1. Mission Statement
World Explorers with Chinese Pride. Chengdu Cogdel School is to cultivate global citizens with Chinese cultural grounding and international vision. Through self-cultivation in virtue, mastery of past and present knowledge, and integration of Eastern-Western wisdom, students will develop into lifelong learners with a strong sense of social responsibility. While deeply rooted in Chinese cultural heritage, they will embrace diverse cultures with open-mindedness and address global challenges through inquiry.
We will achieve our mission by:
- Upholding the concept of holistic education and fulfilling the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education
- Creating an open, inclusive, caring and exploratory campus educational ecology
- Providing personalized and differentiated teaching guidance and diverse interactive learning experiences
- Promoting the comprehensive and individualized development of students in morality, intelligence, physique, beauty, and labor
- Cultivating students' national pride, social responsibility and global competence
- Guiding students to understand and respect cultural diversity and establish awareness of cross-cultural communication and cooperation
- Helping students shape a confident, persistent, inquisitive and healthy personality
- Equipping students with lifelong learning methods and core competencies July 2021
2. Concept of Language
Language is a tool that can unite people and solve global affairs. Both spoken and written language are part of our lives. Language records civilization. All school staff should assume the role of language teachers to provide students with opportunities to develop their language skills as this helps expose the students to multiple languages. Students learn languages through textbooks.
Also, their mother tongue language is developed through good PYP teaching methods. The role of language teachers is shared by the family including demonstration of the mother tongue language to enhance the language learning at home.
3. Language Model at our school
1. The Mother Tongue: Mother tongue is the most familiar, accessible, fluent and authentic language that students use. Mother tongue is particularly important for developing students’ cognition, and it is also an important tool to help students grasp concepts, communicate with others, and understand cultural connotations. At our school, the mother tongue language is Chinese, and Chinese is our language of instruction.
2. The Additional Language: The additional language is an important tool to help students understand the culture of the language in different contexts and build a better worldview. At our school, English is the additional language.
3. According to the school’s language policy, syllabus, and IB’s language teaching philosophy, we have set a ratio for Chinese and English learning to ensure that the students can learn the additional language while developing their mother tongue.
Our Bilingual Model:
Our Bilingual Model is a transitional model. Our goal through this model is to shift students from receiving academic instruction in Chinese to English instruction. In primary we are setting the foundation to prepare them for High School where English is the primary language of instruction.
As such, we incorporate more English into student learning as they progress through the grades.
To facilitate this, we have adopted the following into practice:
- Grades 1-5 All have 8 – 9 classes English lessons per week. All of our Music, art, English, and PE classes are co-taught with a local and a foreign teacher.
- Approximate percentage of English usage by class and grade. Please understand that this is English usage without Chinese translation. These percentages represent the minimum standard amount of English use in classes.
- In English, we aim to provide students with an immersive language environment where exposure to English is used in learning and teaching. Having said that, there are times when Chinese is used to help students to better understand rules to an activity or to make sure students fully understand a grammar point for example.
Language Cue:
Each classroom has a Language Cue which helps to keep students and teachers aware of which Language they should be using and when.
4. Role and responsibilities of teachers
All teachers are language teachers. All teaching staff shall work together to plan lessons and further improve the unit exploration in the weekly grade group meetings.
5. Language teaching methods
Based on the theme-based teaching model, teachers use many effective teaching strategies to promote language development. For example, learning language through reading, writing, songs, rhythms; providing students with opportunities to express themselves through role-playing, puppet shows, stories, games, multimedia, and dialogues, etc. Teachers regularly reference other teaching methods included in the language teaching scope and sequence of the IB PYP.
6. Professional Development Opportunities
Teachers participate in IB workshops on and off campus. Teachers share and discuss our PYP courses with each other. The school supports the participation of teachers in extracurricular training and academic qualification improvement, and encourages and supports their participation in workshops to further equip themselves with necessary skills to improve teaching.
7. Role of Librarian
The school librarian works with other staff in lesson planning, supports the implementation of the school’s vision of the cultivation lifelong learners and teaches the development of concepts and skills to arm the students with knowledge. The librarian participates in all major lesson planning sessions, selects and purchases resources that support teaching and learning, and supports the development of the mother tongue language.
8. Parent participation
The school encourage the participation of parents in class affairs and school events.
Representatives of each class and representatives of the school jointly form our Parent Teacher Association. Parents take part in the school’s parent workshops every semester to enhance understanding and communication. Most of the documents provided to parents are bilingual - Chinese and English.
9. Communicating the Language Policy with Parents/Staff/SEB
The language policy will be reviewed and approved by all working groups of the school. After that, it will be printed in the Teacher Handbook in both Chinese and English.
10. Amending the Language Policy
The teaching leadership team, PYP coordinator, teachers and school working groups will review the language policy annually.
References：
- International Baccalaureate Organization (2008), Guidelines for developing a school
- International Baccalaureate Organization, (2011), Language scope and sequence（《语言学
- International Baccalaureate Organization (2014), Language and learning in IB programmes
- International Baccalaureate Organization (2008), Learning in a language other than mother tongue in IB programmes（《国际文凭项目中的第二语言的学习》，2008）
- International Baccalaureate Organization (2009), Making the PYP happen: Acurriculum framework for international primary education （小学项目的实施：国际初等教育课程框
- International Baccalaureate Organization (2014), Programme standards and practices （《项
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