PRIMARY 1ST CYCLE - 1ST - 4TH YEARS
The Primary 1st Cycle is a fundamental step in a child's teaching-learning process. It is at this age that habits are created and decisive acquisitions are made. For the school and personal life of a student, Colégio Planalto, along with the other schools of the Fomento group, has an innovative project that aggregates all the learning areas foreseen for this cycle: the Keep Project.
The Keep Project presents mathematics teaching through the Singapore Method as a major area of innovation. Alongside this innovation, we invest in the integral education of our students by developing a training program in the values that help to form their personality, acquiring habits and skills, today often called soft skils.
We also seek to invest in the talent of each student by getting to know him and accompanying him, as well as his parents, in order to create the foundations for harmonious development and guarantee complete training.
In addition to the officially planned curricular areas, students also have 2 weekly blocks of Physical Education, Music Education, Religion and English every day.
Ensuring the transition and continuity of the Optimist Project (operating at Nursery and Kindergarden of Colégios Fomento) and some areas of learning already worked in this area (daily English, introduction to writing, etc.), the dimensions that make up this project aim to support and expand knowledge, but fundamentally develop routines that encourage knowledge acquisition. Therefore, it is not a question of either increasing the curriculum or teaching hours. On the contrary, the Keep Project promotes habits through appealing pedagogical strategies in an integrated and natural way. Based on this conceptual line, operational strategies focused on the main areas of knowledge were developed.
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Keep Reading: aims to broaden the culture and vocabulary, enhance understanding and help in the development of writing.
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Keep Writing: stimulates the writing activity through the regular production of texts and creative writing strategies.
- Keep Spelling: allows contact with several written words to acquire skills in spelling, through its visualization.
In the teaching of mathematics, we highlight:
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Keep in Maths: with the adoption of the Singapore Method. In this context, class head teachers received specific training and have the support and supervision of the Escola Superior de Educação do Porto, which monitors the application of the Program.
- Keep Counting: leads students to acquire calculation strategies, to develop critical sense and mental flexibility in mathematical operations.
On a daily basis, our students benefit from opportunities to improve their performance in the skills required for cumulative learning, through the program:
- Keep Training: a way to permanently review and consolidate basic knowledge.
Aware that the teaching of a foreign language must happen early and naturally, the project includes:
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Keep in English: with daily English language classes, duly certified by Cambridge English Assessment. This partnership, which lasts for several years, allows the CEFR certification in English of our students and teachers through specific programs and entitles Colégio Planalto as a Cambridge Educational Partner.
- Keep Listening: daily auditions of musical pieces by great classical composers, which favours the development of auditory discrimination and aesthetic sensitivity, and enhances the learning of languages, expanding the register of sounds by the child.
In order to work on other soft skills (attitudes and behaviors that facilitate the relationship with others and team work), essential tools that need maturation and training, we came up with:
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Keep Connecting: an activity that develops the skills of public exposure, improves communication, argumentation and debate skills, while increasing self-confidence.
- Keep Growing: education for values - a training plan and orientation of students towards nuclear virtues and aims to help each and everyone to be more free and attentive to the needs of others.