MOe announced Learning of English to Develop 21st Century
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Agree with Melodies that the good thing about Stellar is that my kid enjoys school but am not really sure if all kids have the ability for higher order thinking. Sometimes, I get the impression that some kids do not know what is going on in Language Art lesson. Hence, is it something that can be taught or is there a limit to such ability? Also, am concerned if it will benefit kids who comes from more priviledged background as it seems like parents need to help their kids develop the relevant skills if schools cannot implement it well.
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There is a 10-15 IQ points difference between my 2 children and am seeing a vast difference in analytical and information processing ability age on age, hence I really wonder if an average child without parental guidance similar to those given by some of the parents here can make it under the Stellar program.
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Scary:
Maths syllabus confirmed changed. This was announced just a few weeks ago.
SINGAPORE:
Primary 1 Maths syllabus to be tweaked from next year
Pupils entering primary school next year will be given more breathing room to grasp basic numeracy skills with the Ministry of Education (MOE) planning to drop part of the Primary 1 mathematics syllabus as part of its regular curriculum review.
A ministry spokesperson said that \"minor changes\" will kick in from next year's Primary 1 cohort.
For instance, Primary 1 students will no longer learn about measuring and comparing objects' physical mass through the use of non-standard units like paper clips and apples. They will also not be taught about 3D shapes.
They will instead learn about the orientation of objects such as whether they are facing left or right or pointing up or down.
\"These minor changes improve the sequence of the topics being taught without increase in content,\" added the spokesperson.
In tandem with these changes, the format of the Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE) for mathematics will be adjusted for these students come 2018. No details on the format change are available yet, but the MOE said schools will be informed of the change two years in advance.
The syllabus adjustments come after the MOE's regular curriculum review - done every six years - and they are in line with the Primary Education Review and Implementation (PERI) initiated by the MOE to provide a more all-rounded primary school education.
Primary school teachers welcomed the latest move, saying it bridges current gaps in students' understanding and allows more time for students to grasp the remaining topics.
A teacher who has been teaching for seven years agreed that teaching children left and right orientation is useful because \"not all know their left from their right and this knowledge is needed when it comes to heuristics problems\".
Another primary school teacher with more than 30 years of experience said: \"The syllabus is already very tight for Primary 1 and doing away with some topics will allow for more breathing space.\"
Noting that not all students enter primary school with a good knowledge of numeracy, she felt lightening the syllabus load will give teachers more time to impart basic numeracy skills.
\"It is important to have a strong foundation so that it will be easier for them to understand more difficult concepts later on,\" she said.
source:-
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1200575/1/.html -
Sun_2010:
[/quote]I like this, in fact, a good chef (teachers) can make a delicious meal even with very ordinary ingredients (students) with minimal seasoning(parents).Chenonceau:
[quote=\"Melodies\"]
As always the a good recipe doesnt mean a delicious dish. It depends on the Chef (teacher) and the Main Ingredients (students) and side Ingredients ( parents).
This applied to our primary English teachers in our days, many of them were not graduates but had passion in teaching us. -
Coolkidsrock2:
There is a 10-15 IQ points difference between my 2 children and am seeing a vast difference in analytical and information processing ability age on age, hence I really wonder if an average child without parental guidance similar to those given by some of the parents here can make it under the Stellar program.
Exactly..stellar program works if kids are able to understand and apply..but for some kids..u have to simply tell them..that is the grammar rules..memorise and learn it...no need to understand why it has to be this eay.
In a way, I am glad that the changes only affect the P3 this year, if it would to be implemented to my dd1 (P4 this year), I doubt she would pass PSLE English (I better start earning and save more $$ to send her to overseas uni) ..some kids are just not into this kind of visual, oracle questions. -
The article below appeared in the Straits Times. It was written by a PAP MP. It was originally from here - http://hri-kumar.blogspot.sg/2012/09/primary-colours-dispelling-myths-about.html?showComment=1346808723555
Primary Colours – Dispelling Myths About Primary Education
While the system of pre-school education featured heavily at the National Day Rally, the message which resonated most was a simple one: PM's urging that pre-school should be more about developing social skills and that kids should be allowed to enjoy their childhood. Every parent I know wants that.
But the tail that wags the dog is primary school. We regard pre-school as a preparatory step to primary school. Mandating that pre-schools focus on soft skills may make more parents turn to private centres to coach their kids on the hard skills they think are necessary for primary school. That would make the problem worse.
I think there is a more fundamental question of what we want our primary school system to be, and whether we should allow more choices in the system. Minister Heng spoke of two different parents: one did not want to his child to have homework during the holidays, while the other questioned why his child was not given any. Perhaps the solution is for the two children to swap schools – in other words, allow parents to choose the kind of education which best suits their child. When government runs schools, it tends to result in a one-size-fits-all approach. This is not a criticism – it is a natural consequence of efficiency and fair distribution.
But so long as we maintain the current system, MOE can and should deal with parents’ concerns about Primary One education. They should start by addressing directly and clearly a number of questions which keep surfacing.
Myth or Fact 1: It is not clear what literacy and numeracy skills children are expected to have when entering Primary One.
Parents I have spoken to are not clear about what level of skills their child should have when they start Primary One. The consequence is clear: if parents do not know, they will over-prepare their child. The MOE should simply make this clear, and remove the anxiety.
Myth or Fact 2: Teachers do not teach the curriculum if the majority of the class already knows their stuff.
There is much anecdotal evidence that this happens. If it is true, MOE should put a stop to it. It only rewards over-preparation and forces others to over-prepare as well. That just means more homework and tuition. If teachers want to teach beyond the curriculum, fine, but it should not be at the expense of their responsibility to ensure that all their students are taught the curriculum. If parents want their child to get ahead, that’s their prerogative, but they must accept that their child may get bored having to do the same thing twice.
Myth or Fact 3: Teachers encourage parents to send kids who are behind for tuition.
Again, one hears of this happening. It would be particularly egregious if the child is considered “behind” simply because his classmates are ahead of the curriculum and the teacher is therefore not prepared to teach it.
More fundamentally, it should be the obligation of the school to help those who are behind or have difficulty coping. The problem should not be out-sourced to a tuition centre. With primary schools going full day, there is more scope to offer weaker students extra lessons.
Myth or Fact 4: Pupils are “streamed” according to abilities in Primary One and the better teachers are assigned to the “better” classes
If this is true, MOE should put a stop to it. This only encourages parents to over-prepare their child to get into the \"better\" classes. Putting all the “better” students in the same class also lends to the impression that children will not be taught equally. Teachers should be assigned randomly. Also, if teachers ensure that all their students are taught the curriculum, there will be no need for such “streaming”. Besides, if you want pre-school to be more about social skills and play, it makes no sense to group kids according to their literacy and numeracy skills the minute they enter Primary schools. The only assessment the school should be concerned with is to identify the kids who have not achieved the minimum skills (Myth 1) and to give them extra attention (Myth 3). Given that more than 99% of our children go to pre-school, this will likely be a small group in each school.
Even with these changes, will some parents still send their kids for tuition? Of course they will. Parents will do what they believe will give their kids an advantage. That has been, and will always be, the case. And we should not stop that - it is their prerogative how they wish to raise their children. But what we can and should do is to address features in our system which compel such conduct.
Some have said that any changes at pre-school or lower primary level will have little or no effect unless we also deal with GEP and PSLE. I do not think that is necessarily true, although we do need to address some issues with them as well. I will share my thoughts in a later post.
I think many PAP MPs see the issues and MOE Primary Schools' role in them. I think changes happen in the preschools and in special education because these 2 systems are UNdeveloped. I think MOE is protective of the system as-is at Primary level because it is either...
(1) too PROUD to see the faults
(2) too locked inside their perspective to understand what is happening on the ground
(3) too keen to say \"It is not OUR fault. It's the parents' fault.\"
Unless MOE decides to care for students and parents (instead of some theoretical future economy which it is trying to prepare our kids for)... I don't think PAP MPs can do much even if they understand what parents are going through.
I bolded and underlined the sentence that I KEEP repeating even though some say that it is NOT a systemic issue. It is. -
Last year, the teaching and testing of Mother Tongue was revised, affecting kids taking PSLE in 2017 and this yr slight changes were made to P1 maths and now it’s the Eng syllabus. I wonder are they working on science?
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SAHM_TAN:
Last year, the teaching and testing of Mother Tongue was revised, affecting kids taking PSLE in 2017 and this yr slight changes were made to P1 maths and now it's the Eng syllabus. I wonder are they working on science?
:offtopic: perhaps. Many schools are already conducting Science practical exams.
Practical exam may form certain percentage for future PSLEs
The way things are developing, it seems to be less focus on pen and paper, more of oral for languages and thus may be more hands on activities eg practical exam for Science. -
Personally, I view the announced changes with mixed emotions… STELLAR seems to focus more on the oratorical competencies of pupils and seek to mould pupils to be more confident users of English, which is something many people feel Singaporean children are lacking in. However, like all things, its a balancing act. With greater focus on oratorical skills, teachers would naturally have less time to work on pupils written competencies and grammar.
Another criticism of the STELLAR is that assessment has not followed suit; the majority of assessment is still written. The recent announcements seems to suggest that moving STELLAR to the upper primary pupils and changes to PSLE will create better alignment. But I will rather reserve judgement until I see more in terms of the specific changes in the assessment. So far what we know is the following:
Writing - Instead of two questions with fixed scenarios to write a narrative. We will now have one topic which can be approached from any one of several perspectives. Visuals will be provided to help candidates think about the different perspectives. (This suggests greater variety in the kinds of writing which will be "acceptable" in exams. Are the teachers able to cope teaching these various text-types for exams? How do we come to an agreement with regards to marking, considering now we need to compare a narrative with other text-types?)
A new Visual Text Comprehension section in the form of multiple choice questions. (This is a media literacy skill. Will the paper expect pupils merely to extract information from the visual or are they expected to analyze and critic the information? Because if we are merely expecting pupils to extract information then we are not really teaching media literacy. On the other hand, if we expect them to conduct criticism, then the teaching of it is going to be a tall order for many teachers. I have not heard from my teacher friends of a structured curriculum on media literacy…)
Types of questions will now be varied for the Comprehension Open-ended section in Paper 2. For example, candidates will be asked to fill in tables using information from a passage. (This suggests that the new assessment format is focusing on pupils ability to extract information from a text and order them in point form into tables. I note that by doing so, there will be lower expectations on their ability to construct grammatical sentences. This might be aligned to STELLAR but is this truly desirable?)
The Listening Comprehension paper will have more items with graphic representation. (This suggests that it would be less text-based thus resulting in pupils relying less on grammar and reading. Again is this desirable?)
For the Oral Communication paper, candidates will respond to a visual stimulus that is thematically linked to the Reading Aloud passage. Candidates will then move on to a discussion on a relevant topic. (Will this replace the current format of picture discussion and conversation? If so what is the expectation with regards to the level detail that that discussion should be? As parents and teachers know, there is a broad "standard" with regards to what constitute a "good" conversation and picture discussion. However, with the new format we need to know how MOE/SEAB is going to decide what is the new "standard" that we expect before we can evaluate if this is going to be beneficial to our kids… -
Snow Crystal:
RE: the line in bold above.SAHM_TAN:
Last year, the teaching and testing of Mother Tongue was revised, affecting kids taking PSLE in 2017 and this yr slight changes were made to P1 maths and now it's the Eng syllabus. I wonder are they working on science?
:offtopic: perhaps. Many schools are already conducting Science practical exams.
Practical exam may form certain percentage for future PSLEs
The way things are developing, it seems to be less focus on pen and paper, more of oral for languages and thus may be more hands on activities eg practical exam for Science.
This would be so much more fun (and more coherent with how children best learn science). My DS' hardly does experiments in school. Can count the times on one hand. However, in PSLE 10 out of 14 questions in a randomly picked Paper 2 Science... tested experiments, the pen and paper way. Kids who rarely do experiments cannot translate no-experience-with-experiments into pen-and-paper experiments.
What is true is that to do well in the new PSLE syllabus across almost all subjects, assessment books ain't gonna help. This can be VERY scary for many parents because WE grew up with assessment books. As teaching and testing evolve AWAY from what we are used to... and TOWARDS how children should really learn (i.e., multi-modally)... parents will feel insecure. Forummers who have attended the Positive Teaching Seminar will be familiar with multi-modal learning. If not, just google the term.
I was upset for 2 years because the current PSLE syllabus tests stuff that SHOULD have been taught multi-modally but from P1 to P6, my DS was taught via pen and paper. If I didn't know how to teach multi-modally at home, I don't think my DS can get to 2nd in class in PSLE Prelim Science... and top in class in English.
So... if they DO stellarise all 4 subjects and make sure multi-modal learning happens in schools, I think it'll increase teaching effectiveness because...
(1) the teaching is coherent with testing requirements
(2) teachers are given materials to teach with
This said, I share the concerns of many parents on Teacher Quality and readiness to implement multi-modal learning.
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