EHSM’s new intake gets head start

The management of the Emmanuel High School Mesopotamia (EHSM) has embarked on a readiness programme to better prepare the new cohort of students who will be entering the institution in the next academic year.

A two–week Literacy Camp from July 6 to 20 is the school’s way of helping to intervene and plan for the new students.{{more}}

Principal of the school Curtis Greaves explained to SEARCHLIGHT the reasons behind the programme.

“This year when I looked at the performance of the students in Form One and especially those who came in reading below their grade level, I felt it necessary that we should have some kind of intervention,” Greaves explained.

He revealed that the reading levels of the students who were assigned to the school from this year’s Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment (CPEA) were examined and those who need help were signed up to attend two weeks of the programme.

“The parents readily accepted and here we are with over 50 of the new students attending the programme,” Greaves commented.

Greaves noted that while similar efforts were made three years ago, this new approach is different.

He is happy that his school is known best for its efforts at remediation, and stated, “We sometimes write off students even without helping them.”

“You have to prepare the students for Form One and over the years, the Emmanuel High School Mespo has been known for its remediation work…. In fact, we have captured the title for best school for remedial work on four occasions in the past nine years,” the EHSM principal said.

“I must commend the teachers, who have taken their time to be here, because they are the ones carrying the bulk of the work and have embraced the programme; as you can see we have about 15 of them present helping with it,” Greaves related.

He underscored that the Literacy Camp is being run at no added cost to the parents and guardians, with the school providing all the necessary supplies and equipment during the two weeks.

Meanwhile, Karyn Constance, the teacher who is spearheading the programme, added: “We want to be effective helpers … We will not be able to see 100 per cent increased performance after this intervention, but it doesn’t stop here. It continues, so what we are doing here, we are going to be building on when school resumes.

“We have created a reading and writing class and for the lower level, phonemic awareness, where we are doing blending and segmenting,” Constance detailed.

Constance is optimistic that the camp will go a long way in preparing the new students for the secondary programme.

“What we used to do before is to do the miscue when they come in September and that took quite a while…. All of that has been cut down now and with the programme; we will continue when school begins, so that the children can have a smooth transition into the secondary setting now coming out of a primary school”, Constance projected.(RT)