Petition to Review the Singapore Education System

[vlim]

Busymom:

err... now you are making me :oops:


You are the master in human motivation. I have much more to learn from you. :oops:

but u are the KiasuGrandMaster III

[Busymom]

vlim:

Busymom:

err... now you are making me :oops:


You are the master in human motivation. I have much more to learn from you. :oops:

but u are the KiasuGrandMaster III

have you seen the rest here...? sshhhhhh.... a lot got oscar even :gloomy:

:lol:

[vlim]

Busymom:

vlim:

[quote=\"Busymom\"]err... now you are making me :oops:


You are the master in human motivation. I have much more to learn from you. :oops:

but u are the KiasuGrandMaster III

have you seen the rest here...? sshhhhhh.... a lot got oscar even :gloomy:

:lol:[/quote]aiya nebbermind la...kiasugrandmaster III also good enough la... :lol:

[Chenonceau]

Busymom:

err... now you are making me :oops:


You are the master (correction, PhD) in human motivation. I have much more to learn from you. :oops:

I agree mah... trying to multi-task a research paper in Word... so I lazy and just press the picture lor...

What I meant was that I agree. Sorry I embarassed you. :hugs: PhD doesn't tell me all I need to know about mothering, even though it helps a bit. Mostly, it's just Permanent Head Damage.

[corneyAmber]

vlim:

Chenonceau:

[quote=\"meinteel\"]As school teachers, we cannot reject a students request for help. That is of course to be conducted before or after school.

My son's English teacher marks compos with a few ticks. She says she has no time to comment, nor give a mark. If we do extra compos and ask for feedback from her, she takes THREE weeks to revert. They don't reject... but man, they can sure hold you up.

wow...chenonceau..u do have very high expectations on teachers.... :lol: ....if every kids give her extra compo to mark, I think she will be pretty stress up... :lol:[/quote]Actually I gotta agree with Chenonceau on this, the number of compositions done in class is certainly not enough to prepare for exams. I have been told(because I enquired during PTC) by the teacher from P1 and P2 that there would be no MT compo writing until P4 during PTC and my gutfeel told me something was wrong. So true enough I got a shock that compo writing was indeed required in P3. Quite a number of students in her class have siblings, so those kids knew. We knew because of my gutfeel so I sent my child for a crash course as the teacher had not started teaching compo then and I would not continue to believe so. And later they did 3 compos in 2 terms and one of which was done 3 days before the exam. The first 2 were GROUPWORK!! :faint:

I am thankful to GOD my child scored well for the compo despite a crash course but many other kids \"tanked\" sadly... Only those who were sent to enrichment were saved and even some who went still \"tanked\"(runway was too short). So was that fair learning? Many experienced mums would have known because
(1) They had one child who \"tanked\" before :lol:
(2) They had friends whose kids tanked in P3. :lol:
(3) They had teacher friends who warned them.
(4) They read KSP :lol:

So if you are not one of the above, your child would have \"tanked\" or would be \"tanking\".

Now they say P3 gap is a big jump. Surely it is if there is much more in curriculum but little time to teach or poor planning to teach.

So Chenonceau knew the issue hence she made her child write and sent to the teacher for marking. She is doing it right also because marking is another \"art\" in school which can differ largely from what parents or enrichment centre think.

I also had the same experience as Chenonceau on Eng compo in P1. Scripts were returned with \"Good work...\", \"Well done\". I gave the feedback to the Eng teacher that it should be marked the way exam would be marked then they would know where their weakness was, content or language. Lucky for us, the teacher took my feedback and implemented it. IT WAS SO GOOD cos from then onwards, we knew where she could improve on and it helped..because it was never completely right during the class practice. In the end, during the exam, she scored full marks(that was of course only possible in P1/P2 as that was the marking scheme and expectation then)

So realistically, can children score well in exam if they only do 3 compos in 2 terms? I know my child would have failed in P3's MT, not to mention do well.

So the 2 issues I have here is:
1. Why was the P1/P2 teacher not aware of higher level curriculum expectation and gave me the wrong info? Almost \"tanked\" my child and could potentially affect her interest in MT and even lower esteem because of poor results. Also a psychological barrier of P3 being difficult may also set in which I am trying to avoid. I am now seeing the impact of the P3 results on many children and they are suffering, many cried because of the dip and they feared scolding from parents or their esteem was hurt.

2. If compo is such a difficult component to get it right in 3 seatings, why are they teaching it this way? Lack of time should not be an excuse. This is predictable outcome. As adults, I don't think we can even learn to write well just by doing it 3 times. Then we talk about lowering the expectation in exam but that is so not true too because many children indeed \"tanked\".

Sad to share, I know of many children who started creative writing enrichment since P1 but writes averagely for exam now so what makes us think it is possible to do so in 3 sessions with the kind of expectations in exams? With school's coaching of 3 sessions, one could only possibly expect to score 11-12/20 at best. If a child can score 17-18/20 with 3 sessions, that child is a born genius. So is the school expecting 11-12/20 score? No, as that is below average for the school. Average should be about 14-15/20. So is there a mismatch? You be the judge.

[vlim]

I would think is the school fault..as the teachers will go according to the curriculum or worksheets plan by the school(I strongly believed)...they cannot suka suka teach whatever they like right :scratchhead: ..in such a case got to raise the issue to the principal.. :mad:

[corneyAmber]

vlim:

I would think is the school fault..as the teachers will go according to the curriculum or worksheets plan by the school(I strongly believed)...they cannot suka suka teach whatever they like right :scratchhead: ..in such a case got to raise the issue to the principal.. :mad:

So Chenonceau and my experience are the exceptions? Every school teaches MT or Eng compo with more sessions? ok...I just recall one neighbourhood school I remember gave additional creative writing class outside the school hours, are there many schools doing so?

[vlim]

ksi:

vlim:

I would think is the school fault..as the teachers will go according to the curriculum or worksheets plan by the school(I strongly believed)...they cannot suka suka teach whatever they like right :scratchhead: ..in such a case got to raise the issue to the principal.. :mad:

So Chenonceau and my experience are the exceptions? Every school teaches MT or Eng compo with more sessions? ok...I just recall one neighbourhood school I remember gave additional creative writing class outside the school hours, are there many schools doing so?

my dd (p3) school's also doesn't give many many compo writings..I think about 2 to 3 per terms..In p1, they were taught to practise writing sentences for HCL. In p2, they have to write a paragraph with a picture with some helping phrases..and p3 they have to write a proper essay with 4 pictures provided and some helping phrases. She will usually write about 1 to 2 pages.

[corneyAmber]

vlim:

my dd (p3) school's also doesn't give many many compo writings..I think about 2 to 3 per terms..In p1, they were taught to practise writing sentences for HCL. In p2, they have to write a paragraph with a picture with some helping phrases..and p3 they have to write a proper essay with 4 pictures provided and some helping phrases. She will usually write about 1 to 2 pages.

Does this approach guarantee an \"at-least- average\" score for the compo by P3?

[vlim]

ksi:

vlim:

my dd (p3) school's also doesn't give many many compo writings..I think about 2 to 3 per terms..In p1, they were taught to practise writing sentences for HCL. In p2, they have to write a paragraph with a picture with some helping phrases..and p3 they have to write a proper essay with 4 pictures provided and some helping phrases. She will usually write about 1 to 2 pages.

Does this approach guarantee an \"at-least- average\" score for the compo by P3?

I supposed so..but nevertheless..coming to language the kids got to really read more story books in order to master the sentence construction especially for Chinese as nowadays most of the family are English spoken plus Chinese is tougher to learn ...so no choice got to put in more effort. If the parent is well verse in Chinese, then they can teach their own kid else got to outsource like me...