Bilingual Pathway Primary School covers Class 1 to Class 4. Children resuming school are seven years of age. The duration of this level of schooling is four years. Each session is divided in two semesters. During the school day all children follow their daily schedule of learning activities as approved by Heritage. Learning, meals and play time, homework and clubs including sport, art-related activities and LEGO Education are part of the academic and enrichment programme. Learners in Class 1 have a modified lesson schedule for the first several weeks of school in order to enable them to get accustomed to the routines of a school day.
Primary school students are housed in their homeroom classroom and attended to by a Class Teacher supported by the English Language Specialist Teacher who is in charge of the English language lessons and supports the project-based activities introduced during the learning process, carried out through the approach used by the International Primary Curriculum (IPC) designed by Fieldwork Education. Additionally, the Music, Physical Education, IT and Art teachers are part of the class team. Pupils have lessons of 45 minutes duration with 10-minute breaks in between; breakfast time, lunch time, play and after school snack times are also provided according to the school class timetable. Children are placed according to their language of instruction (English, Romanian or Russian) while being supported on a daily basis in their acquisition of English.
Learning is designed through enquiry-based activities incorporating studying various themes such as My Body, The Living Planet, Fit for Life, Inventions that Changed the World and many others. While learning those themes the pupils will investigate various disciplines such as Geography, History, Physical Education, IT, Art, Science, Technology and Music. The learners will make meaningful connections to each discipline and will be attempting to develop mastery in the standards which IPC has recommended for each level of studies.
The IPC levels of studies are called Mileposts and are spread for the duration of two years each. The IPC programme is designed to cover three such mileposts. Heritage has enriched the IPC-recommended mileposts by blending the IPC standards with those covered in the Primary School of Moldova. Therefore, our learners are exposed to the complete programme of studies of the Republic of Moldova for the Primary School years.
A typical learning day consists of the first part of the day from 8:30 to 14:30, after which all pupils are encouraged to go for homework session and clubs. The homework session, which is optional, is structured to accommodate the learning needs of each child who is supported by the respective subject teacher.
In that way Heritage learners are ready to take the National Exam in Class 4. During the Primary School assessment is carried out through a descriptive reporting system on a semester basis, which provides a feedback about the level of proficiency in each targeted benchmark – from “beginning” through “developing” to “mastered”.