Primary School
Primary School Academic Curriculum System
The primary school of Moonshot Academy is for grades 1-5. The primary school's academic system is designed to "encourage students to explore the world around them with curiosity."
The curriculum in Primary School
The curriculum of the primary school is based on the Chinese Natinal Curriculum Standards, and refers to the content and methods of the education and teaching systems of the United States, Singapore and other countries.
In order to improve the Chinese-English bilingual education and teaching environment and promote learners’ in-depth understanding of Chinese and Western cultures, MSA has matched two full-time homeroom teachers in each class: a foreign teacher whose mother tongue is English and a bilingual Chinese teacher. Teachers guide the learning and growth of primary school learners through collaborative inquiry-based instruction.
Courses offered from Grades 1 to 5 include Chinese Language Arts, English Language Arts, Math, Cross-curricular units (Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Information Technology, Family life Education), Performing Arts, Visual Arts, Health and Physical Education.
Click the card below to see more about Primary Curriculums.
Bilingual Education
Behind language is a set of behavioral, thinking, and social patterns. The charm and function of bilingual education lies in giving learners another possibility to understand the world and themselves. Moreover, long-term follow-up studies have shown that bilingual learners perform better than non-bilingual learners in many aspects such as standardized test scores, cognitive flexibility, concentration, multitasking ability, creativity, and so on.
The 12-year immersion bilingual teaching model of MSA integrates content and language. Learners learn the concepts, content and skills of the subject as well as developing language skills in listening, speaking, reading, writing and application. The school supports learners to naturally and solidly grasp the application of two languages in both life and academic situations, and to understand the Chinese and Western cultures behind these two languages.
Our goal is to enable primary school learners to seamlessly connect to middle school at home and to abroad when they graduate from Middle school, and to seamlessly connect to the language level of top overseas universities when they graduate from high school. Competency-based education enables learners to understand the essence of Chinese and Western cultures and thoughts, and to find their own Chinese identity in a multicultural and multi-value-oriented community background.
Proportion of Bilingual Teaching
Under the guidance of the seven bilingual course setting standards of the authoritative Center for Applied Linguistics in the United States, the ratio of bilingual teaching time of MSA is set in a U-shaped curve, which also follows the principle of balanced development of Chinese and English bilinguals, and is combined with the acquisition rules of different age groups for the two languages, language learning environment, as well as the graduation destinations.
Bilingual Community Environment
Providing learners with a diverse, cross-cultural, and highly inclusive immersive bilingual community is an essential element in creating a high-quality bilingual education program. Not only can bilingual communities increase the exposure of acquired languages outside the classroom through increased opportunities to use languages, but they can also create different learning scenarios for students to develop unique behavioral, thinking, and social patterns through language acquisition.
When we design a bilingual teaching model, what we consider the most is not how many English classes, Chinese classes, or how many foreign teachers we have, but with a hope that learners can participate in a global system as much as possible, so that language can go beyond the language itself and become a true lifelong partner.
In addition to implementing a scientific-based and rigorous bilingual teaching model, our approach to creating an immersive bilingual community environment also includes exploring bilingual community service opportunities in the Beijing area and opening up long-term international exchanges. Thus, we provide enriching channels for learners to contact and serve the world through both languages. We support families through school to home communication and parent classes, in order to boost parent understanding of bilingual development and learning processes.
Teaching Team of the Primary School
Primary school is the first step for learners to go from home to the world, and the "people" who accompany children on this first step are particularly important.
Teachers from various cultures and teaching backgrounds in China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and more form the teaching team of the primary school. They serve as class teachers, visual arts teachers, social emotional learning teachers, mental health teachers and other roles, and they have a common ideal of education - to provide children with a diverse, cross-cultural and highly inclusive growth environment, allowing them to explore the world with curiosity.
Development Guidance of the Primary School
The development guidance system of the primary school is coordinated by the vice principal (in charge of learner affairs) with the psychological counselor at the core. They are supported by the class teachers to strengthen comprehensive development of learners in terms of psychology, social skills and emotion.
Co-teaching Model
We match two full-time class teachers in each class in the primary school: a foreign teacher whose native language is English and a bilingual Chinese teacher. The co- teachers are jointly responsible for class instruction and daily management, and together, they teach English, mathematics, science, social science and other courses.
Chinese and foreign class teachers use different cooperative teaching modes, such as one teaching and one supplementary, stand-up teaching, parallel teaching, substitute teaching, team teaching, etc., to meet the differentiated academic development as well as spiritual and emotional growth of each learner.
Development Guidance Course
At the primary school stage, we hope that we can not only teach children knowledge and life skills, but also guide them to develop enough social emotional skills from an early age so they may adapt to changes, make positive decisions, and become responsible citizens.
The development guidance course for the primary school is based on social emotional learning, designed in combination with the physical and mental development characteristics of primary school students and the national moral education work guidelines. It adopts a spiral curriculum system where each grade will spotlight the same five topics. However, the depth and focus of each topic are different. These topics include: Safety and Responsibility, Respect and Kindness, Learning Methods, Physical and Emotional Health and Positive Growth Mindset. Taking "Safety and Responsibility" as an example, first graders focus on the transition from kindergarten to primary school, while fifth graders focus on health and safety in the digital world.
The development guidance course is taught by the class teachers. The class teachers design the course in the form of large units to provide and create learning situations based on real-life needs and according to the learners' development stages. The goal is to help learners better carry out social and emotional learning, and to gradually form right values, which are essential character traits.
Mental Health
For primary school students and their parents, we have established a primary school psychology office. Psychological support teachers will establish contact with each learner and provide follow-up support to learners in need. The primary school psychology office follows an "open door policy" where learners can go to the psychology office for help whenever they need it.
Hoomroom teachers play an auxiliary role in the psychological support system, but they play the core role. The class teacher is the person with the most daily contact with the children, and is often the first to discover problems. With the support of psychological counselors and language learning coaches, they will intervene and guide learners' behavior. If the learners need further support, the vice principal will coordinate and discuss with relevant teachers and parents.
Development Guidance Team of the Primary School
In addition to knowledge education, the primary school has also established a development guidance team with the vice principal of the primary school as the coordinator and the psychologist as the leader who accompany the children's spiritual development in a professional and empathetic way.
After-School Programs of the Primary School
Growth of children happens not only in classrooms and with books, but also in daily tennis training, animation model making, and simulated debates with friends... We look forward to seeing more possibilities for children to grow.
After-School Clubs
After-school clubs in the primary school are mainly divided into sports and non-sports clubs. Sports clubs include swimming, frisbee, football, basketball, track and field. Non-sports clubs include drama, magic scientist, debate and programming.
International Tennis Academy
International Tennis Academy (ITA) is a special sports training program of MSA. Adhering to the concept of integrating sports and education, we expect tennis to bring students health in both body and sportsmanship.
ITA implements layered teaching, and recruits students of different ages and foundations. We also welcome learners who have no tennis foundation but would love tennis to join ITA.
Training System
The training system of ITA consists of three parts: tennis skill training, physical fitness training and sportsmanship.
We will guide learners to continuously improve their tennis skills such as ball control, volley and pace, and continuously improve their physical fitness in terms of resistance, speed, agility, basic strength and endurance while focusing on developing the sportsmanship they gain from tennis, such as perseverence and a friendly, competitive spirit.
Training Mode
According to the learner's age group, tennis skill level and future development direction, we have designed personalized layered training:
1st grade: 2 tennis lessons + 1 strength class per week
2nd grade: 3 tennis lessons + 1 strength class per week
3rd grade and above: choose "3 + 1 program" or "5 + 2 program" according to individual need
Awards
2022 the 16th Beijing Games Tennis Youth Competition Group: 3rd place in singles, 3rd place in doubles, and 1st place in teams;
2022 Beijing Youth Championship Tennis Men's Group C: 3rd place in singles, 5th place in doubles, and 1st place in teams;
2022 the 3rd Financial Street Cup UTR Youth Tennis Certification Tournament U14: men's champion;
2022 UTR Olympic Forest Park Flying Cup Youth Tennis Certification Tournament U14: men’s champion;
2022 Heilongjiang Provincial Games: men's doubles champion;
2022 Heilongjiang Provincial Games: 6th place in men's singles;
2022 Youtuo Cup Youth International Tennis Points Tournament: runner up;
2021 Tsinghua Cup and Beijing International School Youth International Tennis Open U10: men's singles runner-up;
2021 Heilongjiang Running Youth Cup Tennis Tournament: 5th place in men’s singles;
2021 National Open Cup Tennis Open U12: men's champion;
2021 Diamond Cup Junior Tennis Challenge U12: champion of finals, champion of one weekly tournament, runner-up of two weekly tournaments;
2020 Zheng Jie Cup U12: Final Four;
2020 China Open Youth Tournament U11: champion;
Tennis 123: champion and runner-up in different levels;
China Tennis Association Nike National Youth Ranking Tournament Shenzhen Guangming Station U12: men's singles champion;
Discovery Cup Tennis Open U12: men's singles champion;
China Open Youth Tournament U14 Fuzhou station: singles champion;
China Open Youth Tournament U14 Fuzhou station: singles and doubles champion;
China Open Youth Tournament U14 Shanghai station: singles champion;
China Open Youth Tournament U14 Shanghai station: singles runner-up;
China CITIC Bank Youth Tennis Tournament (Beijing Station) U12: men's singles champion;
China CITIC Bank Youth Tennis Tournament (Beijing Station) U12: men's singles runner-up;
Selected into the National Youth Tennis Team;
World Youth Tennis Tour sixth station U11: champion;
World Junior Games UWG: team champion;
To be continued...
Coaching Team
The coaching team is composed of 10 senior coaches in the tennis field, including Chinesenational first-level athletes, Chinese national first-level referees, former Croatian national youth team coaches and former Croatian national team athletes.
These coaches also have an identity as educators. Not only will they teach children tennis skills, but, more importantly, they will pass on sportsmanship to win games on the inner court- the heart.