Welcome to the 2019-2020 academic year at JVLR Campus, Oberoi International School!

Our mission: We are dedicated to fulfilling every child’s educational and developmental needs in a safe and caring environment conducive to learning and teaching. We aim to create responsible, global citizens who show understanding, compassion and acceptance of the differences in the world. We strive to ensure that every child in our care is empowered to make choices and encouraged to contribute to our community.

Welcome and Introduction to our school

Welcome to another great school year at OIS JVLR. The school continues to buzz with happy children who are thinking, asking questions and learning through play. Now in our third year, our building hums with 570 early years and primary students, and over 150 secondary students in grades 6-9 as well. We now have 100 teachers and a thriving community of learners.

I am Kristen Blum, and I will be facilitating the curriculum as PYP coordinator at the JVLR Oberoi Campus. The Head of Primary, Lisa Hughes, and I have been joined by Nicola Holloway, deputy principal this year. All of us have been teaching and leading in international schools around the world for 49 years (combined) and are all parents of children growing up in IB programs. We are excited to help the school grow into a culture of compassion, thinking, and inquiry.

This year we will have our authorization visit from the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme (PYP) school in November. We have spent the last two years gearing up for this visit and are excited to be a fully authorized IB Primary Years Programme school. What this means is that we will be officially recognized for our IB program in the primary. Our middle school is in the process of gaining their authorization as well, as is our 11th and 12th grade Diploma Programme.

We have some goals this year for our community, and we will share more with you, but in summary:

• We will explore and implement our language policy.
• We will explore assessment, with students and the community, focusing on assessment that moves learning forward.
• Play and learning through play will be a focus of our early years, from nursery-SKG.
• Critical thinking will be focused on throughout our school and made visible to all.
• We will focus on action of all kinds across the school.
• We will continue to focus on personal, social, and physical education across the curriculum.
• The library will become a more integral part of our learners lives.

To find out more, please join us during the journey. We offer many opportunities for parent workshops and chances to see learning in progress. Please join us. A few key dates are outlined below:

September 13: Our PYP curriculum morning for new parents with an introduction to our program.

September 20: Three-way conferences in primary. More information to follow.

October 15 and 22: Inquiry cafes for early years and primary years to learn more about how we teach and to see our learners in action.

Unit 1: What's happening now

Students in our program explore themes that are universal and globally significant. These themes resonate throughout all of primary but vary in ideas, depending on the age of the child. For early years, students will explore 4 themes, and in primary, they will explore 6 of them.

The themes with some description of each one are the following:

In addition to exploring content relevant to each theme, including Math, Language, Social Studies, and Science, our students learn skills and dispositions important to become a lifelong learner and global citizen. We offer a holistic program where students learn to think, research, communicate, collaborate with others, create and manage themselves.

We will explore more information about our programme in our introductory session, September 13th, and in October, you will get a chance to take a peek into our learning. For more information on the IB Primary Years Programme, please see this short slideshow.

For more information on our academic program, please see our JVLR Academic handbook.

Below are our grade level units we will explore this year in the homerooms. Students will also be exploring these themes in Visual Arts, Music, Drama, Personal Social Physical Education, and Language additional subjects. We will follow with more information on the single subjects soon.

We look forward to having you as collaborators on this journey together. Engage in conversations with your child about what they are learning. Discuss. Ask questions. Model curiosity. Enjoy your children. We look forward to a great year together.

“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day." --Albert Einstein.