Whole Child Development
We believe that developing a set of general competencies and a positive mindset underpins academic success as well as happiness and personal growth. Developing children as effective learners requires paying attention to developing their attitudes, skills, strategies, and behaviors as well as their content knowledge and academic skills. Nexus balances academic demands with an emphasis on growing good citizens. We help our learners to become self-aware and to develop the skills for good decision-making.
There are three frameworks for developing competencies and mindsets in each of the three curricula. The Nexus Neuron, Personal and Transferable Skills (PaTS) and the IB Learner Profile.
These frameworks are are explicitly taught and assessed to make them conscious and further help develop independent, self regulated learners. The three frameworks are overlapping and developmental. For example we teach learners about resilience across all three phases but in Primary we talk about co-operation and in Secondary this develops further to be collaboration.
Intrinsic Motivation
You may be surprised that, unlike some other schools, we do not give rewards such as house points or stickers to reward effort. Rather we want to develop intrinsic motivation which involves learners engaging in a behavior for it’s own sake because it is personally rewarding. E.g. solving a problem because you find the challenge fun and interesting. That is not to say that we do not celebrate success or have events that encourage competition such as Sports Days, inter-school competitions, maths challenges and talent shows.
