knowledge

Teacher: Bella Yang

Unit Title: knowledge and knower

Concepts: perspective, evidence, explanation

ATL skills:

• thinking skills: require students to take an unfamiliar viewpoint into account when formulating arguments. And set students a task which required higher-order thinking skills (such as analysis or evaluation)
• Communication skills: ask students to explain their understanding of a text or idea to each other. And ask students to monitor and check the quality of their writing

Help your child by: reading more articles or watch some videos then discuss with students in different perspective. Discuss with students about some TOK questions, give some idea to them.