DP1 November – January 2023 Overview

Homeroom Teacher:

Kelvin Tian
Kate Yu

Unit Title:
Get Ready with Diploma Program
Concept: Understanding DP

ATL Skills: Thinking, Self-management
Introduce ATL skills students need to do well in DP and in their future endeavours. 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:
Chinese A: Language and Literature
Teacher: Sophia

Unit Title: War trauma presenting in texts

Concepts
KC: Identity
RC: Analysis

ATL skills: Reflection skills

Help your child by engaging with a range of texts, in a variety of media and forms, from different periods, styles, and cultures to develop the skills in interpretation, analysis and evaluation, to discover identities of the author and the readers.

Group 1:
English Language and Literature
Teacher: Mr. Ridolfo

Unit Title:
Intertextuality:
The Crucible & Related Bodies of Work

Concepts:
Culture
Perspective
Transformation

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 2: Language B:

English B: Cathy Qiang

English B
Unit Title: Social organization – The working world

Concepts:
KC: Meaning

ATL skills:
Communication skills
Thinking skills
Social skills
Reflection skills

Help your child by:
Talk and discuss possible education and job opportunities in the future. Share insights of individual’s role in communities. What is an individual’s role in a community? You can encourage your child to read both local and international news to keep up with what is happening in the world.

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: Chemistry

Teacher: Kelvin Tian

Unit Title:

Essential understandings: The arrangement of the periodic table is purposeful and can answer many questions in chemistry. Elements exhibit characteristic properties which are reflected by their location in the periodic table.

ATL skills:
Communication – construct a task around the use of different vocabulary and examples when speaking to different audiences

Research:
Require students to practice 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, be proactive and practice their self-management skills.

Group 4:

Environmental Systems and Societies

Teacher: Sunny Si

Unit Title: Ecosystem and ecology

Concepts: System

ATL skills:
Thinking, in this unit, we will
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)

Research, in this unit, we will
require students to practice effective online search skills
provide opportunities for students to reflect on how they determine the quality of a source, or analyze contradictory sources

Help your child by:
Encourage the students to enhance self-management skill and read news or articles about the environmental issues.

Group 4: Biology

Teacher: Shameek Ghosh

Unit Title: Molecules of Life SL/HL

Concepts: Systems, Change

ATL skills:
Thinking skills in analyzing changes in the biomolecules leading to creation of different materials including enzymes, DNA and proteins.

Researching beyond the realms of the textbook and digging deeper into the concepts through other perspectives such as research articles.

Help your child by:
Encourage your child to revise completed portions and engage in conversations on what matter they have learnt. For example, conversations on cultural aspects of a diet and the nutrient breakdown of the food.

Group 4: Physics

Teacher: Chris Rothwell

Unit Title: Thermal Physics

Concepts: describe temperature change in terms of internal energy;
– describe temperature scales and convert between Kelvin and Celsius temperature scales;
– experimentally apply the concepts of latent heat and specific heat capacity;
– describe phase change with respect to the behavior of molecules within the substance;
– sketch and interpret phase change graphs;
– predict energy changes involving latent heat and specific heat capacity;
– solve problems using the ideal gas laws;
– sketch and interpret the following graphs for an ideal gas: pressure-volume, pressure-temperature, and volume-temperature; and
– experimentally investigate at least one ideal gas law.

KC: Structure
RC: Change

ATL skills: Communication, Self-management,
Research

Help your child by: Encouraging them to complete all assignments on time.

Group 5:

Mathematical Applications and Interpretation

Teacher: Chris Rothwell

Unit Title: Functions

Concepts: Concept of a function, domain, range and graph. Modelling with linear functions. Arithmetic series. Voronoi diagrams.

KC: Models
RC: Change

ATL skills: In this unit, we will
require students to formulate/construct a focused research question (either in class or in a homework assignment)
reward or encourage correct citing and referencing
require students to record their search for sources in steps (types of search engines, search terms, and so on)

Help your child by: Checking they are completing homework on time.

Group 5:

Mathematical Analysis and Approaches (HL)

Teacher: Sky Du

Unit Title: Calculus – Measuring Change – Differentiation

Essential Understandings
Calculus describes rates of change between two variables. Understanding these rates of change allows us to model, interpret and analyze real-world problems and situations. Calculus helps us understand the behavior of functions and allows us to interpret the features of their graphs.

The derivative may be represented physically as a rate of change and geometrically as the gradient or slope function
Examining rates of change close to turning points helps you identify intervals where the function increases/decreases, and identify the concavity of the function
Mathematical modeling can provide effective solutions to real-life problems in optimization by maximising or minimising a quantity, such as cost or profit
Derivatives and integrals describe real-world kinematics problems in two and three dimensional space by examining displacement, velocity and acceleration

ATL skills: Thinking
In this unit, we will
ask students to formulate a reasoned argument to support their opinion or conclusion
give students time to think through their answers before asking them for a response
ask open questions
build on a specific prior task

Communication
In this unit, we will
ask students to monitor and check the quality of their writing
construct a task so that students practise their listening skills
assess or give feedback on speaking or writing concisely
provide opportunities for students to read and understand different types of texts

Help your child by: frequently check their homework completion process and ask them to explain how calculus are important in life.

Unit Title:
Modeling relationships
Concepts:
KC: Relationships
RC: Modeling

ATL skills:
Create plans to prepare for summative assessments

Help your child by:
Encouraging them to study mathematics everyday. When it comes to mathematics practice, frequency is more beneficial than intensity.

Group 6: Visual Arts

Teacher: Scott Ramon

Unit Title:
Analyze, Assimilate, and Synthesize

Concepts:
Connection, Change, & Perspective
Identify formal qualities Understand purpose
Evaluate cultural significance
Make comparisons and connections
Present and Show
Make connections to own art-making practice

ATL skills:
Thinking, Communication, & Research

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. Have them take photographs with their phones.

Theory of Knowledge:

Teacher: Mr. Ridolfo

Unit Title:
Optional Theme: Knowledge & Technology
Optional Theme: Knowledge & Language

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

Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS)

Teacher: Kevin McGarry

Unit Title: Creativity, Activity and Service

ATL skills: Social Skills – Collaboration

Help your child by:
When your child shows an interest in serving the community, participating in sport or exercises, or artistic endavours, please give them your full support.

Ask for an update on their portfolios and which CAS experiences they have enjoyed the most.