In Global Nexus the week is the main unit of planning. Each week carries one project thread linked to the monthly theme, opened with an invitation on Monday, explored and extended in the middle of the week, and gathered together on Friday, while a fixed daily rhythm of circle time, chosen play, shared activity, outdoor time, meals and rest stays the same around it. The fixed rhythm gives children security; the project thread gives their learning somewhere to go. A week is judged a success when children are still talking about Monday's idea on Thursday, not when every planned activity has been ticked off.
Daily plans are too short for an idea to grow, and monthly plans are too long to respond to what children actually do. The week sits between the two. This article explains how a Global Nexus week is put together, what is decided in advance and what is left open, and how teams use the end of the week to plan the next one.
Why the week, and not the day or the month
Young children rarely finish an idea in one sitting. A group that starts building a bridge on Monday may not discover that it needs a wider base until Tuesday, try a different material on Wednesday and want to show it off on Friday. A curriculum planned day by day tends to cut that process short, replacing yesterday's interest with today's new activity. Children learn, quite reasonably, that nothing they start will be continued.
Monthly planning has the opposite problem. A theme plan written at the beginning of the month cannot know that children will become fascinated by a lizard on the classroom wall in the second week, or that a rainstorm will flood the play area. If the month is fully planned in advance, teachers must choose between ignoring the children and abandoning the plan.
The week is long enough for an idea to develop over several days and short enough to be rewritten in light of what happened. In Global Nexus the monthly theme sets direction, roughly four weekly threads explore it, and the daily plan is filled in close to the day. This layered arrangement is common in project-based early-years practice, and it allows teams to stay faithful to the national age-group goals while still following children's questions.
The week also suits the way teaching teams work. Most teams can find time for one proper planning conversation a week, at the end of Friday or early on Monday, but not for a long meeting every day. Making the week the unit of planning matches the curriculum to the time adults actually have, which is one reason the arrangement holds up in busy schools rather than only on paper.
What stays fixed and what flexes
The balance between predictability and openness is the core design choice of the week. The table shows how the main elements are usually treated.
| Element | Fixed or flexible | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Arrival, morning circle, meals, rest, departure | Fixed in time and form | Predictable routines help young children feel secure and make transitions calmer |
| Daily outdoor time | Fixed in time, flexible in content | Movement and fresh air are part of the national programme and of the curriculum, whatever the weather allows |
| Chosen play in learning corners | Fixed in time, flexible in materials | Corners are adjusted during the week to feed the project thread |
| Shared project activity | Flexible in content and length | The thread follows children's responses; some days need longer, some shorter |
| Language lead for each part of the day | Planned for the week, adjusted daily | Teams agree which language leads each block, then adapt for individual children |
| Visits, workshops, guests | Planned in advance where logistics require | Some experiences need booking or permissions and cannot be improvised |
The pattern to notice is that time is mostly fixed while content mostly flexes. Children can predict when circle time or outdoor play will happen, but not exactly what will be in the tray on the science table. That combination, a reliable frame with surprising contents, is what keeps a week both calm and interesting.
Learning corners are where the flexibility is easiest to see. On Monday the home corner may hold its usual pots and dolls; by Wednesday, if the thread is about markets, it may have baskets, a simple balance and paper for making pretend money. Changing a corner midweek is one of the quietest and most effective ways to feed a project, because children meet the idea again during play they have chosen for themselves.
Carrying one thread across five days: an illustrative week
The example below is illustrative, not a record of a real class. It shows how a single thread, a pretend market within a monthly theme about food and family, might move through a week for four- and five-year-olds.
- Monday, opening. A basket of real fruit and vegetables appears at morning circle. Children handle, smell and name them in both languages and share where their families buy food. The teacher notes who mentions markets, supermarkets or street vendors.
- Tuesday, investigating. Small groups sort the produce by colour, size or whether it grows on a tree, then weigh some items on a simple balance. Questions from Monday's circle are written down by the teacher as children dictate them.
- Wednesday, extending. Where a visit is possible, a small group walks with teachers to look at a nearby market stall; otherwise families are invited to send a photograph of where they shop. Children notice how goods are arranged and how people talk when buying and selling.
- Thursday, making. Children build their own market in the role-play corner: they decide what to sell, make pretend goods from clay and paper, and practise asking and answering in Vietnamese and English.
- Friday, gathering. The market opens for another class or for families at pick-up. Afterwards children look at photographs from the week and say what they would change, and the teacher records their ideas for next week.
Not every week runs this neatly, and it should not. Some threads fade by Wednesday, and teachers let them go. Others grow so strongly that they continue into the following week. The structure is there to make continuation possible, not compulsory.
Language across the week
Planning the use of two languages is one of the distinctive tasks of a Global Nexus week. Teams decide in advance which language leads each block of the day, and they think about the whole week rather than each day in isolation. The aim is that children meet the same project vocabulary in both languages over several days, used in different situations, rather than hearing a list of words once.
In the illustrative market week, Vietnamese might lead the Monday discussion, because children are drawing on family experience and need their strongest language to share it. English might lead Tuesday's sorting and weighing, because the materials carry the meaning and words such as heavy, light, more and less can be understood from what children see. On Thursday both languages are used in role play, often with children choosing which one to use for their stall.
Teachers also plan for the children who need a different balance. A child new to English may be given a Vietnamese-speaking partner during English-led blocks. A child from an English-speaking family who is just starting Vietnamese may be paired the other way. These adjustments are noted in the weekly plan so that every adult in the room knows them, rather than depending on whoever happens to notice.
Leaving room for the unplanned
A week that is planned to the minute leaves no space for the moments that often matter most: the child who brings a snail in from the garden, the argument over a toy that turns into a conversation about fairness, the question nobody expected. Global Nexus weeks leave deliberate gaps. Chosen play periods are not filled with adult-led tasks, and the shared project activity is planned with an outline rather than a script.
Teachers are also encouraged to treat interruptions as data. If a group of children keeps drifting away from the planned activity to watch builders outside the window, that tells the team something about what interests them. The response might be to bring a question about building into next week's thread, or to add construction materials to a corner. It is rarely to insist that children return to the original task.
This openness has limits. Safety, care routines and the national age-group goals are not suspended because children have found something more interesting. The skill teams develop is to hold the frame steady while letting the content move, so that the unplanned enriches the week rather than replacing it.
The end-of-week meeting
Most Global Nexus teams meet briefly at the end of the week to review what happened and plan what comes next. The meeting works best when it starts from evidence rather than impressions: photographs, notes, samples of children's work and the questions children asked. The team asks which parts of the thread caught children's interest, which fell flat, which children were noticeably absent from the project, and what that might mean.
From that review comes the next week's thread. Sometimes it is the planned next step in the monthly theme. Sometimes it grows from something children did that nobody anticipated. The team also checks the plan against the six dimensions and the national goals for the month, so that following children's interests does not mean drifting away from the commitments the curriculum makes.
For younger groups the same logic applies with a lighter structure. With toddlers the thread may be a type of material, such as water, sand or fabric, explored in different ways across the week, with language and routines carrying more of the load. The week remains the unit; the thread simply becomes more sensory and less verbal.
Common pitfalls in planning a week
Too many threads at once. A week that tries to explore planting, insects, weather and colours at the same time leaves children with fragments of each. One main thread, with corners and stories that support it, produces deeper talk and more to observe.
Planning the product instead of the process. When a plan begins with the finished item, such as a paper lantern for every child, the week bends towards producing identical objects. Planning the questions and materials instead leaves room for different children to arrive at different results.
Forgetting the middle of the week. Monday openings and Friday celebrations are easy to plan; Tuesday to Thursday is where ideas either deepen or fade. Teams that plan only the ends of the week often find the thread has stalled by Wednesday.
One language for the whole thread. If every project activity is led in English, children who are still building English lose access to the thinking. If every activity is led in Vietnamese, the bilingual principle disappears from the core of the week. Balancing the lead language across the thread is part of the plan, not an afterthought.
No named children. A weekly plan that speaks only of the class misses the purpose of observation. Naming two or three children whose progress the team will watch closely, and rotating those names across the month, makes sure that quieter children are seen as clearly as confident ones.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
Does every Global Nexus class follow the same weekly plan?
No. Classes share the monthly theme, the principles and the daily rhythm, but each team plans its own weekly thread based on its children. Two classes of the same age may explore quite different aspects of the same theme in the same week.
How many activities are planned for a week?
There is no fixed number. The week is built around one main project thread with several related activities and adjustments to the learning corners. Teams aim for depth over quantity, so a week may include fewer activities than a conventional plan but more time on each.
What happens if children lose interest in the thread halfway through the week?
Teachers let it go and look for what has caught the children's attention instead. A thread that has run its course is not forced to continue, and the end-of-week meeting decides whether to return to the theme from a different angle.
How are weekly plans shared with families?
Schools usually share a short summary of the week's thread and a few photographs or examples of children's work. The emphasis is on what children explored and talked about, so families can continue the conversation at home.
How does a weekly thread work with infants and toddlers?
For the youngest children the thread is usually a material or a sensory experience explored in several ways across the week. Routines and close relationships with familiar adults carry more of the curriculum, and planning is lighter and more responsive.
Who writes the weekly plan in a mixed Vietnamese and international team?
The plan is written by the team together, usually led by the homeroom teacher. Each adult contributes observations and ideas, and the plan records which language leads each part of the day and which children need particular support.