Curriculum

At Myland, literacy is seen from a constructivist approach. The constructivist method, in its widest sense, is based on setting our kids as the center of their own learning. Our natural approach considers that children are familiar with written language since they are very young: signs in the streets, product labels, restaurant signs... and that this written language is the representation of oral language. For learning how to read and write, it is essential for children to link language to its basic function: communication. As a result, those activities promoting communication (meeting time in the mornings, tales, discussions, rhymes, songs...) are crucial for an optimal development of literacy in its first stages. Without forcing them, offering all kinds of different texts and readings, as well as an enriched context, children end up enjoying reading and writing in all their dimensions.

“Reading should be one of the ways of happiness and nobody can be obliged to be happy.”
Jorge Luis Borges

Our approach to the mathematical world always has an experience, manipulative, and self-corrective approach. For us, maths are everywhere and we help children to figure them out and integrate them, from concrete to abstract. A cross sectional study of mathematical concepts, in all areas, and leaning in additional lines, such as Robotics and Architecture, gives learning in this area a broader and more general dimension. The wide range of manipulative materials, the different proposed activities, understanding mistakes as part of the process and see real life applications make our students enjoy learning maths.

“There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres”
Pythagoras

In the social world area, we work with content regarding History, Geography, Astronomy, Territorial Organization, Geology, etc. Just as in the rest of areas, the approach to this topic is active and based on real life experience. We give special relevance to context and connect every learning event to an event in our closest world. Montessori material is combined with the use of new technologies to offer significant tools in this learning area.

“Nobody is as ignorant as the one who ignores geography, as that person ignores the context of everything else”
Víctor Soriano i Piqueras

Art is able to improve people’s lives. For years, art has been a powerful tool to promote the emotional and intellectual development of those who find in artistic expression a language. For us, it is a tool to express and understand the world. We explore cultural movements, authors, and disciplines and use artistic expression as a great way to connect to the rest of individuals around us and to develop personal skills and abilities.

“The best scientists are also creative thinkers”
Albert Einstein

In this knowledge area, we work with aspects regarding the human being and health issues, living beings (animal and vegetal kingdoms), physics, chemistry, and matter, among others. As with any other learning, we view this topic as a life experience. Firstly, we come close to our surroundings to explore them, to know them and study them. From that point, we increase the content. We work with projects to generate a significant learning and involve the whole educational community if it is necessary to tackle interesting topics for our students.

“Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
Albert Einstein

Children grow through movement, a school which prevents the natural movement of kids will be preventing, in part, their development. Our whole school is prepared to promote the free movement of our students, from the outer areas with playground, climbing ropes, trees, rope ladders, and wheels to the distribution of the classrooms and the use of carpets as a learning area. Besides not preventing free movement, we promote basic psychomotor aspects in infant development by means of specific sessions.

“Movements are not just made simply by moving, each movement has its purpose, always has some intention”
Maria Montessori

Emotional skills in children are necessary to know their own emotions and to recognize them in others, so that they are able to regulate and express those emotions assertively. Work in emotional education contributes to a good social and academic adaptation and contributes to a good social and academic adaptation, allowing our students to develop necessary skills for the future and a healthy self-esteem.

“What good is it if a child knows where to place Neptune in the universe, if they don't know where to place their sadness or rage”
José María Toro

The contact with music has multiple benefits for the motor and intellectual development of children. In Myland we know that music education reinforces attention, increases concentration, creativity and the development of motor and rhythmic skills. Therefore, we give importance to the contact of children with this discipline making it attractive and motivating. Each of the activities we propose in the area of ​​music involves students from their different interests and motivations, addressing both classical and regulated works of different styles and cultures.

"Music is for the soul what gymnastics for the body"
Plato

Because we understand that every single child has his or her own potential, rhythm, and interests and that their school needs to respect them, turning them into the base of their own learning, adapting individually their curriculums in the general learning areas.

Our curriculum is structured and organized based on specific knowledge areas and academic content. It is very clear what the children need to know at every stage and which aims need to be achieved. However, this curricular structure does not press or hinder learning and class programs can be lengthened or shortened depending on the interest or needs of the children. No content is passed without its bases being adequately set.

Unlike the national education model, our school is divided into 3 large cycles, in a similar way to what is done in Montessori schools. These cycles correspond to the children development patterns and their inherent characteristics. The mix of ages promotes the respect to individual rhythms and the cooperation in the classroom. We work with groups of 15 students of different ages but within the same educational cycle. This organizational structure offers unique development possibilities and we consider it to be the best way to learn according to their individual needs. By grouping children with different ages, we promote a cooperative learning and promote positive interdependency (kids understand that they need other to achieve their goals).

We open our school for any family who needs to take part in it, regardless of any religious, cultural, social, economic, or academic concern. We receive international students, students with a medical and/or academic diagnosis, students from different religions and different social-cultural environments and all of them work based on the same academic curriculum, which respects difference and promotes singularity.

Because each and every single individual is different and unique, our educational system is aimed at customizing this learning process at all times, respecting the evolution, skills, thoughts, and actions of each person, their motivations and interests according to each individual originality. For this customization process, we lean on the Multiple Intelligence Theory. This is a model proposed by Howard Gardner where intelligence is not seen as a single ability, which includes different specific abilities with a different generality level, but as a set of multiple intelligence modalities which are different and semi-independent. Howard Gardner adds that, as there are many problems to be solved, there are many types of intelligence. Up to now, Howard Gardner and his team at Harvard University have identified eight different types: verbal-linguistic intelligence, musical-rhythmic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, visual-spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and naturalistic intelligence. A good involvement of the families of our students in the development of the school and a monitoring of meetings and home-school information exchange allow us to find out about our students in a deeper way and about their surroundings to work according to their own realities.

We understand knowledge acquisition in a different way, as we think it is sustained on practice. All content presented and worked at our school are to be understood from a practical approach through manipulation, movement, recreational and experience based activities. In this way, we connect our brain to “learn how to think”, that is, all in all, to “learn how to learn”. At Myland, we work with specific curricular objectives, but we allow our students to develop their highest potential through their own interests and motivations. Experimental Trial and Error is a concept introduced by Freinet which describes how learning develops from the experience of a person looking for a solution and finding an error-solution.

All areas are connected, working concepts from different perspectives and reaching different objectives with the same activity. Cooperation, work in groups, or respect are present at all the activities which we develop.

For Piaget, affectivity and intelligence are indissociable from one another and are two complementary aspects of human conduct. If we do not take care of emotional intelligence and we respect, acknowledge, and value emotions in childhood, hardly any significant learning can take place. We would be building a tower, no matter how tall, but with weak foundations. The period between 0 and 7 years old is essential to build a healthy self-concept, self-esteem, and identity. Due to this, Myland particularly focuses on emotion management. Research in neuroscience has proved that emotions are essential in reasoning and decision making processes and are the base for curiosity and attention, which are very important in learning processes, being even directly related to health (Damasio, 2006).

Our students work with a bilingual program, with native bilingual teachers and a basically communicative method. Our center combines Spanish speaking teachers and English speaking ones, generating in this way a real interaction and communication. For the progressive language acquisition, we use the global teaching “Whole Language Approach” methodology. We consider that the competences in one language are learnt as a whole, comprehensively. Speaking, vocabulary, understanding, and phonetics are acquired within a context connecting all significant aspects of the English language to help our students learn it.

New technologies are, to a great extent, the current work tools and they configure the access to information nowadays. As a result, the children of this new millennium need to be able to manage them. However, the use of new technologies should not replace other essentially significant aspects in the development of those children. At Myland, we bet on a regulated and determined use of new technologies according to the age and neuronal and physical development of our students.

The whole school is considered a learning area. We use both the indoor and outdoor areas to work with our students. Aspects such as the light, the temperature, and the familiarity are taken into account in order to be able to offer a suitable environment for the psychological and educational, social, and emotional development of our students.

At Myland, we offer different materials and resources to generate learning opportunities meeting the comprehensive development in each stage. We use manipulative and self-correcting materials. The school has enough resources for our children to cover the learning needs of the different stages. The Reggio Emilia pedagogy defines environment as a third teacher, it is considered as another learning source. In fact, both the location and the inner organization of our school are planned to provide as much experience as possible to our students. The structuring of the space, the environment, and the materials promote cognitive development, communication, and the relationship among the children.