LINUS

Trying to Engage Slow Learners

Everyone is working hard to get their LINUS measurements completed, and it is something of an uphill battle with some classes. Large class sizes and some low-level learners are creating a lot of problems, but I can see a lot of effort on the part of the teachers to help as many pupils as possible.

One group of learners at SK Jerantut Jaya has had teacher Norul Faralisa Abd Gany and me struggling to get them even up to constructs 3 and 4 in reading. The class is generally quite low-level, but this group, while lively and outgoing, lacks focus and cannot always distinguish between letters and words, even. 

E.g. ant pat sat nap

Teacher: Show me 'pat'

Pupil: points to 'sat' (finger on the middle 'a')

Teacher: No, p.p.p.a.t pat

Pupil: moves finger (hopefully) from the 'a' to the 't' of  the same word

I think that books and notebooks and pencils and the like are completely unknown to these children outside of the school environment, so we tried to engage them in a medium they might be more familiar with.

There is a growing body of research that says that exposing young eyes and brains to screens can be damaging to their overall educational, physical and social development, but the fact is that screens are now playing a large part in children's lives. We decided to introduce the words and sounds of LINUS reading constructs 4 and 5 to these pupils through screens and keyboards via electronic media.

Finding letters on a telephone keyboard

I would like to say that we found the silver bullet, and that our seven learners were all able to type out and read 'pat', 'sat' and 'nap' etc. by the end of the hour. But, as you can guess, there was not such a clear cut improvement in the pupils' overall knowledge by the end of one class. It was unfortunate that the laptop we had booked had no cable and no battery, so we could just use the phone. Some pupils quickly got the hang of finding the letters and typing in the words. Even those who had a shakier knowledge of the letter shapes and sounds were keen to have a go. We finished up by playing a racing game to be the first to run and find words, but they still had problems matching letters to sounds and a lot of their guesses were just that - wild guesses!

The children did enjoy the activities; which is something after three weeks of grinding away at the same thing, so we will keep on bringing electronic media in for them to write on and read from, as I think it is a more recognisable medium for these children. 

The next step is to put meaning into 'pat', 'sat' and 'nap'!

Stephen-Peter Jinks (ELC Jerantut)