TIS follows the curriculum mandated by India’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). For more details on this national curriculum, please see: http://cbseacademic.nic.in/curriculum_2022.html
We make the curriculum ours through a teaching methodology centered on the ‘4Cs’ – the 21st century skills of Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking. The focus is on using cutting-edge and innovative practices to promote self-learning and independent thinking.
Our Nursery and Kindergarten classes are taught in the Montessori methodology, helping young students develop personal, social, behavioural, intellectual, communication and motor skills. However, the main focus for Pre-Primary students is on communication skills. All teaching strategies incorporate LSRW (listening, speaking, reading and writing), in that order. Groups of students are set up at various work stations in the classroom, which the teacher visits in rotation while the rest of the students work independently. Students use technology at home for reinforcement, learning poems and listening to stories.
The focus in the Primary classes (I-V) is on collaboration. The classroom is designed for students to sit in groups, which encourages active collaborative and inclusive education. Strategies like Think-Pair-Share, Round Robin, Jigsaw and Hotseat are part of the ‘Cooperative Learning’ pedagogy, where children pair and learn, and then teach each other. This promotes equal participation, collaboration skills and individual accountability in the students. Across the board, we use a ‘Blended’ pedagogy, which allows students to learn at their own pace, time and place.
In the Middle School (Classes VI-VIII), we practice Integrated Learning, which focuses on creativity and enables students to integrate their learning in all spheres of life. The co-scholastic curriculum is interwoven into the academic disciplines. For example, students learn to debate, write scripts and recite texts as part of language learning; understand Chemistry through applying it in the kitchen; use Math in daily life; and outline their rights and duties to understand Social Science. This is complemented by our emphasis on multiple intelligences, where our lesson planning caters to different strengths and learning styles.
The Senior School (Classes IX-XII) curriculum enhances critical thinking skills through observation and self-reflection. We often use the flipped classroom approach, where students watch lecture videos and read relevant material on their own, and use class time to practice applying concepts and working in small groups with the teachers. Assignments are designed based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, focusing on problem-solving through analysis, evaluating options and arriving at plausible solutions. It encourages decision making and aims at creating global citizens and leaders of tomorrow.
We use experiential learning across the board, where students are immersed in an experience and then reflect on it to develop new skills, attitudes, and ways of thinking. For example, we reinforce mathematical concepts out of context by asking students to use Warli Art to make a picture during art class. We then discuss the use of shapes to revisit what they’ve learned about congruent triangles. This is also an example of Art Integration, which is a methodology heavily encouraged by the CBSE.