Warm greetings BCCIS families! I am Engy Abdallah, the Elementary Vice Principal. I have been a part of the BCCIS family as a BC-certified teacher for over seven years. I can attest to the amazing school environment and education here, as my own children have proudly graduated from BCCIS and transitioned into the top universities in Toronto, Canada. I am a long-life learner; I am furthering my education by completing my master’s in Inclusive Education (Advanced Practice) at the University of Charles Sturt. In this beautiful journey of progressing and watching the school continue to achieve new heights I am honoured to bring my Western expertise and strong educational background to empower students to develop personal responsibility, independence, and a passion for their interests. I am excited to be a part of the incredible BCCIS family as there is no better place for your child. I am enthusiastic about being a part of a great community where together we can instill virtues, celebrate diversity, and empower our students to seek their full potential. I welcome you once again to our school and hope to meet you in person soon!
— Engy Abdallah
The British Columbia curriculum has been designed for teaching/learning in the 21st century. The goal is for our BCCIS students to graduate with the knowledge, skills and attitudes that they will need once they leave our schools.
The B.C. Ministry of Education overview of the curriculum is as follows:
At the heart of British Columbia’s redesigned curriculum are the Core Competencies, essential learning and literacy and numeracy foundations. All three features contribute to deeper learning.
Core Competencies underpin the curricular competencies in all areas of learning. They are directly related to the educated citizen and as such are what we value for all students in the system.
The curriculum for each subject area includes the essential learning for students, which represent society’s aspirations for B. C’s educated citizen. The redesigned curriculum develops around key content, concepts, skills and big ideas that foster the higher-order thinking demanded in today’s world.
Literacy is the ability to understand, critically analyze, and create a variety of forms of communication, including oral, written, visual, digital, and multimedia, in order to accomplish one’s goals.
Numeracy Is the ability to understand and apply mathematical concepts, processes, and skills to solve problems in a variety of contexts.
Literacy and numeracy are fundamental to all learning. While they are commonly associated with language learning and mathematics, literacy and numeracy are applied in all areas of learning.
All areas of learning are based on a “Know-Do-Understand” model to support a concept-based competency-driven approach to learning. Three elements, the Content (Know), Curricular Competencies (Do), and Big Ideas (Understand) all work together to support deeper learning.
The British Columbia Ministry of Education has done an excellent job of describing and defining the curriculum, competencies, classroom assessment and Provincial assessments for each grade level.
This information is available by grade and course at https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca.
Grades 10 – 12 are referred to as the ‘Graduation Program’ in which students are required to complete 80 credits in both required and optional courses. They are also required to successfully complete several B.C. Ministry of Education assessments. BCCIS Administrators, Counsellors and Teachers work with our students to guide them through these years. The B.C. Ministry of Education describes the specifics of the Graduation Program at: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/education-training/k-12/support/graduation