Preparing young people for life beyond school.
Teaching & Learning Approaches
Different kinds of approaches are used by teachers to ensure effective and meaningful learning-focus activities. The classroom learning setting integrate Biblical truth, build characters and tap on individual abilities, skills and learning styles.
Various instructional design are used interchangeably to ensure students understand the concepts and are able to transfer the learning in new situations. Some approaches used are collaborative project-based and problem solving learning, e-learning with flipped approach initiated with digital citizenship, reflective learning with higher order questions that focused in deep learning, or scientific method that trigger students to analyze, evaluate and create innovative solutions.
Curriculum
In Education, a curriculum could be narrowly or broadly defined. The term often refers specifically to a planned sequence of instruction, or to a view of the student's experiences in terms of the educator's or school's instructional goals only. We, at MSCS view curriculum as the totality of student experiences that occur in the educational process. It has a holistic meaning encompassing not only subjects, but also the connections between subjects, teaching methods and all aspects of schooling that define the learner’s experience. It includes both the planned and unplanned or unintended outcomes of the curriculum. The curriculum design is also uniquely derived from school’s educational vision. It highlights the fact that qualifications form only part of the curriculum. This makes each school is unique.
The wider learning experience:
Planning the school curriculum in terms of subjects and qualifications is only part of the process. The experienced curriculum provides a learning experience that is more than the sum of the qualifications, subjects and activities that are visible on the school schedule. This is because careful attention in curriculum design and implementation is given to learning within, across and between the subjects and activities. All teachers and school staff support the development of the learner attributes and other qualities identified in MSCS vision. Breadth, balance and coherence are built in by design. The school’s vision and aims include personal and social outcomes as well as academic ones. Learning does not begin or end in classrooms, but permeates the school environment and broader community. What our students actually experience may not be the same as the written objectives of the curriculum – it will be the consequence of a complex web of interdependent parts including: our school's vision and values, teaching quality, student's motivation and prior knowledge, school leadership, environment and culture; MSCS's mapped curriculum and subject curricula; assessment practices and expectations; as well as our internal structures and operations. Therefore, the experienced curriculum is necessarily unique to our school only.
The implementation
At MSCS as a school standard, the school has mapped out the Cambridge well-developed competences against the National's newest standards for content & skill mastery and aligned them with school's vision. The set learning instructions and designed experiences as a whole must address the school's vision. This combined with events, friends and teachers loving relationship makes learning at MSCS different, one of a kind. The formula is translated into a design of learning process inside and outside classrooms that teaches and facilitates students to fear God; to healthily grow into all aspects physically, mentally, cognitively, & spiritually; to find their purpose in life as God intended to be; and to finally offer solutions to immediate or distant challenges in the world.
This means, for example, when a student learns sessions about Bible, Character or having Teen-talk buddy time, they are in the process of spiritual and mental building; transforming their perspectives into a Biblical worldview. When they learn foundation or applied Mathematics or Sciences, they are building their logical and Biblical reasoning and critical thinking skills. They are also building constructive, edifying-way communication skills as leaders when they learn to converse in proper Bahasa, English or Chinese.
At Global Perspectives and PDP research students learn to develop skills rather than testing the recall of specific knowledge only. It is designed to assist our students with some tools and approaches to engage with the complexity of the modern world, to understand the views of others and to help them put forward their own Biblical Perspectives and offer solutions. They learn to think globally and to act locally.
MSCS instills Biblical values, learner attributes through its academic and extra-curricular activities, thus helping students in the whole school community coming from various backgrounds become well-rounded national and international citizens, as well as excellently prepared them for the many opportunities that the future holds.