What would it be like to see, at a glance, a child’s entire educational journey, from Nursery to High School?
This was the challenge Avenor teachers took on as they began preparing for the new school year. Together, they created a visual representation of a child’s learning journey from age 2 to 18, starting with three questions:
How many teachers does a child interact with over 16 years?
How many subjects do they encounter along the way, and when does this range begin to diversify?
How many individual lessons are planned, prepared and taught throughout this learning journey?
The challenge seemed simple at first, but it soon became clear that, beyond the mathematical exercise, the real challenge was connecting all this information and turning it into one continuous journey. Watch the video below to see how the entire activity unfolded.
From separate subjects to one learning journey
Divided into 16 teams, the teachers used differently coloured construction pieces to represent each of the 16 years of a child’s educational journey, from Nursery to High School. Each team received the construction pieces corresponding to the subjects and volume of learning for the year they represented and had to build that particular year on their table. At the end, the 16 individual constructions were brought together to form one continuous journey — the educational journey of a child from age 2 to 18.
Beyond the construction itself, the joy of playing and collaborating, teachers identified, for each year of learning, the essential elements that move learning forward, centred around three dimensions: Concepts, Competencies and Character.
The 3Cs help us look at a child’s development as a whole: not only what they know, but also what they can do with what they learn and, most importantly, who they become along the way.
Concepts help students develop a deep understanding that they can transfer to different contexts. Competencies give them the tools to apply what they learn, solve problems and collaborate with others. Character is shaped through the way they learn to make decisions, relate to others and contribute to the world around them.
The activity challenged teachers to look at each year not as an isolated stage, but as part of a much larger construction:
What does a child need to understand at this stage? What competencies are they developing? What kind of person are they becoming? And how does what happens this year connect with what has been built before and what comes next?
When the individual paths were brought together, teachers were able to see the bigger picture: one continuous educational journey, from Nursery to High School.
When the pieces begin to connect
From a distance, a child’s educational journey may seem like a succession of subjects, school years and stages. Look more closely, and it becomes a network of connections built over time.
“When I think about all the subjects a child learns from Nursery until they leave school, I think about all the connections that are built over time, just as we are building with pieces now. And I thought it was really interesting how, within our team, some of us chose to build elements of nature, objects and other kinds of details, because I think this is the element of character that is so important for children’s development, beyond the academic side.” – says Cristina Farcaș, Deputy Head of Nursery.
Because a coherent educational journey is not simply about adding new knowledge year after year. It is about building connections between what children learn, the competencies they develop and the people they become.
But how do we make all these pieces connect? One of the most important conclusions from the activity was the need for collaboration and communication across subjects, teachers and stages of learning.
Mari Nicolae, Academic Learning Lead Primary, speaks about this challenge from the perspective of connections between subjects: “The biggest challenge in building a coherent curriculum from the age of 2 to 18 would be communication between subjects. How do you make all the subjects communicate with one another, teachers talk to each other, and children see the transfer from one subject to another?”
Communication between subjects, however, is only the first step. For these connections to become visible and meaningful to children, concepts need to come together within a coherent learning structure. “For 16 years of learning to become one single journey, we need to integrate subject-specific concepts in a coherent way,” explains Cristina Bumboiu, Curriculum Development and Teacher Training.
When a concept appears across different subjects, when a competency is practised in different contexts, or when a skill developed at one stage becomes the foundation for the next, learning gains continuity and meaning.
For Georgiana Socoliu, Deputy Head – Pastoral of Secondary, coherence also means becoming more aware of the whole journey, rather than focusing only on the stage in which each teacher works: “We need to be aware of the work happening across the other stages, to know about one another and to be aware of the work that comes before and after us, staying connected to the present, the past and the future.”
Daniel O’Connell, Teacher of English, emphasises communication between teachers as the element that connects all these stages: “I think communication is what we need. That way, it’s not separate trips, but one continuous journey with lots of stops and teachers communicating along the way.”
It is an important shift in perspective. A Nursery teacher lays the foundations that a Primary teacher builds upon. A Primary teacher develops competencies that Middle School teachers will extend later on. AndHigh School teachers work with students whose knowledge, competencies and character have been shaped over many years.
Each teacher sees one part of the journey. The child experiences the whole journey.
From vision to a coherent learning journey
The activity was more than a collaborative exercise or a creative way to begin preparing for the new school year. It made visible an important direction in the development of the Avenor curriculum: building an increasingly coherent and intentional educational journey, from Nursery to High School.
In this context, the Avenor Curriculum team is developing Learning Progressions – clear continuities in Concepts, Competencies and Character, from Nursery through to graduation.
These progressions help teachers understand what students have already built before reaching a particular stage and what they will go on to develop next. At the same time, they provide a shared direction for designing deep, active and meaningful learning experiences.
In a way, this is the same construction that teachers created during the activity, carried forward into everyday practice: seeing the individual pieces, but, above all, seeing the bigger picture they create together.
Teachers learn so they can help children learn
There is something symbolic about the fact that, as the new school year begins, teachers find themselves in the role of learners. They collaborated, communicated, made decisions together with colleagues from different stages of the school and transformed a collection of individual pieces into a whole.
They experienced, in turn, an interactive approach to learning, in which experience, collaboration and reflection were just as important as the final outcome.
Because preparing teachers for a new school year is not only about giving them information. It is also about creating meaningful learning experiences that encourage them to be curious, collaborate, reflect and make connections.
A child’s education is made up of thousands of moments — a question asked, a concept understood, a competency practised, a challenge overcome, a teacher’s encouragement, a friendship, a mistake, a new perspective.
Each one is a piece. But the pieces become meaningful when they connect.
At Avenor, this is the journey we continue to build together: a coherent educational journey from Nursery to High School, where Concepts, Competencies and Character develop over time, and every teacher contributes to the bigger picture.
