The Global Nexus curriculum is the bilingual early-years framework used at Global Star School in Ho Chi Minh City for children from about six months to six years old. It rests on three principles: liberal-arts bilingualism in Vietnamese and English, learning through real experience, and whole-child development. It follows each child's growth across six dimensions (language, emotion, life skills, independence, creativity and thinking) and it sits on top of Vietnam's national preschool programme, which every licensed preschool in the country must deliver. Global Nexus decides how that programme is taught, in which languages, and with what picture of the child in mind.
That one paragraph is the short answer. The longer answer matters to anyone who has to work with the curriculum rather than simply hear about it: a teacher arriving from abroad, a Vietnamese teacher moving from a conventional kindergarten, a school leader comparing frameworks, or a parent who reads English and wants more than a brochure. What follows lays out the parts of the framework, how they relate to each other, and what the curriculum deliberately does not try to be.
The framework at a glance
A curriculum is easier to understand when its layers are separated. The table below shows the six layers of Global Nexus, the question each one answers, and where a visitor would actually notice it in a classroom.
| Layer | The question it answers | Where you notice it |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | What kind of person are we helping to grow? | In the way adults talk about children: as thinkers and communicators, not as pupils to be filled |
| Three principles | What rules every planning decision? | Two languages used for real purposes, hands-on materials, attention to feelings as well as skills |
| Six dimensions | What do we watch and support in each child? | Observation notes and development records organised by dimension, not by subject |
| National programme | What must every child in a Vietnamese preschool experience? | The five developmental domains and the age-group goals set by the Ministry of Education and Training |
| Borrowed practices | Which proven methods do we use, and for what? | Prepared practical-life materials, documentation on the walls, project work, simple investigations |
| Rhythm and evidence | How is time organised and how do we know it works? | A predictable day, weekly project threads, monthly themes, portfolios instead of scores |
None of the layers is new on its own. Plenty of schools talk about the whole child, and plenty use project work. What gives a framework its identity is the way the layers are held together, and in particular which layer wins when two of them disagree. In Global Nexus the national programme sets the floor, the principles decide method, and the six dimensions decide what adults pay attention to.
What Global Nexus is, and what it is not
Global Nexus is a curriculum in the full sense of the word: a written statement of intentions, a set of methods for reaching them, a way of organising time, and a way of recording what happens to children. It was built inside the Global Star School system for Vietnamese and international families in Ho Chi Minh City, and it is designed to be taught by mixed teams of Vietnamese teachers and English-speaking colleagues.
It is easier to place once you see what it is not. It is not a foreign national framework imported wholesale, in the way some international schools follow England's Early Years Foundation Stage. It is not an English course added to an ordinary kindergarten day, where children leave the room for forty minutes of vocabulary and come back to a Vietnamese-only routine. It is not a single method either. A school that calls itself Montessori is committed to a specific set of materials and a specific role for the adult; Global Nexus borrows from Montessori, from the preschools of Reggio Emilia, from STEAM and from project-based learning, but it is not bound to any one of them.
Finally, it is not childcare with a label attached. A day of safe supervision, meals and naps is valuable, and many families need exactly that. A curriculum adds something different: adults who know why they set up the room the way they did, what they are watching for in a given child this month, and how today connects to last week and next month. That difference is mostly invisible on a quick visit, which is why the rest of this category is about the parts you cannot see in a photograph.
The three principles, in brief
Liberal-arts bilingual. Vietnamese and English are both used as tools for thinking, asking, arguing and telling stories, not as subjects to be drilled. Children are not asked to translate word for word, and there are no flashcard drills. The word liberal points to breadth: language is used across art, science, play, movement and everyday care, so children meet it in context. Vietnamese remains the anchor language for most children, because a strong first language supports a second one rather than competing with it.
Real experiential learning. Children learn through things they can touch, try, change and talk about: weekly projects, monthly themes, simple life simulations such as running a pretend market, hands-on workshops and visits outside the school. An experience in this sense has a purpose and a follow-up. A trip that is never mentioned again is an outing; a trip that children prepare for, talk about, draw and return to is part of the curriculum.
Whole-child development. Growth in language, emotion, life skills, independence, creativity and thinking is supported together, and each child is allowed a personal rhythm. The principle rules out forcing children into a single mould, and it rules out comparing them with each other. Progress is described for a child against that child's earlier self, never as a position in a class.
Six dimensions instead of subjects
Most primary curricula are organised by subject: literacy, mathematics, science, art. Early-years frameworks around the world tend to avoid this, because a three-year-old does not experience the day in subjects. When a child builds a bridge of blocks for a toy car, negotiates with a friend about whose turn it is, and explains to the teacher why the bridge keeps falling, that is mathematics, language, social skill and scientific reasoning in a single ten-minute episode.
Global Nexus therefore names six dimensions to watch rather than six subjects to teach. Language covers listening, speaking, early print awareness and the use of two languages. Emotion covers recognising and naming feelings, coping with frustration and building secure relationships with adults. Life skills cover the practical competence of daily life, from washing hands to tidying up and taking part in a meal. Independence covers making choices, starting and finishing a task, and asking for help when it is really needed. Creativity covers expression through drawing, building, music, movement and pretend play. Thinking covers questioning, noticing patterns, early number, and testing ideas.
The dimensions overlap on purpose. A teacher planning a cooking activity is not asked to pick one of them; she is asked which two or three she will watch most closely for particular children this week. That habit, of choosing what to look at rather than trying to see everything, is what makes the six dimensions usable in a busy room of toddlers rather than a theory that lives in a binder.
The national programme underneath
Every licensed preschool in Vietnam follows the national preschool education programme issued by the Ministry of Education and Training. For children aged three to six it is organised in five developmental domains: physical development, cognitive development, language development, emotional and social skills development, and aesthetic development. For the youngest children, in the nursery years, the programme groups emotion, social skills and aesthetics into one domain, giving four. It also names play as the leading activity of the kindergarten years, which places the national framework closer to international early-years thinking than many outsiders assume.
Global Nexus treats this programme as the floor, not as an extra. The six dimensions map onto the national domains rather than replacing them: language onto language, thinking onto cognition, emotion and independence onto the emotional and social domain, creativity largely onto aesthetics, and life skills across physical development and social skills. Where the national programme sets an age-group goal, a Global Nexus classroom still has to reach it. What the curriculum changes is the route: more open-ended materials, two languages instead of one, longer projects, and observation instead of tests.
For international teachers this point is easy to miss. The national programme is not a parallel track taught in the afternoon by Vietnamese colleagues while the bilingual curriculum happens in the morning. It is the base the whole day is built on, and a separate article in this category walks through the mapping domain by domain.
How the curriculum lives in time
A curriculum has to show up somewhere in the timetable, or it exists only in planning documents. In Global Nexus it lives on four time scales. The day has a predictable shape built around a morning circle, periods of chosen play, shared activities, time outdoors, meals and rest; the predictability is itself part of the curriculum, because young children cope better with new ideas when the frame around them is familiar. The week carries a project thread that children can return to on several days, so that an idea from Monday is still alive on Thursday.
The month carries a theme, chosen to connect with children's lives in Ho Chi Minh City: water in the rainy season, food and family around Tet, light and lanterns around the Mid-Autumn Festival, the neighbourhood, animals, the body. The year gives the themes an order, so that a child who stays for several years meets familiar topics again at a deeper level rather than repeating the same activities.
Each time scale answers a different planning question. The day asks whether children feel safe and know what comes next. The week asks whether one idea has had time to grow. The month asks whether the theme has reached all six dimensions. The year asks whether each child has met a broad and balanced range of experiences. Later articles in this category take each scale in turn.
What counts as evidence in Global Nexus
Early-years curricula are often judged by the wrong evidence. A child who can recite twenty English words on demand looks like progress, yet tells you little about whether that child can use English to ask for help or explain an idea. Global Nexus deliberately avoids scores and rankings for children. Its evidence is observational: short notes written during the day, photographs of work in progress, samples of drawing and early mark-making, recordings of a child's talk, and a development record organised by the six dimensions.
This approach is consistent with a large body of research and policy. The Harvard Center on the Developing Child has popularised the idea of serve and return, the back-and-forth responsive exchanges between adults and young children that shape early brain architecture, and those exchanges are exactly what observation tries to capture. The OECD's Starting Strong reports have repeatedly argued that the quality of everyday interactions, sometimes called process quality, matters more for children's outcomes than structural features alone.
For a school, the practical consequence is that evidence is gathered by teachers during ordinary activities rather than in special testing sessions. For a family, it means progress is reported as a story about their child with examples, not as a mark. For a child, it means the day is never interrupted to be assessed, and no child is told where they rank among their friends.
Questions to ask when you first meet the curriculum
Whether you are joining a Global Nexus classroom as a teacher, evaluating it as a school leader, or reading about it as a parent, the following questions get to the heart of the framework faster than any brochure.
- Which of the three principles is hardest to live up to in this classroom, and what does the team do about it?
- Can a teacher show how this month's theme reaches each of the six dimensions, with examples from actual children?
- Where in the plan does the national programme appear, and how are its age-group goals checked?
- How is each language used during the day, and who uses it, for what purposes?
- What does a child's development record contain, and how often is it shared with the family?
- What happens when a child is not following the usual pattern for their age?
- How does a new teacher learn the reasons behind the routines, not just the routines themselves?
Good answers to these questions are specific and slightly untidy, because they describe real children and real compromises. For families who want to see the curriculum in a classroom, visits are arranged through Global Star School at globalstarschool.com. Teachers and school leaders interested in the framework will find the remaining categories of this site organised around the parts of the work they are most likely to need.
Câu hỏi thường gặp
Is the Global Nexus curriculum the same as an international curriculum such as EYFS or IB PYP?
No. Global Nexus is its own framework built on Vietnam's national preschool programme, with Vietnamese and English used side by side. It borrows practices from several international approaches but does not follow a foreign national framework or an authorised international programme.
What age range does Global Nexus cover?
The curriculum is designed for children from about six months to six years old, covering both the nursery years and the three kindergarten years that come before Grade 1 in Vietnam. The emphasis shifts with age, from secure relationships and sensory exploration with infants to longer projects and readiness for school with five-year-olds.
Do children in Global Nexus classes get grades or test scores?
No. Children are observed during ordinary activities, and their progress is recorded across six dimensions with notes, photographs and samples of work. Families receive descriptions of their own child's development, and children are never ranked or compared with one another.
Is Global Nexus mainly an English programme?
It is a bilingual programme, not an English course. English and Vietnamese are both used for real purposes throughout the day, with Vietnamese as the anchor language for most children. The aim is for children to think and communicate in both languages, not to accumulate vocabulary lists.
Why does the curriculum use dimensions rather than subjects?
Young children do not experience the day in separate subjects. A single activity can involve language, number, emotion and problem-solving at once, so the framework asks teachers to watch dimensions of growth across activities rather than to schedule subject lessons.
Where can a teacher or school leader learn more about working with the framework?
This site covers the curriculum, bilingual pedagogy, classroom practice, observation and working in a Vietnamese bilingual preschool. Training for kindergarten owners and teachers is offered through the Global Nexus training channel at globalnexus.edu.vn, which describes its own courses.