Our Approach to Learning and Teaching
At PAS our Vision for Learning is that every child is empowered in a personalized, life-long journey of holistic growth which inspires a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence, and helps students unleash their passions.
In order to achieve this, At Pan-American School we develop students:
- Self-management skills to become independent learners able to develop their own lines of inquiry and their learning journey.
- Research skills, to be able to seek out, evaluate, understand, and apply new knowledge and learning in new settings.
- Thinking skills, to become critical thinkers.
- Communication skills, to communicate in different languages and approaches, depending on the context.
- Social skills, including face to face and using online learning platforms.
Our approach to teaching is based around these six approaches which guide learning engagements and facilitate student learning:
- Inquiry-based approaches in which students develop their own questions based on their passions, interests, and needs, and use these questions to drive their own learning journeys.
- Developing a focus on conceptual understanding that allows learning to go across disciplines and beyond traditional, discipline-based approaches.
- Engaging students in local and global contexts to develop student understanding of the world around them and their place in it.
- Focusing on effective teamwork and collaboration.
- Differentiating to meet the needs of all learners, recognizing and supporting each student’s unique learning journey.
- Using assessment as an ongoing process to constantly provide feedback to students and teachers to help them adjust and tailor their learning journey.
Inquiry based learning at PAS spans the inquiry continuum from confirmation to open inquiry with the majority of the learning centered around guided inquiry. Whether the teacher or the student generates the questions, the inquiry is guided by the teachers to ensure student growth and conceptual understandings.