Foundation Programme is a one-year curriculum which CWA specially designs for its Year 10 students. During this year, students can not only build basic knowledge modules necessary for IBDP in Year 11 and 12 through a series of fruitful and challenging subject learning, but also be capable of knowing themselves, enhancing language skills, improving thinking skills, expanding their visions, and preliminarily master knowledge and skills to face complex challenges in the 21st century.
Therefore, FP curriculums build students’ comprehensive skill set via four aspects:
· Improving language ability
FP curriculum will provide students with full language learning in English and Chinese, help students further improve their ability in language understanding and application, confidently express and exhibit their opinions, enhance national and cultural confidence, perform well in future study and life, both inside and outside the country.
· Connecting subject knowledge
FP curriculum will become a significant bridge between national curriculum and DP curriculum, help students build knowledge and mindset system required for an international curriculum based on sorting out and strengthening previous knowledge reserve, adapt assessment used by international curriculums, lay the solid foundation for further learning.
· Optimizing learning methods
Self-management, including time and emotion management, will be one of key points of FP curriculum. Through one-year learning, students will acquire the ability of independent learning as well as developing essential transferable skills, such as design thinking, research, and coordination…etc., so as to become life-long learners.
· Broadening perceptions and horizons
FP curriculum will focus on cultivating students’humanitarian perspectives and international views. With the guidance of CWA missions, dreams, and values, students will apply their knowledge, skills, understanding, and executive capability to strive for creating a better future.
In CWA, the class size of FP curriculum is 25 students maximum. Experienced subject teachers will take on responsibility of homeroom teachers, managing students as well as communicating and cooperating with parents as the first contact in school. Math and science courses are primarily taught by Chinese bilingual teachers, effectively help students transform from the national curriculum system to DP curriculum. English and Humanities courses are mainly taught by foreign teachers, aiming to help students understand and master western language, culture, and mindset.
Foundation Programme：
| Subject(s) | Curriculum Content and Aim(s) | Remarks | |
| language | English | Take Streamed teaching method according to students’English levels when they enter school. Each student must take integrated English curriculum and English literature curriculum to bridge the curriculum requirement of DP English B | English Literature & English B (language Acquisition) |
| Chinese | Help students bridge DP Chinese A curriculum requirements and adapt to the difficulty level and assessment criteria of DP Chinese A | Chinese A | |
| Mathematics | Mathematics | Help students bridge DP Mathematics curriculum requirements and adapt to the difficulty level and assessment criteria of DP Mathematics criteria of DP Mathematics | FP Math curriculum |
| Science | Physics, Chemistry, Biology | Based on students’electives, help students bridge DP science curriculum requirements and adapt to the difficulty level and assessment criteria of DP science | students will need to choose 3 subjects out of 7 subjects in Science/Humanities/Arts as their electives. They must choose at least one from the science group, one from the humanities group, they can choose art as their third elective. If they do not choose art, they need to choose one more subject from the science or the humanities group to be his/her third elective subject. |
| Humanities and Social Science | Economics、Geography、Psychology | Based on students’electives, help students bridge DP Humanities curriculum requirements and adapt to the difficulty level and assessment criteria of DP humanities | |
| Arts | Visual Arts | Help students further understand western arts and culture and learn how to confidently express and communicate through English drama curriculum | |
| Sports | Sports English Drama | let students have a basic understanding of four different kinds of sports and cultivate their life-long interests and enthusiasm through multiple sports programs rolling selection mechanisms | FP PE curriculum |
| Core | Teenager Self-development Courses Teenager Self-development Courses Personal Programs | Help students build self-cognition and social-cognition through a series of courses on mental and emotional cognition, life skills, management and leadership arts in order to better adapt to future academic learning and social challenges | |
| STEM Courses | Help students realize transformation from traditional passive learning to active inquiry learning. With various theme modules such as “world history and culture” and “recycling economics,”let students master how to raise and answer questions, compare the ways that different subjects construct the world and reflect themselves via experiential and interdisciplinary learning in order to lay a solid foundation in ATL skills and cognitive theories in DP period | ||
