Mastery Strands and Centres of Excellence

HUMAN FRAMEWORK INSTITUTE

The Human Framework^TM Institute is aimed at nurturing joyful, healthy, resilient, and socially responsible individuals. We believe in instilling in children the ability to question and craft their identities, embrace complexity, navigate conflict constructively, honour emotional wellness in themselves and others, and interact with those who are different from themselves. This is in essence our view of social emotional learning.

The framework focuses on cultivating four aspects of the self:

1. My Swabhav (My Essence): An inquiry of my triggers, my reactions, my emotions, and my yearnings. Through this exploration, I gain the freedom to express myself thoughtfully and constructively. I build a healthy relationship with myself and am resilient when faced with challenges.
2. My Relationships: Creating healthy and fulfilling connections, and the capacity to use diverse opinions as strength for problem-solving. Through this exploration, I am comfortable expressing myself and engaging in difficult conversations. I have empathy for others and can build meaningful relationships.
3. My Swadharm (My Purpose): A discovery of my values, my strengths, and what gives my life meaning. Through this exploration, I am motivated, comfortable with exploration, and confident to work towards what is meaningful to me.
4. My Context (My Water): An exploration of how my context shapes who I am and the way I act. Through this I develop the freedom to express myself in a way that is aligned with my purpose and my values. I contribute positively to create a better world.

Centre for Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship

The goal of the Centre for Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship is to integrate maker-centred learning and design thinking as a pedagogical best practice at HIXS. The vision is to enable students to be product and solution builders using the design thinking framework. Its foundation goal is to make students creators rather than consumers. The pedagogy is based on three core guiding questions, around which student learning is structured:

• Maker Empowerment: What kind of educational interventions can empower students to have the creative confidence to envision the world differently and believe that they are capable of championing change?
• Maker Skills: How can educational environments be enhanced to empower the skills of innovation through the development of student-specific knowledge and skills (e.g. STEAM) and more maker-based knowledge and skills (e.g. learning to code or how to use a soldering iron to fix a circuit)
• Maker Design: How can students be empowered to create/manufacture using human-centred design approaches?

The COE works with educators to integrate design thinking into their curriculum design. It also facilitates workshops, modules and bootcamps on designing thinking and maker engineering.

Centre For Reading And Writing

Almost all schools view reading and writing as a generic skill limited to English as one of the subjects. HIXS views reading and writing as a group of cascading skills and is not limited to English. The capacity to read complex academic and literary pieces and write complex pieces for varying audiences is a critical 21st century skill that cannot be left to a 45 minute English period.

This COE specializes in deploying evidence-based instructional strategies, granular assessments and best practices so that our students benefit from a differentiated and personalized literacy experience that caters to each student’s unique learning profile. These strategies, wrapped over the IB and Cambridge curriculums, are cascaded sequentially to form a seamless skill building curriculum from Nursery to grade 12.

In the early years, students receive instruction in reading, writing, speaking and listening based on the internationally acclaimed programme developed by Lucy Caulkins’ Reading and Writing Project.  The framework develops students’ self-directed learning skills to be reflective and proficient readers and writers, and also to instill a love of reading and a passion for writing and uses tools such as word study (phonics), guided reading, independent reading, read alouds, shared reading, and writers’ workshop to achieve learning outcomes.