As an International Baccalaureate school, UWC Thailand values play as the primary driver for inquiry in the early years. Through a combination of structured and unstructured play opportunities, we believe that children build life-long skills (these are called ‘Approaches to Learning’ in the Primary Years Programme) and attitudes for successful lives.

At UWC Thailand, we know that learning to use a paint brush on tree bark, filling containers with sand and lifting heavy rocks is a developmental precursor to writing with a pencil, understanding capacity or realizing the scientific principles of how gravity works. 

Children’s first experience of a sense of belonging is at home with family, the foundations of which expand significantly when they enter school. Our priority is to foster positive relationships between home, family and school to create confident and self-assured children.

At UWC Thailand, we are fortunate to have amazing educators in the Early Years Programme, as well as access to a variety of educational leaders across the school who build relationships with each child. This could take the form of our Head of Mindfulness teaching our youngest students to regulate their emotions through breathing techniques to our Head of Outdoor Education leading Junior Kindergarten students to build a dam in the National Park beside our school or our school gardeners supporting Senior Kindergarten about plants around our campus.

The creation of safe, stimulating and inviting learning spaces that promote exploration, wonder, creativity, risk-taking and learning through play is central to effective early years learning. Teachers develop deliberate provocations using time and space to push their students’ thinking. Students are actively encouraged to make these spaces relevant to their questions and wonderings. This merger between inquiry and play is the essence of our Early Years Programme.

At UWC Thailand, Outdoor Education is one of our five pillars. Learning outside, in addition to inside, allows our learners to develop an appreciation for the natural world in the hopes that they will personally want to care for it. We are fortunate to have a large grassy campus to explore, a National Park in close proximity and local experts at our disposal.

Effective language and mathematics learning and teaching is based on students’ developing ability to listen to and speak with others, and to understand and use symbols. The importance of expanding these skills by transferring learning and experiences to other contexts allows students to explore new connections and consolidate their understandings. We create language and mathematics rich environments through rhymes, poems, stories, games, play, conversations, mark-making, drawing, problem-solving, reasoning, counting, patterning, and sequencing in order to build a strong foundation for future learning. 

At UWC Thailand, our students are musicians, artists, story-tellers, poets, activists, actors, scientists and mathematicians. Instead of our students learning about a subject like ‘transportation’ you will see them exploring the concepts of movement through role-play as well as authentic — and timely — learning engagements. During an inquiry like this, you will see students of all ages and abilities contributing to deepening the knowledge and understanding of their classmates through personal story-telling, map exploration, flag curiosity, writing passports and tickets and financial literacy.