Skills Builder Global

This content was written by

Shining Star International

Context

We are an Indian curriculum K-12 school located in Abu Dhabi. We serve the expatriate community in the neighbourhood, we have a student body of over 2,000 students with a diverse range of nationalities. We are committed to education for sustainable development, so 21st-century skills are important to us. We are a Common Sense Education school, and we are also recognized as a T4 Education top ten school in the innovation category for the best school prize. We are a vibrant and diverse school that is committed to providing our students with the best possible education. We believe that all students can succeed, and we are dedicated to helping them reach their full potential.

Overall impact

In our second year we have continued to build our teachers' understanding through more staff training on the Skills Builder Hub. This has helped deepen the integration of essential skills into lessons and the use of effective teaching resources. We have given our students many opportunities to practise their skills using student assembly presentations. This helps them to develop their public speaking and presentation skills, as well as their confidence.

Keep it simple

We have produced a recorded teacher training refresher this year, to ensure that new teachers and those that need more support can access help whenever they need it. We have also built on our previous training on the Hub and integrating essential skills into our lessons. We have increased the number of visual displays in our classroom to help students to recognise the eight essential skills. We reward effort and growth in our "Stars of the Week" celebrations to motivate students to continue developing their skills and to use them in their learning.

Start early, keep going

We continue to teach essential skills across various year groups but have focused on our Year 6 class this year.

Measure it

This year the focus skill has been Problem Solving and Creativity and Hub assessments have been completed by some teachers in these skills

Focus tightly

Students practise the skills they have learnt in their climate change project and in other subject areas. Using their essential skills to present their learning in other areas of the curriculum.

Keep practising

We are continuing to use after school activities clubs to develop students' skills, for example environment club, model UN, communication skills development, coding club and photography, visual and performing arts and sports . They develop a number of skills such as communication, problem solving and creativity. This year our students also completed activities at home to build on their climate change project.

Bring it to life

We have a variety of projects that help bring skills to life and link them to the wider world. For example, we participate in a Sustainable Development Goals project and a climate action project. In addition, students have participated in a 3-month calendar of gratitude service learning program in the school. Finally, students have participated in inter school (Science Forums, Inter School Math Competition ) competitions where their innovation skills are tested. They have presented prototypes for sustainability in these competitions.

What's next

We have the following goals, firstly enhance Critical Thinking Skills by incorporating Problem Solving and Creativity into our activities, using open ended questions and project based learning. Secondly, to improve Communication Skills with public speaking opportunities, writing workshops and collaborative learning to build Listening and Speaking skills. Finally, to strengthen Teamwork with group projects and team-building activities.

UAE