Kainon has proactively started the CORE Project in response to COVID-19 and the National Lockdown in 2020, and how it has affected the holistic development of children and their core skills.
What is THE CORE PROJECT at Kainon?
CORE stands for Conceptual, Cognitive, Collaborative Opportunities for Responsive Education. It focuses on smaller classes of no more than 20 learners per Grade 1 class and a maximum of 22 learners per class for Grades 2 – 7. In 2022, Kainon will purposefully create two smaller Grade 1 classes to ensure a supportive learning environment that fills the developmental gaps and missed learning opportunities that have arisen due to COVID-19. This approach allows for Kainon children from Grades 1-7 to have the best individualised support from teachers that supports their different learning requirements.
The focus will be on developing the whole child, which includes development of the physical, moral/religious, social, emotional and cognitive aspects of the child. These aspects function hand in hand, and the nurturing and responsive environment offered by smaller classes will enable children to develop holistically and work at their own pace, with opportunities for accelerated learning and extension according to their needs.
Our lessons, administered through a mediated learning experience, will provide students with a balance of academic activities and subjects, as well as music, speech and drama and art. In a mediated learning experience, the teacher facilitates learning through intentional questions. This allows learners to actively grasp the concepts for themselves, developing a sound conceptual understanding, rather than simply remembering information passively received from a teacher.
Homework tasks are kept to a minimum to encourage children to participate in our extra-curricular programmes, giving them time to just be children – an essential component of self-development.
Our CORE approach stems from the perspective that children need to be nurtured and loved, and that they need to feel happy in the learning environment of a school. Families and children at Kainon experience a home-from-home ethos and feel supported in the academic CORE focus. Small classes and creative collaboration enables children to feel excited about school and learning and provides them with opportunities to succeed.
We recognise that there needs to be a lot of nurturing, support and focus on core skills in education, especially during a pandemic, which Kainon is prepared and ready to achieve.