The Christmas turkey has been carved here at Wellington College Bilingual Shanghai, the children have sung around the
Christmas tree and Father Christmas (or Santa, depending upon your preference) has been to visit with his little
helper elves delivering special Christmas cookies to the children. The term is now finished, the setting is
considerably quieter and the teaching teams are planning the work to be undertaken during the break, in preparation
for Spring term.
Onwards we go……..continually preparing to move forward.
Reflection is a wonderful tool. It means serious, careful thought; consideration (a combination of Oxford and Cambridge dictionary definitions). The teaching teams reflect upon their practice and learning opportunities for the pupils and make changes to respond directly to pupil needs. The leadership team respond to reflections from the teaching team, the non-academic teams and the parents and together we implement changes to meet the needs of all at Wellington College Bilingual Shanghai. As a leader, I reflect continuously on the setting, practices, policies and personnel and strive to ensure that as one team, we nurture our evolution as we strive to offer the very best early years’ experience for young learners, the best working environment for every member of the team and the most welcoming community for all members of our Wellington College family.
It is a continual process which allows changes to be made to achieve positive outcomes……always moving forwards.
The Week Ahead from January 2017
When I write the Week Ahead, it is often more of a ‘Week Behind’ and to this end, from January, each publication will
introduce the reader to what is coming up in the setting the following week, as well as a reflection on the week that
has passed. We hope that this will help to support the parents at home with their young Wellingtonian and to develop a
shared experience. This will not replace the themed newsletter, nor the information given out in the Wellington
Weekly, it an additional little insight into the learning opportunities presented here at the setting.
Week beginning 2nd January (please note that the pupils return on 3rd)
EY1 (theme – All About Me):
During our first week of the theme “All about Me,” EY1 children will be learning more about themselves. Children will
learn about, recognise, and identify parts of their body. Making handprints is one activity that most toddlers
thoroughly enjoy and we are going to use our little hands to make a class tree. Children will enjoy singing the
English version of the song ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ as it is appealing and will help to reinforce key
vocabulary words. Songs such as ‘wo you yi shuang xiao xiao shou’ (I have helping hands) and ‘toufa jianbang xigai
jiao’ (head shoulders knees and toes) will also be sung. The book ‘Eyes, nose, fingers and toes’ will be used during
this week in Chinese class. In English class, we will read ‘From Head to Toe’ which will cover similar content related
to parts of the body. We will also make funny faces, put together giant puzzles, and dress up paper dolls to review
parts of the body throughout the week.
EY2 (theme – Dinosaurs):
The children will be in for the shock of their lives this week as they discover that giant footprints have been left
in the classrooms. What could have left them? Have Mr Chris’ feet grown even bigger, or is the new EY2 theme all about
DINOSAURS?!?!? Thankfully for the children, we will be investigating the theme of dinosaurs. We start the topic off
this week looking at dinosaur fossil making, measuring a Tyrannosaurus Rex’s footprint and comparing it to the
children’s feet. Later in the week, we will start to explore dinosaur environments and freezing our very own dinosaur
eggs. Throughout the week during circle time, we will be introducing Rowdy-Saurus, who is our friendly Wellington
dinosaur and who will help us settle the children back into the Wellington setting.
EY3 (theme – Pirates):
We are exploring pirates this theme, with lots of pirate related stories and songs. As a team of explorers, we will brainstorm our collective ideas about what makes a good pirate ship and what we would like our class pirate ships to look like. Once we decide on our design, we will create a role play pirate ship out of recycled materials. We will also be working on reading maps and following simple directions to find buried treasure! Some of us may even try our pirate hands at drawing our own maps for our pirate friends to follow.
Looking to the future…..
Throughout the term, the leadership team has continually gathered feedback from the teaching teams, listened to
parents’ comments and scrutinised the learning opportunities presented to the pupils through continual observation and
monitoring. Any proposed change to be made to the curriculum or the structure of the team is reported to the School
Affairs Committee, which convenes three times per year and approval is sought once evidence for the change is
provided. This process forms an integral part of quality assurance and protects the integrity and experience that one
associates with Wellington College.
As we enter 2017, we will be looking to the next academic year (we do plan well in advance, so that fruitful dialogue
and reflection can take place) 2017-2018 and changes to be made will be discussed more fully with the pupils, parents
and teachers. I’d like to introduce two of the changes which will be discussed in more detail after the break:
• Learning Through Song
We have had approval for the addition of a specialist music teacher (early years) to our team of amazing practitioners
and I’m delighted to be able to formalise the process of language acquisition through our music and movement
programme. The advert is on our website and I’ll look forward to interviewing potential candidates in the New Year. As
soon as an appointment is made, I will provide our Wellington College family with a pen portrait of our newest team
member, as we officially welcome them to the College.
• The learning experience in EY3 & EY4
Immersion in language forms the fundamental basis of our bilingual educational ethos; we wish the Wellington College
pupils here to be immersed in the languages of Chinese and English. To support this, we propose a change that will
surround the pupils on any given day with one language only. From August 2017, the EY3 and EY4 pupils will have one
English Teacher and one Chinese Teacher (as they do now) who become known to them as their
‘learning team’。
Each teacher will have their own language-based room and assistants who are trained to support in the specific
language. The result for the pupils is that when they enter the ‘English’ room, they are surrounded by the language of
English, it is print rich and embedded with cultural offerings. The following day, when the pupils enter the ‘Chinese’
room, they are then surrounded by the language, print and cultural offerings of Chinese.
There are no changes to the ratios, the staffing structure will stay the same. What we deem to be the key benefit is to afford the pupils an opportunity of deepened and enriched learning. The children will go between two classrooms throughout the week and will identify the space and the teams as their Chinese team and their English team – their learning team. The teaching teams will work closely together in the monitoring and assessment of the individual pupils and will work in unison to plan inspiring and challenging learning opportunities for them which will support and extend each unique individual.
And finally………
As we head off in to the Winter Break, I will take this opportunity on behalf of the team at Wellington College Bilingual Shanghai to wish our wonderful Wellington family a very Merry Christmas and a happy, healthy and fun-filled 2017.
