The first time I heard this new term was on 30th December 2009. That day, we organized a registration session. The children who have been selected to attend my class in 2010 registered their names along with their parents..
During a talk delivered by Puan Herlina Adam (a former KIA2M coordinator), she mentioned the term LINUS .to my first knowledge. I wonder the difference between LINUS and KIA2M and how the assessment will be conducted.
She told that LINUS which stands for (Literacy & Numeral Screening) is a progamme for assessing pupils' ability in Literacy and Numerals skills. It is basically focused on BM and Mathematics and all their related skills (including reading, writing, listening, speaking).
As far I am concerned, KIA2M have bee designed to fit the ministry's need for preparing Year 1 pupils who are lacking basic skills in reading and writing before they proceed to Year 2. Pupils in this programme will be equipped with basic literacy skills as long as they can show their ability to read and write.
Starting from this year, the ministry looks further by inroducing numeral skills as another basic skill that pupils have to undergo. Pupils tend to know the basic operations in Mathematics like adding, substracting, multiplying and dividing numbers. Not only that, pupils also should be able to differentiate quality among variety of items. They have to know how to distinguish the day and night, value of Malaysian currency, length or sizes of items..
I've seen the sample of LINUS papers and I think it is a bit tough for average pupils facing such questions. Only chosen few will be pass through. After sitting for the screening test, pupils will be put in different classes, showing how good they are in answering LINUS questions. They are 3 categories of classes; Perdana, LINUS and Tegar (according to their ability respectively)
I would like to remind you (viewers), those who fall under LINUS categories couldn't be seen as "malnutricious", stupid, illiterate, awful, clueless or any related terms. Most of them are able to read and write but it is different in the way the assessment is made. Pupils are assessed in holistic way. They have to show their confidence and literacy in listening passage or statement and be able to talk about it. They must be able to extract the thing they know into words in verbal manner. In other sense, if they cannot talk, it is hard for them to be in good classes (Perdana). In most situation, if they fail to complete it, they will be labeled stupid, don't know how to read and whatnot. As a result, teachers who prepare them for early education (including kindergartens and preschools) will be blamed. They can't do their job very well, can't take responsibilities or not able to finish such an easy job to educate small children. This stigma is normal and by any means we (the preschool teachers) have to face it.
Whether we want it or not, we have to face it. We have to do ALL WE CAN to equip them with "LINUS knowledge" and get ready to be smashed. This is the fact we have to face. End.
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