Narcy He
Director of IB Courses in Liaoyuan Bilingual School
Graduated from Waseda University in Japan in 2011
The initial decision to join Liaoyuan was attracted by its transition from national curriculum to integrated curriculum. I remember the first time I came to Liaoyuan in August 2017. PYP is still in its infancy. There are many confusions, but it is also full of possibilities. Helping teachers complete the transformation of ideas is the primary task of our PYP team. In this process, we met many teachers, from questioning the integrated curriculum to gradually understanding and accepting, and finally became the backbone of Liaoyuan PYP. They also imperceptibly convey their inquiry spirit, critical thinking and lifelong learner attitude to our students, thus changing the atmosphere of the whole learner community. Front-line teachers are the rock of the school, and we are proud to have such an aggressive team.
Before joining Liaoyuan, Narcy had seven years' teaching experience in the PYP, and was a designated trainer for the IB International Diploma Organization Primary Years Project. She is also a member of the PYP Early Years, PYP and MYP, Authorized Team of the Yushen Education Group of Liaoyuan Bilingual School.
Shadow Li
IB-PYP Coordinator of Liaoyuan Bilingual School
Graduated from Shanghai Foreign Studies University in 2008
In 2015, I officially joined Liaoyuan as an English teacher in the primary school. When I first entered school, the name of the school was Liaoyuan experiment, and it was from that time that the school began to introduce the IB project. At the beginning of PYP, the school broke through the tradition and created two bilingual classes. The main purpose of the course is to create more contextual platforms, take English school-based auxiliary textbooks as the highlights of the course, and the Double-teacher teaching mode provides students with more individualized language use ability.
As a teacher who follows the traditional teaching mode all the year round, at the beginning of contacting PYP, the first difficulty is how to carry out teaching with IB inquiry method. After many teaching seminars and program meetings, we decided that the first thing we could do was to bring out what teachers were most familiar with - integrated curriculum. PYP has a large-scale framework, the content can be integrated according to the requirements of the school, so we integrate the national curriculum into the six transdisciplinary themes of PYP and a series of inquiry cycle modes, integrate the POI teaching plans and national syllabus according to different grades, combine similar subjects together, advance to the first unit for inquiry, and the parts that are not easy to integrate are according to the national teaching progress.
Secondly, the characteristics of PYP curriculum are divided into six forms: formative inquiry as the main learning method; six transdisciplinary themes as the knowledge framework; teachers and students jointly design research-oriented curriculum units; students often go beyond the scope of conventional disciplines to explore subject knowledge; through the above process, students form important concepts, acquire skills and knowledge, cultivate correct attitudes, learn to deal with society and be responsible.
I believe that in the next 20 years, based on the national curriculum, Liaoyuan will cultivate more international citizens and lifelong learners by fully using IB concept and inquiry teaching methods, so that more students can continue to learn and progress after graduation. We will continue to work hard in Liaoyuan!
