Character and Citizenship Development
In Keming Primary, we believe in nurturing the whole child by guiding and helping the students to develop their moral, aesthetic, physical, intellectual, emotional and social (MAPIES) domains to the full so that they would become good and useful citizens. The school adopted the work of Thomas Lickona and Matthew Davidson (A Good and Smart School), to provide the direction for Character and Citizenship Development (CCD). Through our CCD curriculum, the school hopes to develop our students into someone who would “Do the Right Thing” (Moral Character) and “Give of Their Best” (Performance Character). As a result, the students would become persons of character who would be good and useful citizens and this is aligned with the school’s Vision - Enlightened Students, Enriched Citizens. The school also adopted the R3ICH values (Respect, Responsibility, Resilience, Integrity, Care and Harmony) as the school values and they provide the internal compass for everyone to work and interact with one another.
The CCD department also collaborates with the other departments in the school to ensure a whole-school approach to the Character Development so that students are provided a holistic experience in their Character Development. While the CCD department focus on developing the moral, emotional and social aspects, the academic departments, PE and aesthetics departments plan and implement programmes to develop the intellectual, aesthetic and physical domains of the students.
“My Reflection Journal” is one key feature in all of the school programmes in our focus in developing students holistically through the building of their moral and performance character. This is carried out with the use of the reflection journal for all Primary 3 to Primary 6 students.
With the reflection journal covering the MAPIES domains of a child’s holistic development, students are taught how to set goals for themselves across a number of contexts, such as targets for achieving academic excellence and setting achievable standards in both exercising habits and eating healthily. Students are required to self-assess and review on their targets and standards regularly with their teachers. Different subject teachers will also guide students in reflecting about their learning after they have participated in activities or school events.
The school uses the reflection journal to validate students’ learning of the values and track their progress in the development of their moral and performance character through the reflection records of their thinking, feeling and actions during and after each activity or event. The teachers will then acknowledge and provide valuable feedback to each child for future improvement. With this purposeful approach, the reflection journal captures the students’ learning in the MAPIES domains in order to provide a qualitative form of assessment and feedback, thus providing an informative voice to both the school and family about each student’s learning.
The CCD department comprises of various committees to look into the various aspects of the Character and Citizenship Development. The committees under the CCD department are:
- Character and Citizenship Education (CCE) & Values In Action (VIA)
- Student Well-being Committee
- Citizenship Education and Project Work Committee
- Student Leadership Committee