Dear Parents and Caregivers
I hope this message finds you well after another great week at Discovery College. Our campus has been busy with activity, the air filled with the sounds of learning, exploration, and most importantly, joy.
Before I delve into what has occurred this week, I invite you to take a look at the pictures from last Friday’s successful ‘Stay and Play’ session in Year 1. We cherish these opportunities to welcome you into our learning environment, share precious moments with your children, and foster our vibrant community. These sessions showcase the learning experiences that take place here at Discovery College, highlighting our commitment to pursuing best practices in education and nurturing your child’s cognitive development and well-being.
When considering the term ‘play’ in education it is important to discuss what we believe. Our educational provision, guided by the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the Primary Years Programme (PYP), allows us to deepen understanding through a concept-based curriculum and facilitate connections in a student’s brain leading to knowledge creation. What may seem like small steps to us can signify major cognitive leaps for our young learners, creating knowledge and linking understandings. The question “How do you know?” reverberates across all IB programs. Teachers encourage and facilitate our students to engage in frequent cognitive recall, repetition of facts, and build emotional resilience. Knowledge is not acquired through a single teaching event or activity; it is nurtured over time, through repeated experiences and thoughtful engagements. Our exceptional teachers understand this and craft experiences that stimulate long-term memory activation which is heavily promoted through play-based learning.
Back to this week. We embarked on our ‘Building Positive Relationship’ series for parents and domestic helpers. Thank you to all who managed to participate in this. We are excited about the potential of these workshops as they help us to build upon the vital home-school partnership.
We made space this week for our first phonics webinar for parents of Year 1 and 2 students. Our aim was to enhance our young learners’ reading abilities. As we all know the ability to read is an invaluable skill and is a cornerstone for all future learning. Mastering reading is a significant undertaking for young learners, but systematic phonics instruction can greatly facilitate this process. This teaching method equips children with a reliable strategy for decoding unfamiliar words, which, in turn, builds their confidence in reading and writing. By being involved in this process and understanding how we implement it in school, your support can significantly enhance your child’s reading progression. This partnership between home and school is pivotal in fostering our students’ literacy development and enhancing their reading, writing, and spelling skills. The recording of this event will be sent out to all of those who attended very soon.
Today we break for the half-term holidays. I wish you a restful week with your children, building lots of wonderful memories, wherever the week may take you. Our dedicated staff, too, will be taking a well-earned break, and I am sure you join me in wishing them a rejuvenating week off. I look forward to seeing all of your wonderful children on the 31st of October for more adventures in school and the creative curiosity which encapsulates learning at DC.
Take care
Mrs Cathrae