peer tutoring

Purpose:
The purpose of this paper is to discuss how the delivery of the National Curriculum contributes to the academic performance This is of concern base on observation on the attitude of students at Tower Hill Primary Schoo and other neighbouring muti-grade schools are experiencing a difficulty with low performance and also the concern of the students’ attitude towards learning.
QUESTION: What are some challenges that principals, teachers and students experience during the implementation of curriculum instruction?
BACKGROUND
Tower Hill Primary School is a small rural school located in the remote hills of East Rural St. Andrew. The school lies in the valley sandwiched by hilly terrains bound by two small commmunities Tower Hill and Line Tree. The school was established by the Anglican Society of Jamaica in the early fifties an all-age school. The combination of grades are as follow The enrollment now stands at 20 students ten (10) boys and (8) girls. The combination of grades at present is 1,2 &3 then 4,5, & 6 with two teachers which one is the principal. The teachers and student are expected to compete with the Monogrde School nationally. Tower Hill School has been through rough stages of student and teacher migration to neighbouring schools. This school was previously an all-agee school. It was after of the Mavis Bank Vocational High School now Mavis Bank High, that it was changed to primary school. Many bright minds have passed through the door of the school. Because of low population of students, teachers have to teach mulit-grades. There is a concern of children now performing at an unacceptable level. Some citizen of the community earns their living through farming, they produce crops such as coffee, flowers, ground provision and vegetables. Their means of socialization is through the church, bars, shops and school.

Based on literature reviews, it has been discovered that pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is an essential and critical element in determining a teacher’s success in handling the teaching and learning processes in the classroom (Shulman 1986; Ball & Bass 2000; Hill et al. 2004). Lilia (1997) found out that the educational trainings given by four (4) teacher training institutes provided limited opportunity for teachers to develop their PCK. Besides that, mathematics teachers’ educational programme is said to be only focusing on the acquiring of knowledge and the trainees’ skills and not to train them to teach mathematics effectively in schools (Tengku Zawawi 2005). Loucks-Horsley et al.(1998) argue that for a teacher education programme to be successful it should consider teachers as learners in ways that are consistent with the student's perspective of learning. Teachers should be given experience with teaching approaches that are similar to those being used in classrooms. According to contemporary cognitive theories, learning is situated in a particular context and is an active constructive process that is heavily influenced by the individual's existing knowledge and beliefs (Borko & Putnam, 1996). Research on learning to teach shows that teachers' existing knowledge and beliefs are critical in shaping what and how they learn from teacher education experiences. It is argued that prospective and experienced teachers' knowledge and beliefs serve as a filter through which their learning takes place (Borko & Putnam, 1996). In order to be an effective school mathematics teacher, a teacher needs both a strong background in mathematics and a thorough understanding of pedagogy.

Multi-grade teaching maybe defined as a type of teaching in which one teacher instruct students of two or more grades in a single classroom setting. This implies that the teacher also teaches more than one age group, with varying levels of ability at the same time.

multi-grade teaching has remained an unrcognised phenomenan, taking place in many parts of the world including rural Jamaica, but failing to influence the curricula of teachers in and out of training or to secure any special provisions for its conduct. The challenge of coping simultaously with non-homogenous groups, following different syllabuses and requiring different types of assitance from the teacher to facilitate academic progress seems to be no solution as the national curriculum has in too much content to be covered versus a multigrade class.
Teachers have the role of skilful time tabling this is where one or two classes may not be involve in the direct teaching and learning processbut have to work independently.
Educators have to deal with time management. The educators of the multigrade schools are concerned about not having sufficient time to teach the requied programmes depth. Also in order to address some of the constraints, subjects such as physical education or the performing arts are left out. There is also insufficient time to address the specific needs of individual students.
The challenge of engaging all grades on task throughout the school day. This challenge extends to that of providing a variety of activities and avoiding repetition over a period of two or more years. This challenge is sometimes compounded by the noise level that accompy this setting if the teacher is atteending to one group while the others are engaged in other task.
As a multigrade educator we get thee feeling of isolation. This is because we have few teachers, because it is in a isolated communtiy, so there is little opportunity for sharing with teachers or getting the kind of parental or community support desired.

RECCOMMENDATION As the curricula in Jmaica are developed along single grade lines one of the tasks we should do as a mult-grade teacher is that of recognising the programmes to faciltate the simultaneous teaching of the grades you have in your class, in a way that ensures that each grade benefits fully from its own programme. This is to modify and change the sequence of the contents of curriculum guides to suit your context.
Teachers should use learning resources that are stimulating, differentiated and self instructiional. The teachers should design and develop challenging and interesting resource materials that can be used independently