We are now in our Fourth Year of Acton Academy Kuala Lumpur! Game on!

Weekly Updates

Preschool / Spark Studio (PS) Update

Eager to see their friends and guides again, the PS Eagles started off the brand new week, Sprint and year early, most arriving before 8.30am. It was awesome to see them picking up right from where they left off, remembering the systems and flowing right back into it.

A New Quest

The Quest for this Sprint is Art … something the Eagles love! Creativity through art is a great form of expression for your thoughts and emotions. It gives you the chance for self-exploration too, all while you’re having great fun splashing and mixing, daubing and creating beautiful masterpieces to liven up your space.

This week, we explored scratch art which focused us on the importance of following steps systematically to create something beautiful. There were three steps and we covered one step a day. On the first day, we used crayon to colour the first layer. We painted the second layer of black or brown paint on on the second day. On the third day, we scratched drawings into the dark paint to create rainbow pictures! Some succeeded while others didn’t and it was a great learning point to see what didn’t work out.

Guided Autonomy

There was a little protest during the week from 2 Eagles who decided that they didn’t want to work. Eagles are given choices, but there are guardrails and systems to guide and govern them to allow them to explore choices and the natural consequences of those choices. In this case, the guardrail is that an Eagle aims to achieve a set number of minimum points each day with equal time to work and play. The natural consequence of not doing any work is that the Eagle’s freedom level is affected and they are required to complete some work before they can play.

In the end, one Eagle who initially decided to forgo play as the consequence of not doing any work decided to do some work as he was bored. The other Eagle, wanting to play, realised that to achieve that they had to complete a task.

Elementary Studio (ES) Update

New Beginnings

Welcome back to school! We kick off the first sprint of ActonKL’s new academic year by focusing on the Quest Building a Tribe. New contracts will be declared and signed, new Eagles will be welcomed into the tribe and a new buzz will be created. Along the way, we explore the over-arching question: “When does a hero submit to authority?”

Team Building – How Can I Support the Team?

To paraphrase a particular pop song flooding the radio waves right now, ‘there ain’t no ‘I’ in team, but you know there is a ‘me’. That was what the Eagles explored this week – their place in the team. Everybody has different roles in a team – some are leaders, some are followers, some promote and some support. The Eagles explored and challenged their roles to better understand that whatever your role, it’s important to play it well to support the team.

Palm Printing – Let’s put our hands together to build the community we want to live and work in!

Cup Stacking Challenge – Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to stack up as many cups as you can as a team. The challenge … the cups are all joined together! Can your team work together to complete the mission?

Human Knot – So-Fast Challenge – Your team has been tied up into a great, big knot!! How fast can your team untangle yourselves??

Setting Smart Goals

The Eagles plugged back into being independent and taking ownership of their daily learning by setting their weekly Smart Goals.

Lip Dub

As part of building a new tribe this school year, the Eagles will shoot a lip dub video. Brainstorming started this week and the studio was abuzz with excitement, humming and dance moves! Follow this blog for more updates on the video throughout the sprint.

Photo Shoot

We took our first group photo of the year in our CBF shirts! It’s going to be another fun adventure with this vibrant, energetic group!

Happy Birthday!

Happy birthday Akash and Kotowa! May you continue to grow from strength to strength!

Middle Studio (MS) Update

Biology Evolution

This sprint, the MS Eagles are delving into the question of Biology Evolution. Where did humans, plants and animals come from?

After a deep dive into heavy topics like: ‘Which came first, the chicken or the egg?’, biological debates, and pitches for a Biology Hero, the week culminated in a fun and crazy 3-part Egg Final Competition.

1. Egg Drop

The challenge was to build a nest to cushion an egg so that it could survive an egg drop! Needless to say tensions were high and things got rather messy.

2. Egg and Spoon Race

The age-old egg and spoon race was deemed “too easy” by some Eagles because “everyone survived!”. A suggestion to up the ante was to “put the spoon in our mouths.”!

3. Egg Toss

Another tension-filled egg challenge was the egg toss! Teams of 2 had to toss eggs to each other, but after every successful toss, the pairs had to take a step backwards. The Eagles love messy challenges … “The Egg Competition is my favourite part of the week!”

Team Game @ Garden

To reunite and realign the team, the MS Eagles split into Squad X and Squad Y and played a variation of the Centipede Race where the squads had to race against each other … with their feet joined together! The trials went well but the actual race was a disaster! The Eagles improvised halfway through the race: “We can use the bamboo sticks – tie them to our feet instead of using masking tape. Maybe there’s still time.” but there wasn’t time and both teams ended up defaulting. A guide observed that maybe the Eagles should have swapped duct tape with masking tape as masking tape ripped too easily.

MS Town Elections – Election Speeches

One of the first orders of business at the beginning of the new year was to elect new Council Members. Each candidate delivered a speech to convey their intention to be elected, their commitment to the role and their election promises.

Ra’ees, Ee Rynn and Leanne became the new Council for the term of 2019/2020.

Year 4. We are only getting started :))