Primary school: the reflective years
During the primary school years, children develop a relationship with the world that is more abstract: more interested in the reasons and processes behind objects and facts. The purpose of their intense curiosity is the formation of their minds and that is why we have chosen a transdisciplinary approach with an inquiry-based pedagogy. Thanks to this method, our children learn to make sense of the world by exploring questions that involve many different disciplines, while thinking actively about what they learn, why they learn, and how they learn. As a result, their minds can develop a holistic and dynamic understanding of the world, as well as an ability to perform self-questioning.
Since language is the substance of rational thinking, we design our curriculum to facilitate the learning of this crucial tool by following the idea that learning a language means also learning with a language and about a language. As mother tongue of our children, and core of their identity, Farsi keeps a central role in the classroom. But as in pre-school, many hours are spent in English, which is used to discover mathematics, science, or even religion, and represents an opportunity for the children to enrich their minds with alternate understandings of the world. This open-mindedness is further developed by the acquisition of French, while the students’ potential for creative expression is expanded in a modern approach to linguistics that insists on the importance of other forms of language including art or computers.
Self-evaluation and qualitative assessment complete a curriculum dedicated to self-knowledge, critical thinking, and creativity. It is therefore during these years that the foundations for life-long learning are built, providing our children some future keystones for adaptation in a world that is in constant flux.