WELCOME TO HONG KONG ACADEMY'S PRIMARY SCHOOL

As you walk in the main red door (after a multitude of stairs), a feeling of openness and energy is immediately apparent. You see black and white checked floors and primary colors, children's work and art, children with quick smiles, and many open doors with smiling teachers. Most classrooms look over a cozy courtyard facing the hill on which the school is built and all have views of greenery or the Hong Kong skyline. Students in Year 2 to Year 5 attend school from 8:30 am-3:30 pm every day except for Wednesdays, when the day runs from 8:30 to 12:30. There are two classes at each grade level and each class has a qualified teacher and co-teacher with a maximum of 18 students. The high teacher to student ratio enables HKA teachers to meet individual student needs. In addition to the home classroom, students attend classes in Art, Music, Physical Education, and Mandarin-all staffed by specialists.

In HKA primary classrooms, the teacher's structuring of new experiences, and support of children's ideas of new experiences, are fundamental to the process of incremental growth of knowledge and formation of concepts. The International Baccalaureate Organization's Primary Years Programme supports those efforts. The Primary Years Programme consists of five essential elements: concepts, knowledge, skills, attitude, and action. The knowledge component is developed through inquiries into six transdisciplinary themes of global significance, supported and balanced by six subject areas. The PYP at HKA allows students to participate in six large, transdisciplinary units each year, called Units of Inquiry.

Each of these units:
-is a significant, relevant, engaging, and challenging learning experience
-builds on the prior knowledge of the students
-involves students in a range of learning activities
-encourages students to engage in positive action
-integrates diverse subject areas whenever meaningful and appropriate

At each grade level, units of inquiry fall under one of the PYP's organizing themes, broad ideas that are loosely aligned with subject disciplines. By studying these themes each year, students, over the course of their time at HKA, take a rich and in-depth look at the various aspects of that discipline/subject. The organizing themes include:
-Who we are
-Where we are in place and time
-How we express ourselves
-How the world works
-How we organize ourselves
-Sharing the Planet

Through these Units of Inquiry, the classroom becomes a center of structured inquiry through which students acquire and practice skills and build new knowledge. These units are outlined in our school-wide Programme of Inquiry (POI) and are carefully designed to build from one year to the next as a student progresses through the school. The Language Arts program in each class consists of developmentally appropriate practices. For reading teachers use a combination of small group reading (using leveled readers), guided reading and/or literature circles to meet students instructional needs. Our writing program uses materials from The Write Source as a reference and incorporates the use of the Six +1 Writing Traits. HKA mathematics teachers are trained to use Everyday Mathematics. At each grade level, homework is assigned for an appropriate period of time. Homework at HKA reinforces what was taught in class and provides students with a variety of different experiences. For Mandarin, they might use the school intranet to listen to pronunciations for words taught that day or practice writing characters; for math they may have a long term project, a game, or a brief question and answer sheet; for language arts they may finish a reading assignment and create responses for a book club meeting or work on revising and editing a writing piece. All assigned homework will enrich students' understanding of what they are learning in class.

Acknowledgments: Some sections were excerpted from the IBO documents or website.