Although we have crossed the halfway mark for January, this is still our first Primary newsletter of 2020, so please allow us to start by wishing all of our community a Happy New Year and all the best for the new year that lies ahead of us. We are looking forward to another year of effective learning, excellent collaboration and great enjoyment.

For the teachers, the academic year started with a number of days of preparation in anticipation of the families and children to return to school. This included extensive training in various areas of the curriculum and also a first-aid training course for 30 members of our primary staff.

In last weeks Primary assembly, we welcomed back to school our returning children and teachers as well as our new children and new teachers who have joined us this year. As usual, we sang the ‘Welcome Song’ and greeted them all with a warm hand of applause.

All of our classes started with their first IPC unit of learning. We have designed the programme in such a way that in all year groups there will be a focus on how we actually learn. This is to get the children into the right mind-set for the rest of the year. This obviously includes talking about how the brain works, because after all, all learning happens in the brain! Most classes have now run their IPC ‘Entry-Point’. Entry points in IPC are activities that are meant to capture the children’s curiosity about the learning that will be taking place in their new unit. I do hope that the children got so excited that they shared with you what happened during their Entry-Point and what their learning was about!

Today in our assembly we talked about what learning actually means. We looked at the difference of learning new things as opposed to remembering and recalling what you have learned. The latter is something the IPC calls consolidated learning. With the children we talked about ‘sticky learning’ a name that hopefully will indeed stick!



Mr. Marco Damhuis (Head of Primary)
Email Contact : marco.damhuis@pc.tis.edu.my