Curriculum Coordinator's Welcome
Dr. Peter DuckettDear Bayan School Community Members,
Welcome to the 2023-2024 academic year. I am excited to begin the year and we all look forward to seeing you on campus again. I’d like to take this opportunity to outline some of the major curricular initiatives that the school will be working on this year.
UDL, AEA, MSA, BQA
This year the school is poised to engage in strategic actions guided by a variety of mechanisms including Middle States Accreditation (MSA), the Bahrain Quality Assurance, and existing Bahrain Bayan School policies and procedures. Within the MSA protocols the school has identified three student performance objectives; Arabic Literacy, English Literacy, and Mathematics. Within these objectives there is an intention to embed Additional Educational Assistance (AEA). In support of these objectives we will continue to explore applications of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in unit and lesson planning so
that they more strongly encompass students’ interests, strengths, and needs. This initiative brings inclusive changes that will seek students’ opinions, offer them choices, and make learning feel even more relevant. It will also increase access to assistive technologies such as text-to-speech, speech-to- text, audiobooks, or other adjusted formatting. Additionally, it should offer students options for showing what they know through a variety of formats, such as poster presentations, video recordings, graphic organizers, product designs, or other real world applications.
CURRICULUM ALIGNMENT
This year the school will make efforts to more closely bring together the Math and Science programs particularly in Grades 6-12, by aligning standards so that students’ math experience will link to and support their science experience. The school has contracted with an IB expert to provide an intensive week-long workshop with Science and Math teachers in Grades 6-12.
PROFESSIONAL LEARNING
The school will continue its longstanding tradition of supporting the professional growth of teachers in enhancing their instructional practice. Last year the school engaged Erin Kent Consulting in providing on campus and online professional learning in support of the Arabic and English programs. Last year the focus was on enhancing instructional practice for writing and this year the consultants from this organization will focus on reading. Across the past several years, the school has invested in supporting teachers of Math to receive training from Erma Anderson in the form of a series of four institutes leading to a certificate from the USA Office of Overseas Schools named Math Specialist in International Schools. This year the school has committed to using two of our own math teachers to serve as math coaches who support other math teachers throughout the school in honing their instructional practices with an aim to have students develop deep conceptual understanding of mathematics.
The school continues to maintain and actively access additional resources for professional learning through memberships with internationally respected organizations such as Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools, The Principals’ Training Center and regularly accesses relevant workshops through organizations such as Chapters International. Teachers who deliver IB courses in Grades 11 and 12 regularly attend IB trainings made available through the International Baccalaureate Organization.
Dr. Peter Duckett
Coordinator of Curriculum and Professional Learning