A curriculum describes what students should be learning through the grades. It should give clear statements of goals and objectives and should leave to teachers the decisions about how to realize them. Our faculty is high professional, knowledgeable, caring and committed to the individualized development of the whole child, therefore each teacher must decide how best to deliver the academic concepts in his/her curriculum.
A good curriculum should be organized clearly and structured logically within and between subjects and from grade to grade. It must be standards based, student focused, and goal oriented to build the foundation for future learning. It should gradually become more complex and difficult in terms of skills and objectives.
While IAS is structured to assure that all students who attend can, go on to higher education, its primary aim is to develop all aspects of the individual student. We want our students to know and respect themselves and others, and to develop their individual strengths.
IAS seeks to stimulate and develop intellectual curiosity, critical and analytical thinking, as well as develop a foundation for information processing at higher levels. It is our goal that our students would be life long learners and constructively question the world around them. We want them gain the ability to analyze critically and objectively. We encourage them to seek to change, to challenge themselves to make a difference
IAS expects its students to work hard and to meet these challenges. It is only through continued maintenance of its standards and of the full partnership of the IAS learning community that our students can fulfill these goals.
The ability to communicate in more than one language has long been recognized as a tool for enhancing student achievement. Beginning in the early school years, it is critical for today’s children to develop communicative and linguistic proficiency in English and other languages in order to understand and appreciate the cultural diversity of our rapidly developing global community. English is the base language at IAS; all academics are taught in English with native speaker level staff teaching the language arts curriculum. Students are also taught their native language, classical Arabic. There is formal instruction in Egyptian National Studies which includes Egyptian History, Religion, and classical Arabic. There are ESL classes to help students with weaker English Language skills to make the adjustment to an all English based curriculum. We also offer French instruction beginning in Grade One. Spanish is offered in Grade 9. In addition to the primary approaches of activity-based learning, reading and writing become very important components of language development. Our foreign language program is based on the National Standards known as the Five C’s (Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons, and Communities). This component helps the teacher address multiple learning styles and “intelligences” as well as preferences, while providing the student with variety and interest in the learning experience. Linguistic skills acquired in French and Spanish are a valuable transferable asset to facilitate the study of any other foreign language.