Curriculum

Orchard Curriculum

Orchard School was established with the vision to provide a space for children to feel happy, loved and cared for while they learn for life. The intent of the Curriculum Frame Work at Orchard is to make every child feel at home, easing the transition from home to School into a natural and gradual process.

The Curriculum is categorized as below:

Foundational Years
Preparatory Years
Middle Years
Secondary Years

Foundational Years

“Early Childhood years is the key to the betterment of Society”

We strive to provide an environment conducive to the holistic development of every tiny tot. Our team of trained teachers ensure that a cozy home like environment is created to keep the children happy and feel secure as they learn. A culmination of Montessori and play way method of learning helps the kids grasp the concepts with ease. The activities are planned schematically to help kids form lasting impressions on their cognitive domain. Our curriculum aims at concrete concept-based learning based on the following key areas:

Literacy
Numeracy
Exercises of Practical life
Sensorial Activities

Literacy

“There is in every child a painstaking teacher, so skilful that he obtains identical results in all children in all parts of the world. The only language men ever speak perfectly is the one they learn in childhood, when no one can teach them anything!”

Language development begins from day one in the Pre-Primary environment. The child comes with language of which he or she is not yet conscious. The child needs to enrich and become aware of this wealth of spoken language within him or her. For further development, the child needs a prepared environment that enhances opportunities for both direct and indirect learning.

Enrichment of vocabulary and phonemic awareness happens through storytelling, songs and rhymes, vocabulary drills, picture cards, planned conversations, and Sandpaper Letters. The child is encouraged to express his or her ideas orally first. Children are introduced to activities that help them understand and appreciate the world around them, and to share their ideas and experiences with others. It is wonderful to witness the ‘explosion’ into reading and writing that happens during the Pre-Primary years.

Numeracy

“Human intelligence is no longer merely a natural intelligence, but a mathematical intelligence. Without a mathematical education, it is impossible to understand the progress of our time or to participate in it. In its natural state, the human mind is already mathematical; it tends towards exactness, measurement, and comparison.”

The abstract subject of Mathematics is given a concrete form through carefully planned activities. When children are introduced to numbers, quantity is presented first, followed by the abstract concept of symbols. Children gradually learn to associate the symbols with the corresponding quantities. The child is then introduced to the decimal system of numeration, followed by the four basic operations—addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division—which are presented through parallel exercises.

The Arithmetic materials, which serve as tools for development, help the child gain clarity of concepts. When these concepts are internalised, they enable the child to carry out these operations independently of the material.

Exercises of Practical life

“The organization of man has three parts – brain, muscles, and senses. Movement is the final result to which the working of all these delicate mechanisms leads. In fact, it is only through movement that the personality can express itself.”

The aim of the Exercises of Practical Life (EPL) activities is to help the child in taking care of the self, caring for the environment, nurturing social relations, and learning essential early life skills. These activities help improve the child’s hand-eye coordination, increase control over the coordination of movement, and foster independence.

Rolling and unrolling the mat, pouring grains from one container to another, opening and closing containers, making lemonade and salads, pounding peanuts, washing hands and towels, and gardening (sowing seeds and watering them) are some of the activities offered under EPL. These activities help our Pre-Primary children settle into the environment and lay a strong foundation for all other activities in their joyful learning space.

Sensorial Activities

“The senses are gateways to intelligence. There is nothing in the intelligence that did not first pass through the senses.”

The primary purpose of the Sensorial Activities is to help the child sort out the many and varied impressions received through the senses. The Sensorial materials help refine the visual (seeing), auditory (listening), olfactory (smelling), gustatory (tasting), baric (weight), tactile (touch), thermic (temperature), and stereo gnostic (feeling with the eyes closed) senses.

Cylindrical Blocks, Brown Stairs, Long Rods, Pink Tower, Colour Tablets, and Noise Boxes are some of the materials in the Sensorial area. These materials follow a developmental sequence and are scientific and precise in design. Control of error is inbuilt into the materials, which helps the child in self-correction, thereby developing confidence and independence.

Preparatory Years

Curriculum

The curriculum for the Preparatory Years focuses on three major domains—Literacy Skills, Numeracy Skills, and Socio-Emotional Development. We follow a child-centric approach aimed at ensuring a joyful learning experience for our children every day at school while connecting learning to real-life experiences.

The curriculum focuses on fostering lifelong learning competencies that go beyond the mere transfer of knowledge and encourages a skill-oriented approach to the teaching-learning process. It is designed to help the child develop gradually from self to the immediate environment, and further to the global level.

Continuous evaluation of learning takes place through formative assessments at this stage. A healthy teacher-student ratio is maintained to ensure a wholesome, focused classroom experience with enhanced student engagement.

Socio-Emotional Development

Multi-faceted activities and celebrations, carefully curated and systematically administered, help our children develop strong socio-emotional skills. Empathy, appreciation and care for available resources, and eco-friendly practices are an integral part of our system.

Literacy & Numeracy Skills

English

The English curriculum is designed to help children develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, and become proficient in the sub-skills of the language such as comprehension, vocabulary, and grammar.

Mathematics

Mathematics curriculum is designed to help children develop mathematical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and problem-solving skills. Children are encouraged to apply these skills to real-life situations and solve problems to attain proficiency in fundamental mathematical concepts.

Science

The Science curriculum is offered as EVS for Grades 1 and 2, and as Science for Grades 3 to 5. In Grades 3 to 5, the curriculum encourages the development of scientific temper, curiosity, analytical thinking, and critical thinking skills through hands-on learning.

Social Studies

The Social Studies curriculum includes a range of content drawn from the disciplines of History, Civics, and Geography. It is aimed at developing analytical and critical thinking skills, inquiry, reasoning, and map-marking skills, besides nurturing active citizenship.

Languages

From Grade 1 onwards, children begin learning Tamil as the second language and Hindi as the third language. Language is taught as a support subject with the objective of familiarising children with an additional language. The language curriculum focuses on:

Providing exposure to the language through systematic and age-appropriate language building
Developing listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills
Building vocabulary and sentence formation

The support language curriculum places emphasis on simple vocabulary, comprehension, and the everyday use of the language. The third language curriculum is designed to develop listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, thereby providing a strong foundation in the language.

Computer Science Curriculum:

The Computer Science curriculum for Grades 3 to 5 is designed to promote the use of technology to accomplish tasks and communicate effectively and securely, thereby helping students become competent, responsible, and critical users of technology. Gradual emphasis is also placed on developing logical thinking and problem-solving skills.

Middle Years Curriculum

At the Middle School level, the curriculum is child-centric and incorporates a wide range of learning experiences in a progressive and phased manner, using an inquiry-based and integrated approach to teaching and learning. A healthy teacher-student ratio is maintained to ensure a wholesome and focused classroom experience with enhanced student engagement.

Transition from Preparatory Years

A meticulously planned transition programme is designed by teachers at the beginning of Grade 6 to familiarise students with the new subjects introduced at this stage. Science branches into Physics, Chemistry and Biology, while Social Studies expands into History, Geography, Civics and Economics. The programme also introduces students to the learning approaches and assessment patterns followed in the Middle Years.