Character Education (Values Education)

OVERVIEW

The Character Education Approach in the school is pinned on 2 approaches to help the school achieve its Vision and Mission.  Based on the principles of Thomas Lickona on how to develop a good character education programme, we focus on five parameters to ensure that our Character Education is well thought through.  The domains we look at each area is the Curriculum that drives the domain, the Culture that we want to achieve, the relevant Assessment to measure the programmes, the Relationships that can push the programme and finally Innovative Practices that we can use if programmes are adopted or replicated.

Using the Kolhberg and Piaget theories of moral development and cognitive development respectively as a reference, the Lifeskills curriculum has been explicitly designed to impart values to students in the formal education system. It also aims at enhancing the daily Value Moment Programme. The syllabus is a more student-centric approach, teaching the pupils to develop the school core values in them and to display these values in their actions and behaviour. Pupils are taught how to identify the behaviour they should emulate in order to become a more upright individual and eventually a concerned citizen. They are also taught to reflect on the right and wrong actions and learn from their own reflection. To ensure that the current nation centric value education is not lost, the curriculum has infused.

CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION

National Education (N.E), Cyberwellness and Kindness Movement (SKM) as well as the Values in Education (VIA) into the syllabus. This is to ensure that pupils learn that the values and behaviour they display do not just affect them but the nation as a whole in the long run. The curriculum thus aides in developing them to be gracious citizens, one of the school missions. The Celebration of the core NE Events is deepened with the introduction of Contemporary Issues for the blocks in the Upper Primary to deepen the conversations amongst the children

The new syllabus is using story-telling and questioning approach focusing on the 4 school values. The value moment and lifeskills curriculum messages are aligned weekly. Thus student focus on the same message in one week. At the end of each term they will use the rubrics in the Lifeskills booklets to assess themselves and their peers on the value taught for the term. The rubrics in the Lifeskills booklets are aligned to the HDP- I will statements. After assessing, they have to give their peers who have imbue the values taught with the cut-out certificate found in the Lifeskills booklet.

Innovation and Values in Action

The process of Innovation and Values in Action are intertwined to ensure that the development of the projects is linked with the innovation whilst the actual project and products will be on the values in action.

In Lifeskills lessons, students learn about Design Thinking as an approach to look at problems from the perspective of the end-user.  The approach allows students to look at the end user perspectives, developing empathy and evolving Gracious Citizens.

Student Leadership in the school is broken up into 3 Tiers.  Tier 1 develops leaders in the class.  Tier 2 develops pupils who serve in the school outside the classroom.  At the highest Tier, the Prefects occupy this place.  The idea is to ensure that leadership is a spiral development and, at each level, how the pupils are developed.