By Angel Jin, ISB Communications Team
Published on Thursday, April 20, 2023
The Early Years 3 (EY3) class’s recent community explorations are a perfect example of how the International School of Beijing (ISB) prioritizes students’ social and emotional well-being. For about a month now, EY3 students have been brainstorming places they see around their community, creating these in the classroom, and roleplaying at these stations. This included a police station, fire station, airport, bakery, doctor’s office, and atelier or art studio. These stations were decided by the students’ interests and curiosities.
This exploration has helped the children learn about what common places make up a community and the roles and responsibilities of members of a community, which in turn has helped to build the children’s sense of ISB’s community. For instance, through this exercise, the children recognized the role of police officers is to keep the community safe, while in ISB’s community, who keeps us safe is our Safety and Security Director Dario Yue, and the rest of our security team. Through this exploration, students were able to sample real-world experiences and see how we can have a positive social impact through providing service to others.
Another aspect of this exploration was Long Long and how he fits into our school community. The children were asked to come up with words that should go with a poster of Long Long. The children then worked with MS/HS teacher, Andrew Walton to paint Long Long on a canvas. Painting on such a large surface developed the children’s fine and gross motor muscles as the students used a variety of movements to paint the canvas – up, down, in circles, side-to-side, and more. These large movements improve shoulder stability, an essential part of manipulating writing tools with coordination and confidence. This activity prompted the children to think about ISB as a community and embodied ISB’s core: challenging and joyful learning.
Through social and emotional learning like this community exploration, these EY3 students have developed a greater understanding of themselves and their community, have learned to demonstrate empathy towards other members of their community, and have gotten a glimpse into how they fit into ISB’s global community. And what a fun way to do it! Who knows? We may have even inspired some future careers as police officers, firefighters or veterinarians!
