As one of the leading international schools in China, Western Academy of Beijing (WAB) provides world-class education to over 1,400 students. The school has been accredited by several global organisations including the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the Council of International Schools (CIS), and has always placed students at the centre of learning.
However, as WAB grew, capturing student learning and deriving insights from it, became increasingly complex, shares Jenny Jin, the Curriculum Coordinator. “We were using three different platforms for planning, evidence collection, and family communication. Our teachers, therefore, had to spend a lot of time juggling these platforms to keep up with our students’ evolving needs and communicate with their families.”
Jenny adds, “We came across Toddle at an IB conference, and immediately recognized it as the missing piece for our IB team. All our teachers were relieved to see how the platform automatically connected lesson planning with student work, while also keeping families in the loop, all in one place.”
What started with the PYP team quickly expanded, with the MYP and DP teams adopting Toddle soon after.
“The more we used Toddle’s planners, the more we learned about IB planning”
Jenny explains, “Our planning process was often disorganized and limited to the ideas we could come up with during our planning meetings. With Toddle’s planners, we saw how much more organized and creative our planning process could actually be!”
“The built-in planning template for PYP, MYP, and DP helped our teachers, both new and experienced, develop a deeper understanding of the IB framework. It provided a clear, visual structure of the planning process, enabling teachers to think more intentionally about each phase, while also ensuring that our planners were consistent across grade levels.”
“For our newer teachers, being able to access IB guides within the planner helped build practical understanding of the various IB elements and how they come together. For homeroom teachers and subject specialists, the built-in chat interface made it a lot easier to collaborate closely and establish more creative transdisciplinary connections. And for our leadership team, the review process became much simpler as they could view the unit’s learning goals and all associated learning experiences in one place, and leave feedback right within the planner.”
“Toddle’s planners didn’t just save us time – they helped us to invest that time in more creative aspects of the IB planning process.”
“Toddle’s portfolios became the go-to resource for our teachers and families to understand student learning”
Jenny explains, “Before Toddle, we hosted student work on a blog, but it was completely disconnected from our unit planners. Our teachers had to manually review each student’s work, categorize them based on learning standards, identify gaps, and feed this information back to the planner. This often led to a fragmented understanding of student learning and sometimes inaccurate conclusions.”.
“With Toddle, our planners and student portfolios were automatically connected and integrated in one platform. Our teachers simply had to tag each student’s work to relevant standards, and then Toddle would work its magic in three ways.
First, it automatically fed student submissions back into the planner, enabling teachers to identify and plan subsequent learning experiences effectively.
Second, each submission, along with the corresponding learning standards, was automatically added to the student’s portfolio, helping families understand how their child’s daily work aligns with the broader goals of the IB.
Third, it organized all our student submissions based on learning standards, which saved us a whole lot of manual work in the months leading up to our evaluation visit.”
“We were thoroughly impressed to see how insights on student work could automatically be relayed to planners, portfolios, reports, and all the way to our evidence dashboard for evaluation! Now, our workflow is streamlined and in sync with our teaching objectives. Which means our teachers can focus more on engaging with students and less on administrative tasks.”
“Our working families have thanked us for switching to Toddle!”
Jenny explains, “Many of our families work demanding jobs or live abroad, making it challenging to stay involved in their children’s day-to-day learning. But Toddle has helped us provide this vital connection. The Family App gives our families convenient mobile access to their children’s school life anytime, and from anywhere. With a simple tap, they can view everything from their children’s day to day work, tasks, portfolios, and reports to school-wide announcements and updates.”
“Our parents especially love that they can not only view, but also leave comments on their children’s portfolios and actively engage with their learning through Toddle. This level of involvement and presence from loved ones has been an incredible morale boost for our students and reminded them of the broader community cheering them on!”
