Outside the Classroom
Sancta Maria International School encourages many activities beyond the curriculum to ensure that students acquire skills outside of the standard curriculum.
Performing Arts
At Sancta Maria International School, we encourage every student to pursue a broad and balanced co-curricular program, providing them with a variety of challenges and experiences through which they can grow into confident, well-rounded individuals. While our performing arts program has many facets, the common thread is to build personal confidence through the systematic development of performance skills. These include:
Music
Music is a required course for every student at Sancta Maria International School, from preschool through grade 12. We hold a strong conviction that musical experiences provide tremendous self-development benefits. At Sancta Maria International School, each student chooses a musical instrument for specialization from grade 4 upwards and will learn to play that musical instrument all through that year. Students have the choice of mastering the synthesizer, guitar or violin, for which they will receive certification from the Trinity College of Music, London, UK.
Dance
Dance is a vehicle of cultural expression for any human being. It is expected that all students of Sancta Maria International School in the primary years should have opportunities to develop a practical understanding of Classical Indian and Western dance styles. Students are expected to develop skills, knowledge and understanding of the special character of dance and various dance forms as they have evolved and developed in India and over the world. They are also trained in the appreciation of the form and function of dance.
Drama
Drama at Sancta Maria provides students with a wide range of opportunities to pursue their interest in acting, stage directing or technical stage skills. We have an open-air amphitheatre with a capacity of 1500 and other excellent facilities for training in drama. The dramatic arts are specifically used to help students overcome reticence and shyness, and to develop the ability to overcome stage fright and fear of interacting with strangers. Drama also helps students understand and analyse human gestures, character and behaviour, and explore their own selves through role-play.
Visual Arts
The visual arts program at Sancta Maria strives to develop students’ aesthetic, creative, imaginative and critical faculties through a coherent, well-balanced, programme across grades. Students explore drawing, painting, illustration, printmaking, poster design, collage, mixed media, art history and art appreciation. Students are encouraged to explore their artistic talent through sketchbooks. They are also trained in planning, developing and self-evaluating their personal art portfolios. Completed art portfolios provide the students with a sense of accomplishment and lay the foundation for confident exploration of additional art forms. Students also learn to appreciate and analyse the works of artists and talk about art. Art and Design is also offered as a curriculum subject at IGCSE & AS A Levels.
Sports
Sancta Maria has world-class sports facilities like an athletic track, a soccer field, basketball and lawn tennis courts, and indoor badminton and table tennis courts. The younger kids have their own indoor play areas and outdoor playgrounds consisting of the sand pit, an indoor soft gym, an obstacle course with play decks and a one-of-its-kind tree house atop a huge tamarind tree. We have a well-structured sports programme that is conducted during school hours. Additionally, we have evening sports coaching centres to actively engage and train promising sports students.
Clubs
All students from grade 1 to 8 are divided into various clubs that meet every Thursday. The group stays in one club for a period of three months before moving on to the next club, thereby getting an opportunity to explore all clubs through the year. Clubs offered to students are:
- Art and Craft
- Best Out of Waste
- Cookery
- Theatre
- Animation
Special Activities
As part of our education philosophy, we push the horizons of our students for both the world within and the world beyond. To this effect, the school carries out a series of co-curricular or extra-curricular activities each year to engage children in a fun-learning way towards their all-round development. Activity plans are designed to ensure that each child is sufficiently exposed to every activity.
The first three months are aimed at giving a taste of these activities to the students. These include aerobics, yoga, dance, community service, etiquette and manners, music, debate and theatre. A specially designed activity lesson is a reserved slot in an academic day to balance and integrate play and studies. The activities planned for the current year are:
- Words-Worth: This activity helps children build their vocabulary in a fun and exciting way.
- News Views: This activity inculcates the habit of newspaper reading among students and develops critical thinking through an understanding and analysis of the impact of news on us.
- Culinary Bustle: This activity translates the human appetite for food into an innovative language arts learning game.
- Fitness Frolic: This is a general fitness regime to energise and rejuvenate the body and prepare the mind for learning.
- Scratch Coding: This activity helps the students enhance their game development and animation skills.
- Young Authors/World of Orators/Dramatics: As part of this activity, the language skills of students are strengthened through role-playing performances.
- Kathak: Kathak goes beyond mudras and postures. It gives freedom to express not just through body, but also through one’s eyes and face. This dance form also aids in experiencing emotions and serves as a tonic for the mind and soul apart from being a good source of exercise for the body.
- Jazz Dance: Jazz dance is a form of exercise, an artistic expression, and also a stress reliever. This fast-paced form of dancing engages students’ stamina, balance and focus. The complex moves, twists and sequences push a dancer’s physical and mental boundaries.
- Strokes of compassion: Strokes of compassion focuses on developing students’creativity through colours as they work on ‘art for a cause’.
- Parasailing: This activity is conducted at safe locales under the supervision of trained instructors and gives students a refreshing break from their routine academic schedule.
- Robotics: Robotics helps students develop the skills of robot conceptualization and design.
- Entrepreneurship: This activity session equips students with critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork and presentation skills.
