Here at St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107, we holistically mould young minds to help children become successful individuals in the future with our holistic system of learning.

The holistic development of St. Andrews children includes the enhancement of their intellectual, extracurricular, social, physical, mental, and co-curricular skills. The school designed its learning programs to focus not only on a single aspect of children’s learning and development but on all of those at the same time.

Part of that holistic learning system also includes incorporating the International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum. These proven educational programmes also holistically mould your kids.

What is the International Baccalaureate (IB) Curriculum?

Students aged 16 to 19 can enrol in the IB Diploma curriculum, which is an international educational programme offering a demanding, stimulating, and well-rounded education to a holistically educated St. Andrews child.

They also have a primary years and middle years programme for younger children aged 3 to 16 that prepare them for the IB Diploma, which needs 120 credits overall.

“The IB curriculum is all about children learning how to learn. In the future, it’s not about what you know but how you learn them.” (Teacher Quote)

Students can choose from six subject groups to study a wide range of subjects and take examinations in:

• Science

• Mathematics

• Social Sciences

• Arts/Design/Technology

• Literature and Performance

• Language A1 (First Language)

• Language A2 (Second Language)

Each subject group should at least provide 24 credits to make the 120-credit requirement. It also covers two core components—Creativity Action Service (CAS) and Theory of Knowledge (TOK).

In other words, your child will acquire a broad, even holistic, range of academic experiences under the IB banner, which include information analysis and critical thinking skills.

They’ll even be taught to solve problems creatively as well through local organisation volunteering and service-learning projects for good measure.

The Educational Programmes of IB

The International Baccalaureate Organisation offers several challenging, top-tier educational programmes to a global community of schools with the aim of promoting a better, more harmonious society.

• Primary Years Programme (PYP): St. Andrews children from ages 3 to 12 years old can avail of the PYP or the Primary Years Programme. It helps develop these impressionable minds into engaged and kind children with a motivation to learn.

  The PYP instils passion and fascination about learning centred towards self-improvement and maturation. Your child can become a lifetime learner with PYP’s inquiry-based and transdisciplinary programme. It’s structured to bolster conceptual knowledge at an early age.

• Middle Years Programme (MYP): As for kids aged 11 to 16 years old, the MYP or Middle Years Programme is designed with their maturation and holistic needs in mind. The MYP helps children better understand the foundations of PYP.

  These young ones will be applying what they’ve learned when it comes to learning through gaining a deeper understanding of their subjects beyond rote memorisation and cramming, thus nurturing their social and personal development as well as future prospects.

• Diploma Programme (DP): The difference between DP and PYP/MYP is the same as the difference between high school and college. The DP is the most well-known and most challenging programme in the IB curriculum.

  Youngsters aged 16 to 19 years old can avail of this curriculum. It’s made with their specific academic needs in mind. It provides subjects such as:

• The Arts

• Sciences

• Mathematics

• Language Acquisition

• Language and Literature

• Individuals and Societies

They can complete the programme with requisite examinations, which includes a Theory of Knowledge (TOK) course and extended essays.

How to Choose the Best IB Course

It’s imperative that parents figure out their children’s strengths and goals to determine the ideal IB level for them relative to their age.

Some can handle going from PYP to MYP to DP or getting a complete DP menu. Others start at MYP or go straight to DP. There are even those who can only enrol for specific courses if the school allows for such an option.

Parents and their children should consider the following when selecting IB courses and navigating through the IB curriculum available at St. Andrews Sukhumvit.

• Consider Early Sign Up: The initial step to getting an IB diploma is registering for the IB diploma examinations. Signing up early can save you trouble down the line. It will also give you leeway when going over course materials or choosing test dates.

• Learn to Schedule: To better handle your IB coursework, make your own personal schedule for it. It will assist you in maximising your time, even if you’re merely scheduling the first few weeks of lessons at the start.

  Scheduling also helps out those who are new to the IB curriculum and wish to juggle it with their other co-curricular and extracurricular obligations as part of St. Andrews’ holistic learning package.

• Acquire a Worldly Perspective: The IB curriculum emphasises global mindedness, which encourages children and teenagers to develop a more nuanced, comprehensive, and considerate understanding of the world in light of today’s globalised society.

• Experience Personal Growth: Being under the IB curriculum encourages the child or teen to do things like persevere, embrace innovation, and take chances or calculated risks, whether they’re facing artistic or academic dilemmas.

  It specifically values creativity and imagination as well as thinking out of the box. This allows these young minds to learn life values like mental fortitude, perseverance, endurance, and patience.

• Develop Critical Thinking Skills: IB learners get to foster their research and problem-solving skills, which mainly develops their critical thinking abilities. They’re tools that don’t only ensure academic success but also lifetime learning and career troubleshooting.

• Find Collegiate and Job Opportunities: Many candidates for IB continue their study at major universities such as the Plymouth Institute of Education, Jain University, and the University of California to pursue training as teachers.

  They can also pursue a career as researchers and make their mark that way because of their previous research experience and stellar academic records, among other related careers.

• Achieve School-Life Balance: To prevent burnout, it’s ideal for children to achieve a balance between their studies, extracurricular activities, and personal leisure under the IB curriculum. Just as work-life balance is essential for adults, school-life balance should also be given priority for these young minds preparing for adulthood.

The IB curriculum has been developed for a broad audience, which means its success primarily hinges on the child’s ability for time management and meeting the deadlines set by the school. As long as deadlines are set and exams are passed, he’s good to go.

Summary

The success attained by a child under the IB curriculum isn’t random or by chance. It requires a nurturing atmosphere of an international school like St. Andrews Sukhumvit, tenacious children, and thorough preparation when push comes to shove.

At St. Andrews, we’re committed to empowering children to succeed in both their present and future endeavours by helping them understand their potential and the satisfaction that comes from improving from day to day.

St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107 is part of the worldwide Cognita School Group, a company that operates multiple schools from across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and so forth.

If you want to know more about St. Andrews Sukhumvit and see it in person, please answer our online form to book a school tour. You may also watch our school’s personalised interactive virtual campus tour for more information.

Here at St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107, we feel responsible for moulding young children into successful individuals in the future with our holistic system of learning.

Part of that holistic learning system—which also covers academics, extracurricular activities, co-curricular programmes, and even playtime—includes fostering a growth mindset.

What we mean by that is instilling into the youth a sense of self-reliance and incentive to improve rather than to just go on with life doing the bare minimum. We show them the benefits of growth so that they’d want to mature and improve on their own.

The growth mindset in St. Andrews’ holistic system promotes social and emotional development as well as self-motivated academic improvement.

What’s Involved in Fostering a Growth Mindset?

The holistic development of St. Andrews children truly involves developing every aspect of themselves, including their mental, physical, social, academic, extra-curricular, and co-curricular abilities.

We emphasise the importance of getting better at your skills daily to optimise their daily life and face the struggles of tomorrow today.

We foster a growth mindset in our youths in order to give them a sense of empowerment. They’re more receptive to growing from dependent children to fully developed independent adults once they realise the power of self-improvement.

“Fostering a self-motivated growth mindset in children will give them more of a fighting chance in their future success.” (Teacher Quote)

Beyond rote memorisation and step-by-step instruction, instilling a sense of self-reliance will pay dividends to their future success more than anything else.

The idea here is to have the empowered, motivated kids take more ownership of their learning. They’re not just doing it because their parents, teachers, or authority figures told them to. They have to realise early on the value of maturation and the freedom of independence.

Our young learners will be taught the importance of hard work and dedication through our holistic promotion of their self-worth and the value of believing in their burgeoning abilities.

Developing Abilities Through Hard Work and Dedication

Your children can do anything they put their heart and soul in. That’s what St. Andrews Sukhumvit wishes to instil in the children in our institution. We want to promote the belief that they can develop abilities through hard work and dedication.

There is no free lunch. If they wish to survive in this dog-eat-dog world, they have to grow up and have the mindset to want to grow up. They need to avoid arrested development.

Many Millennials and Gen Z have issues coping with adulthood and “adulting” because they had been spoiled by their helicopter parents. We wish to improve upon those mistakes in upbringing by holistically teaching today’s youth the value of growth.

Our teachers encourage the St. Andrews kids to embrace challenges and see them as growth opportunities instead of hindrances. Learning from failure is the key to success.

Those who develop a growth mindset are more likely to develop themselves holistically. They’re more built to have grace under fire and to persevere in the face of adversity because they know what doesn’t kill them makes them stronger.

View Setbacks as Temporary and Seek Feedback for Improvement

The young minds of St. Andrews are holistically trained to view setbacks as temporary and seek feedback to improve themselves. It’s holistic in the sense that these values can be applied socially, academically, and physically (as in sports or physical education).

Across the board, a growth mindset proves essential because children and adolescents are likely to face some sort of challenge or wall that impedes their progress.

They shouldn’t be easily discouraged and should learn to take calculated risks in order to improve on their Maths tests, their English exams, or their ability to win at sports and other extracurricular activities they’re interested in.

They should have a positive attitude towards problems so that they could tackle them in a problem solver or trouble shooter sort of way, with the end goal being their maturation.

Thus, our educators in St. Andrews provide constructive feedback that focuses on optimising effort and getting more self-improvement rather than just thinking about the end result. How you go about holistically improving is as important as the improvement itself.

The Growth Mindset is Self-Motivated Achievement and Fulfilment

We first encourage our kids to indulge in their interests, whether they’re subjects that are part of their academic curriculum or they’re extracurricular activities, in order to demonstrate better than words how fulfilling it is to have a growth mindset.

From there, we also teach them about the science behind how the brain can develop and improve with regular practice, which is otherwise known as neuroplasticity.

Teaching our learners how to adopt a growth mindset is extremely beneficial to them because it provides them motivation to succeed and fulfil their innate purpose. Instead of just being human beings, they’re humans who think, act, and enact change in themselves and their environment.

The cultivation of a growth mindset empowers the young minds of St. Andrews to believe in their own potential and develop a passion for learning that goes beyond grades.

The children should be taught that their intelligence is malleable and can grow over time. The more they study, practice, and socialise, the better they become at academics, sports, and partaking in society.

How to Teach Self-Improvement and Foster the Growth Mindset

We understand that the growth mindset gives kids motivation to academically, socially, emotionally, psychologically, and physically succeed in whatever endeavour before them.

It’s due to them seeing a link between their efforts in learning to the results. Instead of the malaise of generations before them that view effort and self-improvement as wastes of time, they know better and understand that success takes time and energy. Because of this understanding, they will gain the wisdom to apply patience and determination in working toward their goals.

We believe that the first step that St. Andrews Sukhumvit needs to do to teach their youngsters about the benefits of this mindset is by actions and success directly linked to their effort.

Here are just a few ways our teachers can foster the development of growth mindsets in our St. Andrews children:

• Tell them about applicable thinking skills.

• Teach them strategies to better learn the material.

• Link approval to learning a strategy or task on their own.

• Motivate these young minds with praise and constructive criticism.

• Instruct the young learners on how to access useful resources from libraries or the Internet.

We teach our kids how to overcome any challenge through sustained effort and learning from their mistakes (experimentation) to find out which method works best for them.

Summary

We at St. Andrews believe in helping youngsters achieve success in current and future endeavours by making them realise their capabilities through the development of a growth mindset and how fulfilling it is to become better than you were yesterday.

St. Andrews International School Sukhumvit S107 is part of the Cognita School Group umbrella. Cognita is a global company that operates various schools from across the Americas, Asia, Europe, and the like.

If you wish to learn more about St. Andrews Sukhumvit, please fill out our online form to book a school tour. You can also watch our school’s personalised interactive virtual campus tour for more info.