DP1 February – April 2023 Overview

Unit Title:

The  core of DP

ATL Skills: Thinking, Research and Self-management

Introduce ATL skills students need to do well in the 3 core component of DP: EE, CAS and TOK.  Make connections with university applications and personal development. Do exercises  in different  contexts.

Help Your Child By: Discuss the skills that your students are good at and the skills they need to improve. Encourage him/her to see the teacher.

Group 1: Language A:

English Language & Literature

Teachers:

Mr. Ridolfo

Unit Title:

Time & Space:
Persepolis & Related Bodies of Work

Concepts:

Identity

Creativity

Representation

ATL Skills:

Communication—Communication

Self-Management—Organization

Thinking—Critical Thinking

Help Your Child By:

Ensure they are reading and suggest that they read from a variety of genres (fiction) and sources (non-fiction). GoodReads.com is a great resource to find literary texts that they might be interested in. As they read, they should reflect on how they feel and contemplate how the author made them feel that way.

Group 1:

Chinese A: Language and Literature

Teacher:

Eunice  Hou

Unit Title: Identity Exploring in texts

Concepts:  Identity, Culture

ATL skills: Thinking skills

• 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)
• require students to take an unfamiliar viewpoint into account when formulating arguments
• include a reflection activity
• make a link to TOK

Help your child by:

• Engage with a range of texts, in a variety of media and forms, from different periods, styles, and cultures
• Communicate and collaborate in a confident and creative way
• Foster a lifelong interest in and enjoyment of language and literature.

Group 1: Language A:

Korean Language & Literature

Teacher:

Mr. Keon Yang

Unit Title: Representing time and space

Concepts:

KC: Representation

RC: Structure, setting

ATL skills: Communication skills

Help your child by:

• Encourage your kids to search out narratives reflecting on a certain place and time.

Group 3: Business Management

Teacher:

Unit Title: Marketing

Concepts: Sustainability; Ethics; Creativity; Change

ATL skills:

Thinking: ask open questions and make link to TOK;

Research: reflect on how they determine the quality of a source, or analyse contradictory sources

Help your child by:

1. Encourage your child to discuss different marketing strategies in the business world; Share your own working experiences and ideas with your child;

2. Remind your child  to review the key concepts and business theories after the class.

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 real world events and changes in the business world and examine possible impacts on the industry, specific markets, related markets and other stakeholders
• Seek opportunities to analyse types of markets that every-day businesses operate in
• 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

Essential understanding:

Protein synthesis-Proteins are formed by transcription and translation.

Different types of RNA-mRNA, rRNA and tRNA with structures and specifications for protein synthesis.

Metabolism-Glycolysis, Kreb’s cycle and Electron transport Chain.

ATL skills:

• Thinking

               In this unit, we will

• Help students consider the differences in sequence of protein synthesis in prokaryotes and eukaryotes

• Communication
  • In this unit, we will
    • Use crosswords for reinforcement of vocabulary
  • Research
    • In this unit, we will
      • Online research on databases and simulations on making proteins.

Help your child by:

Encouraging them to complete tasks on time and review what has been completed in the class.

Group 4: Chemistry

Teachers: Kelvin Tian

Unit title: Chemical structure and bonding

Essential understanding:

Ionic compounds consist of ions held together in lattice structures by ionic bonds.

Covalent compounds form by the sharing of electrons.

Lewis (electron dot) structures show the electron domains in the valence shell and are used to predict molecular shape.

The physical properties of molecular substances result from different types of forces between their molecules.

Metallic bonds involve a lattice of cations with delocalized electrons.

ATL skills:

• Thinking

               In this unit, we will

• help students to make their thinking more visible (for example, by using a strategy such as a thinking routine)

• Communication
  • In this unit, we will
    • construct a task around the use of different vocabulary and examples when speaking to different audiences
  • Research
    • In this unit, we will
      • require students to practise effective online search skills (for example, use of Booleans and search limiters)

Help your child by:

Encourage the students to take more responsibility for their own learning, practice their self-management skills and make a plan for their leaning and reviewing.

Group 5: Environmental Systems and Societies

Teachers:  Sunny Si

Unit Title:  Biodiversity and conservation

Concepts:  Relationship

ATL skills:  Thinking and Research

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 5: Physics

Teacher: C Rothwell

Unit Title: Waves

Concepts: Patterns

ATL skills: note taking and self management

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

Group 5: Mathematical Applications and Interpretation

Teacher: C Rothwell

Unit Title: Statistics and Probability

Concepts: Change

ATL skills: Note-taking

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

Group 5: Mathematical Analysis and Approaches (SL)

Teachers:

Mr. Tanapat Treyanurak

Unit Title:
Representing equivalent quantities: exponentials and logarithms

Concepts:

KC: Representation

RC: Equivalence, quantity

ATL skills: Analyse complex concepts and projects into their constituent parts

and synthesize them to create new understanding

Help your child by: Asking them to explain their learning in your native language. Communicating mathematics helps to cement the understanding they develop in class and using a different language than the language of learning helps students see mathematics from multiple perspectives.

Group 5: Mathematical Analysis and Approaches (HL)

Teachers: Sky Du

Unit Title:  Calculus-Integration

Concepts:

KC: Form

RC: Systems, quantity

ATL skills:

Thinking Skills:

• require students to take an unfamiliar viewpoint into account when formulating arguments
• ask questions that required the use of knowledge from a different subject from the one you are teaching

Social Skills:

• allocate, or ask students to allocate among themselves, different roles in a classroom discussion or activity

Help your child by:

Frequent check-up on their math understanding and homework. Communicating mathematics helps to cement the understanding they develop in class and using a different language than the language of learning helps students see mathematics from multiple perspectives.

Group 6: Visual Arts

Teachers: Scott Ramon

Unit Title:  Our Spirit and Our Art

• Visual arts in context
  • Theoretical practice
    • Students examine and compare the work of artists from different cultural contexts
    • Students consider the contexts influencing their own work and the work of others
  • Art-making practice
    • Students make art through a process of investigation, thinking critically and experimenting with techniques
    • Students apply identified techniques to their own developing work

ATL skills: Research, Thinking, Communication

Help your child by:

Help your student maintain a daily routine to document their ideas, sketches, thoughts, experiments, feelings, and observations about the world around them. They should keep a daily record in their process journal/ sketchbook/ visual diary.  Ask your student, “What is art and what can art be?” Engage in conversations about what you SEE everyday. It could be architecture, graphics on television, newspaper layout with text and image, car designs, colors that are used that affect our behaviors in advertisements, forms we  encounter, and of course art that we experience online or in a book. Also take your student to museums and galleries.

English Theory of Knowledge

Teacher:

Mr. Ridolfo

Unit Title:

Area of Knowledge: The Human Sciences

Area of Knowledge: Mathematics

Knowledge Framework:

Scope, Perspective, Methods & Tools, Ethics

ATL skills:

Communication, Thinking

Help your child by:

Discuss the subject and let them share what they are learning – in this way they will review what they are discussing in class and you can also share your opinions on certain issues with them. They will thus develop different perspectives regarding real-life situations

Chinese Theory of Knowledge

Teacher: Sophia Suo

Unit Title: The knowledge and Technology

Knowledge Framework:

Scope, Perspective, Methods & Tools, Ethics

ATL skills:  Thinking skills and Communication skills

Help your child by:

1. improving critical thinking skills through discussing different perspectives of knowledge and technology;
2. Leaning how to form strong arguments to response knowledge questions;
3. Learning how to connect the real world by using the theory or ideas explored in class.