Does The Enriched Cirriculum work ? (Education System)

Name: jenny967

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Product:	Education System
Date:	17/12/07 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Less information for kids to remember

Disadvantages: trying to help with homework

The Enriched Cirriculum is a primary school education programme, it started in primary schools about six years ago as a pilot scheme and through the last lot of years it has became increasingly popular.

The primary school my three kids attend, teach using this programme, when my eldest son started primary school, this programme was relatively new, both to the pupils and teachers. At first I did`nt believe this system could work, but as you will see throughout my review I have changed my opinion. The teachers have been very helpful with parents whos children attend this school.

The method behind this programme

The point of this programme is teaching by fun rather than sitting at a desk all day working of worksheets. The programme is carried out throughout every class in some way or another, which is good .

Teaching Maths

Maths is taught this way, using fun games for adding and take away and so forth.... which in my opinion is good because all games are based in some form or other on maths I would imagine...however there is certain aspects in maths which they will not learn, until a much later stage, for example times tables.

Teaching English from P1 to P3

I find their way of teaching english strange, for this they use what`s called Linguistic Phonics. The point of this is to reduce the sounds that the kids have to remember, using this method they have to remember 44 sounds, but when you or I went to school we had to remember 1500 sounds, so it fairly decreases the information that the kids have to memorize, which is good.

They use the sound of letters rather than the name of the letters, so this is supposed to make it easier to blend words together when they get to the reading and writing stages and also to give them more confidence at reading and spelling as from P1 to P3 you do not correct their spelling, for example, if your child is spelling the word cat, but they spell it kat, in theory they are correct, as they are encouraged to use sounds and spelling cat with a "k" is the sound that they might here. They are not taught the alaphabet as they dont use letters, they only use the sound which the letters make.

Teaching english from P4 to P7

Well here comes the part that I find slightly confusing, Now they are getting to the stage of learning that the letter "Y" can also be known as the letter "E" as sometimes these two letters have the same sound, another example of this is that the letters "OW" can sometimes be known as the letter "O".

My eldest son is in P5 and he is at this stage, I find it hard to help him with his homework, although the school has ran courses for parents to learn how this method works and how the teachers are teaching the children. The courses are good , however it is hard to except that the letter "E" can also be a letter "Y" when you have been taught totally different, the teachers just tell us parents to teach ourselves not to use letters only sounds, which is a bit hard after being taught for so many years that "E" is "E" and "Y" is "Y".

Spellings

Well no doubt you will all remember coming home from school with spellings, and the dreaded spelling test on a Friday, well NOPE...... not anymore, there are no spellings sent home and no spelling test on a Friday. The reason for this is because if there are children in a class only getting a few of their spellings correct, they will lose confidence in spelling, so the way they learn how to spell is through blending words together as I have said at the beginning of this review.

Does The Enriched Cirriculum work

Well using my three kids as an example, They are aged 9 years (P5), 7 years (P3) and 6 years (P2), the younger two are doing well at school, and seem to understand this way of teaching with no problems (so far), but my eldest son has been falling behind from about half way through P3, We did approach the school about this and they said he will catch on in his own time, but in P5 he is still behind in spelling and reading and he is`nt the only one in his class. OH! I forgot to mention when the now P5 class was in P1 they were the first ones in the school to be Taught The Enriched Cirriculum so it actually started in their school five years ago.

However as I said I have one child behind and two are doing well, I do believe this strange way of teaching does work, but I also believe that some kids would benefit from the way we were all taught in school, I dont blame the Enriched Cirriculum for my son falling behind as I cant be sure that this is the reason, but I do think if he had been taught the old fashioned way he would find school a lot easier.

This programme did start as a pilot scheme, but it has became more popular and lots of schools are using this method of teaching. So I suppose it must work!!!

Summary: still cant get the hang off some of the sounds