Study techniques

Studying a Baccalaureate calls for order, method and precision. Our tutors are therefore trained so their academic accompaniment can provide students with time and study management tools.

This means our pupils:

• Learn to synthesise
• Produce good outlines
• Distinguish the main and secondary ideas from a text

These skills are essential and particular attention is paid to developing them throughout the school year.

Critical thought

Through this programme, we want our students to be able to go a step further and gain the ability to question their own opinions and further develop their knowledge.

We therefore make room in our subject courses for the students themselves to ask the questions and find answers while being accompanied by their teachers.

This programme continues on from Lower Secondary and enables our students to:

• Assess the credibility of a more complicated source or opinion
• Identify arguments
• Reach conclusions

This requires the ongoing development of such skills as:

• Analysis
• Reasoning
• Reflection
• Judgement formation

Public speaking and debate

Our students have the chance to join debate teams and represent the school at inter-school tournaments and competitions, such as the Debate League organised by the Xarxa Vives university network.

This allows our students to train various debating techniques while broadly developing their oral competency.

Languages

At this last stage of their time at our school, and after having worked on the three languages since the start of their schooling, we place a focus on accrediting and certifying the highest levels of competency under the common European framework of reference for languages:

The majority of our students leave our school with the Certificate Advanced in English CAE (C1) and some with the Certificate of Proficiency in English (C2).

International experiences at the school

An international faculty and highly qualified native conversation assistants who not only help teachers in the classrooms to complement and support their teaching work but also actively cooperate in the preparation of speaking exercises for students taking official exams.

They also take part in ordinary school life by interacting with the students at all the everyday and extraordinary events that we organise, always using English or French as the vehicular language.

Our Upper Secondary students also take part in activities to practise, improve and demonstrate their linguistic skills so that they can feel safe and confident in their use of the English language in any situation after leaving school:

• European Youth Parliament (EYP)
• Debating Competition
• Public Speech
• Oratory and Poetry

International curriculum

The 1st year of Upper Secondary is the school year in which those students who opted for a dual Baccalaureate experience will complete the American programme. After completing their national Baccalaureate, they will be able to have the two programmes officially recognised and apply to overseas universities using either one (Spanish or American). All our classes for the American qualifications are taught by native teachers. Students go on to form part of an international student community that complements their academic training.

Career guidance

We run a complete programme of specific days and activities to accompany and help our students make decisions about their professional future.

• Information days
• Round-table discussions with professionals

Work Experience

The WE programme enables pupils in the 1st year of Higher Secondary to discover the day-to-day workings of a company and gain real work experience, shadowing professionals in the sector in which they have shown an interest. The goal is for them to discover the value of work, a service mentality and teamwork, and for them to learn to accept job responsibility.

Mentorship programme

The goal of this programme is to accompany each one of our students at such an important time of their lives, in which they need to conclude one period – that of their school years – by gratefully taking stock of all they have lived and learned and embarking on another period with great excitement and equally great uncertainty. All the while going through the developmental period of adolescence. The goal is therefore to ensure that each pupil can count on a mentor at this point to accompany them; i.e. to stand by their side, “accepting them as they are, wherever they are, with both their talents and potential as well as their wounds and limitations, with absolute respect for their freedom and learning pace” (Document-seed), to help them discover their mission in life and open themselves up to the challenge of their own growth towards the fulfilment that beckons them.

ROUTE 1ST HIGHER SECONDARY

ROUTE 2ND HIGHER SECONDARY

Social Participation

Our students work on their own social participation project aimed at encouraging:

• A capacity for openness
• An awareness of their environment
• A sensitivity for the needs they observe around them
• An ability to propose solutions

Formative Discipline

Through formative discipline, our educators work to help children discover the values that lead to rules in everyday life so they can act through self-conviction and not the mere imposition of those rules by others. This allows students to gain an understanding of the meaning and importance of respect and follow the rules to forge harmony at school.

Technology

Our students receive a Chromebook as a digital learning support tool that helps them work on collaborative projects and engage in truly interactive learning.

Digital environment

We have created a digital learning ecosystem in G-Suite for Education that enriches classroom operation and fosters learning. This ecosystem enables us to collaborate from any location, communicate and share content securely and accessibly with our pupils, run the classroom effectively, organise tasks, have access to a greater volume of content and facilitate online formative continuity for our pupils.

The teaching of digital citizenship seeks to educate our pupils to become critical, free and integral citizens in the real and digital world. To that end, we work with our students on various aspects of digital citizenship in an intra-curricular manner:

Part of this subject involves working on Industrial Technology, which is highly focused on engineering careers. Among other things, students continue to use:

• Devices applied to education
• Complex programming with Arduino
• Scratch
• 3D printing
• Augmented reality
• App design