By SAMPSON BONAI
IT may be a small learning institution but it had a big impact on the ability of the children to better understand English at an early age.
The children had every reason to feel a sense of accomplishment after they successfully completed 13 weeks of pre-schooling under the new Ace and Christi and ABC with Ace and Christi programme in Lae.
It was a small graduation ceremony with only a handful of parents turning up to witness their children receiving ABC certificates after the successful completion of 13 weeks of intensive learning under the Ace and Christi program.
The children are now able to read and understand English without much difficulty, unlike when they first enrolled at the school under the Ace programme, and were put through the first stage of reading development.
A proud school principal Joseph Geparo told parents in his graduation speech that Ace and Christi had emerged as a world-class leader in revolutionary back-to-God movement in education and it had developed a self-instructional curriculum spanning all 12 grades.
This curriculum recognises and integrates the truths and character values of the Bible.
“The Ace is setting new heights in education innovation, pioneering work in curriculum development in these areas of a solid back-to-basic education for children, a course of study individualised to meet a child’s specific needs and learning capabilities,” Mr Geparo said.
“It includes a program incorporating character-building and wisdom principles and a curriculum using advanced computer technology to help ensure the finest education possible in today’s high-tech climate.
“We have a long way to go to acquire and provide the full programme developed by the providers of the Ace curriculum.
“Our best is yet to come and this is the hope we must cling on to and work hard to develop our facilities to a standard that can enable us to take advantage of these resource materials.
“Ace is built upon five basic principles that all students must be at the levels they can perform, reasonable goals must be set for each child to achieve their goal, students must be motivated and controlled, learning must be measurable and rewarded.”
Mr Geparo says that in the interest of national development, the Ace pre-school with Ace and Christi and the ABC with Ace and Christi programmes must be given government support to replace the elementary vernacular education programme.
“Another issue I wish to highlight for your information is the credibility of the Ace programme that we offer at our school,” he said.
“The Ace program is not a mediocre by-the-roadside programme developed for religious fanatics and also not on par with mainstream academic programmes as others might think.
“Speaking English with Ace and Christi is also designed for children likes ours for whom English is a second language.
“This programme provides the means for the young school-aged children who do not speak English as his or her first language to become sufficiently-acquainted with spoken English to prepare him or her to read English language.
“The old school that taught that children learn well by using ‘look say’ or ‘whole language’ is now conclusively-established not to be the case.
“Studies conclusively demonstrate that students who are taught phonics learn to read better and faster than those who do not receive phonics training.
“Ace curriculum offers two complementary programmes.
“The first is called the reading development programme which offers pre-school with Ace and Christi.
“This programme is well-developed with activities designed to facilitate effective learning and makes children want to read.
“This is followed by ABC with Ace and Christi which is a multi-sensory phonetic learning-to-read program designed to prepare a child for the individualised instruction of the Pace curriculum.
“It is expected that within 11-15 weeks a child should be able to learn letter sounds, alphabet sequence and word relationships.
“Our first ABC was able to read and write after 13 weeks of schooling.
“This is the second graduating ABC class.
“They were children who did pre-school with Ace and Christi and than progressed to ABC with Ace and Christi.
“The second component of the programme is the core curriculum that begins from Grade 1-12 and it consists of the following subjects: mathematics, English, word building, social studies, science, literature and creative writing, animal science and Bible.
“Each of these courses is very well-sequenced and the skill levels and concepts are advanced as the level increases from one Pace level to another.
“There are a lot of enrichment courses offered at the high school levels such as business, government, health, language, Bible and type master - which is a computerised typing programme for grades 1-6.
“Today’s educational institutions are not the same as yesterday.
“There are many progresses in different aspects of human endeavor, so the learning culture has progressed enormously both for good and bad.”

 

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