"Dalton Plan: a child's lifetime experience"

With pleasure we are presenting the cover of our book “Dalton Plan: a child’s lifetime experience” written by me and Roel Röhner. The cover was designed by children from Wenzhou Dalton Elementary School. The book has a theoretical and practical character. Our goal is to show the importance of the Dalton Plan worldwide, taking into account cultural background as well as different policies and potentials of the Dalton schools across the world. Moreover, we seek to examine the significance of using the Dalton Plan in everyday school life, so that the main goal would be to focus on mutual learning, socialization and experience as the basis of a social school life. The book will be published in the publishing house of Northeast Normal University in China in Chinese language. The premiere of the book will take place during the official International Dalton Conference in China in November 2022.

Space project in Wenzhou Dalton Elementary School

Children in Wenzhou Dalton Elementary School took part in a astronomy project in cooperation with academic centers. The project aimed mainly at giving students a "real life experience" and encourage them to feel like a professional astronaut. The Likeda Education Satellite starts its expedition towards the JiuQuan launch site, and the 'Space STEAM Organization' receiving an award "Members of the Dalton STEAM Space Organization" researching and studying "Cubic Star" knowledge at Nanjing Science and Engineering University. They also successfully assembled a cubic star of their own. All students gazing in anticipation at the 'satellite revealing' ceremony for the launch of the satellite towards the Jiuquan launch site. All the students in the school theater were listening to a speech by the deputy team leader of the overall design team of the first generation of contributors to the "Oriental Red Number 1" Chinese Space project. He was specially engaged by Wenzhou Dalton Elementary School as a consultant expert for the the "Space STEAM Organization". Dalton International is proud and honored to stimulate all initiatives aimed at giving children real life experience and learn the world on their own way.

Sternschule International Dalton School in Austria

Sternschule Deutchlandsberg International Dalton School has once again re-opened its doors after the summer break for its excited students and growing team! Among many known happy faces they have many new fresh ones having joined them this year. Currently in Sternschule there are 89 children and this including ten new first graders. One has to say there is truly something special about starting a new school year. There is always that expectation and vital energy that makes everyone feel the positive vibrations in the air. After a seemingly disruptive and in many ways not easy last school year, due to covid restrictions and several lockdowns, the school team is now looking positively and hopefully that this year will bring everyone health and strenght. That is all the children wish too, to see their teachers and friends and to be able to communicate, play and learn together. It is wonderful to be back inside the walls of the school, such joy for the children to see their friends and greet their teachers. The team was finally able to start the new Erasmus project with a school from Slovenia. The name of the project is Promote Your Neighbour! Children will travel to Slovenia where they will connect with their peers through several activities aimed at improving their IT, language and social skills. Many new faces among the team too, which is also exhilarating for everyone! Children have already settled in after the first few weeks and are ready for their Dalton education plans, organised and productive and very noticeably full of motivation! The school has new subjects rooms set up for the children and this has brought much satisfaction, curiosity and motivation! To see the children learning self-organisation, responsibility and consideration as the progress of their work is rewarding and moving. Here is to a successful new school year! Text: Simone Reichenberger and team

Dalton Bank in Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School

Raising a team spirit inside the school is a challenging task. Stimulating intrinsic motivation and giving children inspiration are undoubtedly one of the most important factors of everyday school life. Sharing, inspiring, motivating are definitely the most important aspects of Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School. School spirit is key to creating a positive school culture. It creates school pride, brings together the student body and generates excitement. Most importantly, it makes students feel like they are part of a community that is bigger than themselves. But how to increase school spirit? Amy Lu, the school coordinator together with the group of mentors decided to create a "Dalton Bank" in which children have the opportunity to learn economy and real life situations in their classrooms. Helen Parkhurst vision was to combine a school life with real life situations and to create a bridge between them. Shenzhen Dalton Xinhua School set up “Dalton Bank” as awarding mechanism. The Dalton bank will give out Dalton coins to students as awards by subject teachers, homeroom teachers, family teacher in general. Dormitory tutor, administrative staff and supporting stuff can give timely comments to support the awarding mechanism. All the procedure of a "Dalton Bank" was described in our "Dalton Handbook" in the following statements: overview, purpose and administration area, administration, administrative structure, principle of awarding, storage and recycle, usage, procedures.

Gratitude diary

Last week during our seminar, together with Sophie and Marcy I have worked out the ways of implementing the philosophy of gratitude, highly significant in Chinese culture. We have decided to put it into practice on two levels: individual and social. We also explored the different perspectives of gratitude implementation: as an emotion children feel in response to a gift or benefit, as an act when they perform their thankfulness and as an attitude and act to demonstrate their thankfulness. Just like love, trust and respect it is a way on how children react to other people, for who they are, for what they do. The philosophy was first practiced by Kant and Aristotle, for whom the entrance point were experience by interacting with the world. Together with two Chinese Dalton consultants Sophie and Marcy we designed a special “gratitude diary” for group work and individual work. Everyday children have the opportunity to reflect on positive aspects of their lives. The benefits of our activities are enormous for wellbeing of the children, these are: the philosophy of gratitude encourages positive attitude; promote meaningful cooperation and personalized language use, encourages emotional self-regulation, creativity and critical thinking. Practicing gratitude has been an important point in program training in International Dalton Schools in China. The gratitude diary will be published in the first upcoming magazine of Dalton International in Shanghai.