As we welcome the Year of Rabbit to come, Form 1 students at Creative Secondary School (CSS) are busy preparing for the celebration of the upcoming lunar new year, by learning and preparing for the inter-house Dragon Dance Competition. Students learn about the traditions and culture of the Chinese New Year during their Chinese lessons, and the practical skills for performing the Dragon Dance in their Physical Education lessons.
The Dragon Dance has a very prominent position in Chinese mythology. It can be seen in the arts, literature, poetry, architecture, songs and many aspects of the Chinese conscience. Dragons always represent celestial and terrestrial power, wisdom and strength. The dragon in traditional Chinese New Year's Day parades is believed to bring good luck and prosperity.
The Inter-house Dragon Dance Competition in fact is part of the school’s IB Middle Years Programme (IBMYP) Interdisciplinary Unit (IDU). This unit of study provides students with great learning opportunities to integrate their learning from different subject disciplines in order to create new understanding. This valuable experience also allows students to work on students’ MYP’s Approaches to Learning (ATL) skills including social and communication skills, problem-solving skills, collaboration skills and creative thinking skills. The senior student leaders act as mentors to provide support and guidance to the Form 1 students. This has been a tradition for the school to train students’ leadership skills via student-led activities. Certainly, this has been and will be a memorable experience for all CSS students.
Moreover, one of the key aims of the Dragon Dance is to strengthen students’ understanding of Chinese culture, particularly on the traditional festivals and customs. This aligns with the school’s initiative CLACH (Chinese Language & Literature, Art, Culture and History) - where students can be exposed to and be engaged in different Chinese cultural activities.
On 19 January 2023, over 100 Form 1 students representing six houses at our school will be performing their own Dragon Dances. We look forward to celebrating their creative and amazing performances! As part of our Creative Schools Continuum (Creative Primary School’s Kindergarten, Creative Primary School, Creative Secondary School) , the winning team will perform at Creative Primary School in February 2023 wishing the Creative community an auspicious year of the Rabbit!
Video of CSS Dragon Dance
About our CLACH Programme
To help our students acquire an understanding of their homeland and cultivate in them a caring attitude towards the country, we have established a programme - Chinese Language and Literature, Art, Culture, and History (CLACH). CLACH programme is an education at CSS that practices compatibility between China and foreign countries and takes care of local students and non-Chinese speaking students to inherit and innovate Chinese culture. Students can learn Chinese well by knowing China and the world, and strive to allow them to discover the essence of the Chinese language and literature, art, culture, and history.
About Interdisciplinary Unit (IDU)
In the IB Middle Years (IBMYP), interdisciplinary learning supports students to understand bodies of knowledge from two or more disciplines or subject groups, in order to integrate them and create new understanding. At CSS, there are many authentic interdisciplinary learning opportunities taking place across subjects informally. Teachers strive to connect their subjects to other subjects and encourage students to do the same. New initiatives at CSS such as CLACH and STEAM are also areas where informal and formal interdisciplinary learning takes place. Formal interdisciplinary learning is planned for each of the year levels at CSS with many possible subject combinations. Teachers work to create authentic and real-world experiences for the students in these units. These formal interdisciplinary units are assessed by both subject teachers individually and collaboratively using the separate IB criterion-based assessment criteria.