PRIMARY

2022 offered us an opportunity to look with fresh new eyes at all the experiences which are part of the year's journey at each stage of the six years of Primary school: the value of meeting others to learn, share and grow. At the beginning of the year, and in a post-pandemic context, we had to resignify the socio-emotional journey of our students both within and outside the classroom, as we faced the great challenge of having to reestablish work habits, revisit class agreements and reinstitute School rules as our pupils had been away from a sustained in-school learning journey for quite some time. To achieve this, we revised our SEL (Social Emotional Learning) programme, we redesigned units, we deepened our intervention strategies, we modeled the appropriate ways of peer interaction, we consolidated our group and individual dialogues with families and gradually managed to recover good learning habits and strengthen positive ties between our children.

A great benefit and opportunity for professional development instances for our staff was given to us by the PLC (Professional Learning Communities) and thus these moments became another highlight to signal out. During the different spaces we had during the year, our different teams of teachers were able to exchange their expertise: they shared their practices and projects, modeled interventions and teaching methods, instilling and reinvigorating a deep conversation around their combined good practices. In keeping with this, and with the guidance of external professionals, we evaluated our projects to strengthen the teaching-learning experiences from a more comprehensive approach, promoting the development of our students' competencies. Emphasis was placed on embodying our commitment to Sustainability, as well as promoting the development of bilingual communication, collaborative work skills and critical thinking of our students.

Another great milestone in 2022 was to recover the space for dialogue and exchange between students of different year groups to share their experiences and learning. A clear example of this was that, after mapping the teaching approach, meaning and depth of our national holidays throughout the years of Primary School, it was the students themselves who shared with their peers, with older or smaller students and with their families, what they had learnt and understood during their research projects.

Much in the same way, we invited the families to visit our classrooms at the end of the school year to share with their children a true celebration of what had been attained and learned. Following an in-depth work of revision and metacognition under the guidance of their teachers and tutors, the students themselves made a selection of the learning experiences they considered and recognised as most significant. During their families' visit, the children depicted the process they had gone through during the projects they chose to share, described the challenges they had faced, and detailed what they could do differently in future learning experiences.

As a closing comment, we must highlight the great work of our staff, our teachers and support team, who once again worked tirelessly and responsibly, and together made it possible for the challenges, opportunities and celebrations of the year to be capitalised in great learning, achieved in a framework of high commitment, honouring the values and Mission of our School.