Curriculum
School SEK – Los Valles
Good foundations for excellence in learning processes are in the first education at SEK Los Valles. The Initial 2 (playgroup three years and pre-kinder four years) and Preparatory (first of grade five years) belong to this section. In Preschool section, students feel an environment of games, imagination, and children’s dreams.
The significance of Early Childhood Education is because this is the period in which the most considerable stimuli of the environment and the cognitive bases are built.
We consider two fundamental and necessary levels as part of child development: an initial level (three and four years) of recognition and awareness of the social and physical environment; and the second level of consolidation (five years) with the acquisition of the necessary tools to enter Primary Education.
In addition, children start learning a second language, English. We agree with the principle of globalization, with the different areas that make up its curriculum so that this education allows progress following the needs and demands of today’s society. The weekly cooking class activity is an excellent opportunity to put this language into practice.
We seek to stimulate and promote the integral development of the students during this period. The team of professional educators with human quality monitor each student’s development. They also have constant and regular communication with parents. In some cases, the psychology department supports processes in the mother tongue or specific situations such as attention and concentration in the early years.
Our active, cheerful, playful, and innovative methodology stimulates creativity and ability to observe on students providing positive results. One of its fundamental to this methodology is the inclusion of new technologies, highlighting a cutting-edge tool.
Additionally, we offer an international education through the PYP Primary School Program and the International Baccalaureate profile, which focuses on the integral development of the students and their capacity for inquiring and discovering through collaborative group work and experiences that take place both inside and outside the classroom. All the spaces in this section have Internet access.
The motor skills are developed in the training processes. Swimming and sports classes are part of the curriculum, and activities in several themed rooms to work on gross and fine motor skills. In the pool, children are supervised by professionals who support them with this crucial process of becoming increasingly autonomous and independent and having their motor skills at the best levels.
And thanks to the privileged location in the middle of nature and the extensive facilities, students have different resources where they can investigate and discover the natural environment that surrounds them, thus promoting environmental education and enjoying working outdoors.
Our interest in the students’ welfare, development, and learning make this center a quality educational benchmark in the community.
After an accurate process of stimulation and development of cognitive and social skills and abilities achieved in Preschool, students entering Primary have a wide variety of opportunities for their benefit to continue with their development process.
Providing students with vital experiences, significant learning, strengthening oral and written expression, and educating with joy and freedom are the main objectives pursued by Primary Education.
The use of several educational and technological resources makes it easier for children to internalize knowledge and give them time and opportunity to participate and be protagonists in their learning. To this end, digital whiteboards, educational robotics, a MAC room, augmented and virtual reality, and iPads are resources that invigorate the educational process and bring it closer to a new reality.
The unity criteria and coherence in the management of the curriculum are evident in the use of resources. For instance, the school provides iPads up to fifth grade. These devices have modern applications that allow practice and make learning more effective. From Sixth Grade, one of the personal learning resources that help students manage more digital resources and licenses in virtual learning environments is the iPad.
The technological resource is a strength of the SEK International Institution. There are several laboratories to develop digital experiences, currently with a modern MAC room in which students put much of their knowledge into practice.
In the Primary section, the extensive study of the English language continues, and most of the subjects are in this language. In Natural Science, students learn about the scientific method and do weekly practices in a fully equipped laboratory.
Ambitious in teaching other languages besides English, French is present, starting at nine years. Engaging students with more languages open up new horizons and makes them feel like world citizens prepared for long-awaited experiences in any geographical location.
Definitely, we offer an international education through the PYP Primary School Program and the International Baccalaureate profile. This program focuses on the student’s integral development and provokes a large extent of the capacity for inquiry and discovery, inside and outside the classroom.
Swimming and sports are present in the school curriculum to contribute to a healthy growth.
Similarly, the psychology department is present in all processes to ensure that social skills and affective psychosocial development progress as expected. It allows students to be part of a happy environment. Values are periodically worked on to reinforce solidarity, tolerance, and respect as fundamental pillars of social interaction.
The creativity of the professionals who work with these ages has no limits. Year after year, a number of participation experiences are developed, such as festivals, excursions, internal competitions, sports competitions, and many others.
In high-school education, our students are the focus of all pedagogical intended strategies to form people with open minds and a critical spirit, capable of contributing actively and positively to their biopsychosocial progress and that of their environment. To achieve this, we apply a holistic education that emphasises cognitive, technological, and socio-emotional development, aspects which are detailed below:
- The written curriculum is dynamic and oriented towards disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity through a constructivist model and the development of communicative competencies with strength in the mastery of English as a foreign language, which allows students to be the protagonists of their learning in various academic, artistic, cultural, sporting, human and scientific areas.
- The use of cutting-edge technological tools fosters curiosity, creativity, problem solving and an innovative spirit that empowers students to face the challenges of the 21st century in order to successfully integrate into a globalised world.
- The continuous practice of values is the transversal axis of the entire educational process that leads to the formation of autonomous, self-confident, empathetic, tolerant, respectful, inclusive human beings with an adequate management of their emotions.
The main objective of education in children and young people through the IB programs is to prepare students with a learning attitude that allows them to make the most of each phase of their life. The IB programs provide them of the necessary abilities to grow, develop, be successful and happy.
The Primary Years Program (MYP) is intended for children from 3 to 12 years. It sets the starting point of the knowledge that will last a lifetime. It is a teaching-learning program and inquiry-based. Having the student as the author of their own knowledge, this program turns out to be interesting, meaningful, stimulating and relevant.
Our students between the ages of 12 and 16 participate of the Middle Years Program (MYP) that allows them to build a solid academic foundation, develops self-confidence to manage their own learning and leads them to stablish the link between classroom acquired knowledge and the real world.
The Diploma Program destined to young people aged 16-18 years, prepares our students for the future through the development of an inquiry mindset, encourages the desire to learn, prepares them to excel in their professional career and guides them to have a meaningful life.