The Sequoia Academy
ACADEMICS
Primary School Curriculum.
At primary, TSA will teach using Cambridge syllabus. For those students who wish to switch to international schools at secondary, TSA will help them to make that transition easier.
As children will be following a dual curriculum, we will only focus on teaching core subjects. Namely, English, Maths and Science. To inculcate thinking skills we will also exposed to world History and Geography.
For mathematics, TSA collobarate with Singapore group - Seriously Addictive Maths, to offer Singapore maths for those who are interested.
Click here to download Cambridge primary school syllabus.
Lower secondary school curriculum.
At this level, TSA will compress 3 years of lower secondary material to two years. So that by in secondary 3, students may start to prepare for IGCSE.
Exceptional students* may have a more personalize curriculum where they would take up more subjects of their interest.
Click here to download Cambridge lower secondary school syllabus.
Upper secondary school curriculum.
To alleviate the burden of having to cram for two major standardize exam in upper secondary, TSA will introduce students to IGCSE content one year ahead. Students will start to learn IGCSE material in form 3 and then write IGCSE essessment at British Council in June at form 5.
Since IGCSE curriculum content is quite similar to SPM content, it will serve as a good revision for SPM preparation as well.
Again, we would encourage students to take up only core IGCSE subjects, namely :
1. Malay.
2. English.
3. Maths.
4. Additional maths (optional)
5. Physics,
6. Chemistry,
7. Biology.
8. Global Perspective (optional)
Click here to download Cambridge IGCSE syllabus.
Pre-school Curriculum
When kids start their formal education, it is expected that the kid has acquired spoken literacy skills of their own mother tongue at home. Unlike other countries where pre-schools are normally play base because formal education is conducted in their mother tongue.
In Malaysia, students generally would have to cope with 3 languages in standard 1. Starting formal education using more than one language that is not the child's mother tongue can be very challenging for some kids. Therefore, in Malaysia, we need to gently introduce a more academic curriculum that focus on imparting basic literacy skills to prepare kids for school at standard 1.
Children normally learn by repetition. Vocabularies building could be achieved by organizing lessons material thematically. Children generally will draw or make artworks, read, count, write and listen to stories using a common theme for 1-2 weeks. This will enable them learn similar set of vocabularies repetitively in different context. In this manner, learning language is designed so that it is effortlessly caught rather than to learn by rote.
TSA place a lot of emphasis on developing learners oral and presentation skills; children's confidence are nurtured from young, via lesson like speech and drama. In addition, a period is devoted to 'show and tell' everyweek .
There are many ancient mass education pre-school pedagogy developed in the past centuries. We think some of ideas are great, others are outdated. Breakthrough in neuroscience in understanding how the brainworks as recent as in the past five years has now allowed us to develop new pedagogy to be better nurture children's development.
Click here to find out more about the myths of brain development.