VOICES

At Keys School Manila, we believe that childhood education should have the goal of teaching children to love learning so much so that they never stop. We do this by employing learner-centered instruction, which makes the child responsible for their own learning. This is matched by exposing them to the kind of tasks and challenges they will encounter beyond the classroom (and beyond graduation). These real-life scenarios allow them to apply the skills and content they have learned to reach their end goal.

Examples tied to specific subjects include:

Math

In one scenario, students were hired by Keys to redesign a space in the school. To do so, they had to apply the concepts they had learned in math (geometry), those of area and perimeter. They created blueprints for their redesign as well as virtual scale models. The activity ended with a pitch to the school, where they had to explain their design and how they integrated their math concepts throughout the process.

Science

Keys School strives to help learners feel a sense of responsibility over their community. One of the best ways to do this is to step into another’s shoes. In the Halamanan sa Bakuran Science Performance Task, students became agriculturists. The goal of the task was to encourage students and communities to try farming in their backyards and in the school. 

Interdisciplinary Unit Projects (IU Projects)

One of the hallmarks of the Keys secondary school is pushing students to engage in meaningful pursuits of their passions. Students are encouraged to celebrate their unique skills and to think about how they can use them to make the world a better place. Through guidance, they integrate what they’ve learned from different school subjects, personal experiences, and different people they have met, and so the project is aptly called Interdisciplinary Unit Projects.

As can be seen in the examples, learner-centered instruction encourages a lot of independence and resourcefulness, which we believe makes great foundations for a love of lifelong learning. Establishing this in childhood education while also involving a lot of integration with different subjects presents the children with a clear use for what they learn in the classroom, and how what they learn can actually make an impact in the world.