As independent homeschoolers enrolled in the US through HomeLife Academy and Better Together Homeschool International, we transferred our two younger kids back to the PH education system. We only wanted to transfer Ate Z since she expressed her desire to leave homeschool and attend a brick-and-mortar school. My heart was not yet ready to let go of Ate Z, so we looked for a DepEd-accredited homeschool provider instead, where she could still learn at home and get familiar again with the DepEd curriculum. I wanted her to be ready to handle the demands of a face-to-face modality before we enroll her outside of homeschool. This is where St. Mark Integrated School (SMIS) comes in as the best choice for her.
Programs of St. Mark Integrated School
- SCHOOL = face-to-face modality wherein students can attend their classes at the physical school, attend their online classes, or do their digital modules
- HOME PLUS = online classes with the flexibility for students to use their digital modules
- HOME = pure full modular modality where students study remotely using the platforms of the school. Here, the parents are the main teachers
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| Taken from https://www.smis.edu.ph/flexible-education.html |
Home Program: Full Modular
Let's focus on the full modular program of SMIS, as this is the modality we chose for our child. Note that what I share is based on the HOME program where our child was enrolled.
Schedule
St. Mark follows the 4 quarters per school year, and each quarter has 8 weeks.
In our experience, most of the lessons are scheduled from Week 1 up to Week 6.
Week 7 is usually used to complete pending tasks (assignments) by the student, as well as a chance to review for the quarter exams.
Lastly, Week 8 is the exam week, when the students take the quarter exams of the major subjects through their online platform, Quipper. Note that the exam is synchronous, meaning all students take the online exam together while being monitored by the teachers. The student will need 2 devices here.
After the exam week is the Wellness Break, during which students have a full week to rest before they study again for the next quarter. We really like this approach of SMIS as it helps our child to do other activities aside from academics, plus, she looks forward to her wellness breaks.
Platforms
All the learning materials provided by the school, including the assigned tasks that the child must complete, are located in their Google Classroom. Since each student is provided their own Google Workspace by the school (they have their own SMIS email), it is easier for teachers to monitor their progress. The lessons are text-heavy, in a PDF format, and uploaded to the drive that the students will access through their Google Classroom accounts.
For assessments, students take their quizzes and quarter exams through Quipper. SMIS also provides practice exams and reviewers through this platform.
Other platforms used were Canva, YouTube, and a school management system for parents. The school system was very helpful for parents to check our accounts, payments, and the grades of our daughter online.
Curriculum
The curriculum, though text-heavy, was comprehensive. Moreover, I noticed that the materials were actually designed for independent learning, as these were easy to understand, including Math, which provided a good number of examples! Of course, our daughter still needed my help in understanding the lessons, but she was mostly able to go through them on her own by the third quarter.
Aside from the documents on her Google Classroom, we supplemented some of the lessons with books from our home library and videos found on the internet to help her get a better grasp of the concepts, including real-life applications.
For each lesson, there was an assigned task that the student needed to complete. For example, if the English subject has 2 lessons in Week 4, she has 2 assignments for that subject that week. So, for a Grade 5 student who has 5 major and 3 minor subjects, she has at least 8 assignments per week. It may be tedious for the student, but I saw the improvement in our daughter's sentence construction. And in my opinion, those assignments were a good practice in composition, and I'm all for it.
Socialization
St. Mark has a weekly online socialization class for all their programs. For our kids' level, theirs was scheduled in the morning. Our daughter has only attended a few sessions since she starts her day late.
On the other hand, almost every month, the school has an event where the students can join the contests, submit entries online, and attend the culminating on-site event. This is actually one of the main reasons why we chose SMIS, since it is only in Quezon City, our child can join these. Unfortunately, the events start in the morning, and our daughter is a late riser (no complaints here since she gets at least 9 hrs of sleep). We almost attended one event, but when I woke her up that morning, she was too sleepy and slow-moving, and we would be late if we pushed it. Oh well. I guess she can't make it to a face-to-face school setup now, right? LOL!
Support of SMIS
We did all our transactions with the school online, which includes enrollment and payments.
In our experience, we got immediate responses when we communicated with their directors through their Viber numbers.
As for the teachers, they respond through the chat on Google Classroom or through email. A few of her teachers respond to the assignment submitted on Google Classroom and give feedback on the student's output. This is very important for the student to know if there is anything they need to work on or if they are doing a great job.
We highly appreciate Ate Z's homeroom teacher and section adviser, Teacher Jessamae. She always reminds students of their completion via email and gives clear instructions during online assessments. And if there are any concerns, and she is copied in the communication, she makes sure that she checks out if the appropriate person has reached out already to us. Moreover, there is a consultation time with their teachers on the day of the release of their grades.
Another thing that I really appreciate about SMIS is the weekly admin online meeting. On Mondays, the school allots 15-30 minutes to give updates for parents, as well as a chance to raise any concerns to the administration.
St. Mark really listens to their students, parents, and guardians. Just to share, when the SY started, the school implemented a new LMS, but the software provider was not able to deliver, and the students felt that inadequacy. SMIS immediately removed this provider, and we were able to have a smoother school year by Q2. I really appreciate and admire the quick decision and action of the school to attend to the needs of the students. This goes to show that SMIS's heart is for the students.
.jpg "homeschool review") |
| With the SMIS team during our daughter's recognition day. On my right is Dra. Riza Calderon, Principal of SMIS |
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