Week 23 – SLOs & Acceleration Policy

Dear Parents,

I would like to start by extending a very warm welcome to our new community members. My name is Brian, the deputy head and I have the opportunity to share a newsletter to our community once a month. I would like to let everyone know that I am always available by email to meet. I would live to schedule a time to meet with any of our community members to get to know you and update you on your child’s progress. This goes to all our community members.

We are currently doing a self-study into the effectiveness of our programmes. A reoccurring outcomes seems to be coming out from the Philosophy part. Staff and our PTA feel that our SLOs which are the IB Learner Profile attributes and may be found here are not effectively communicated to new community members. We are considering how to improve in this area, but I would like to start by introducing us all to the ten attributes here. Please take the time to review these attributes. They should be planned, taught and assessed in each of our units of inquiry.

I like to take the time to remind our community of some of our policies during my newsletters. In this newsletter I would like to highlight our grade acceleration policy. This policy outlines the steps should a student wish to skip a grade. It is almost always best for a child to be learning with his/her peers due to the complexity of social and emotional development. Students will learn about sex education for example at an appropriate level starting in P5.

However, there are cases where gifted students should be accelerated. This enables them to be challenged with more complex content. The attached policy outlines the steps should any student wish to apply for grade acceleration at our school.

Finally I love to hear from you, please reply to this email and let me know how your child is doing. If you would like to schedule a time to meet with me, please let me know.