The new syllabus (KSSR) is actually an expansion from the previous syllabus which is KBSR. If we are given a choice, we would like to choose KSSR syllabus. We choose this syllabus for some reasons.
First for most, the KSSR syllabus has new curriculum content in which is Language Art. This new curriculum content has its own advantages in assisting the students especially among young learners to acquire English in a fun way. Besides that, the Curriculum Contents in the KSSR syllabus also are explained well.This is because the content has been explained in detail way which gives the clear vision to the teacher on how they will conduct their lesson.
Furthermore, the educational emphases in KSSR syllabus are expanding into more specific emphases on the students self. This can be seen where in the KBSR syllabus, the emphasis of “Preparation for the Real World” has been divided into more specific emphases in KSSR syllabus such as “Entrepreneurship” and “Creativity and Innovation”. This tells us that our education system emphasizes on producing the students who are creative, innovative and capable in business industry.Moreover, the KSSR syllabus is also mention on the Integration of salient new technologies in it.
This new principle encourages the teachers to use more ICT tools to teach the students. For example, the integration of ICT in classroom would be great as children nowadays are widely exposed to all kinds of electronic devices such as smartphones, internet, social networking like facebook, windows live spaces, twitter and so on. Hence, in order to attract their interest in learning, the education must do some changes to accommodate to the children’s needs.They also have to ensure the students are able to utilize the tools so that they are able to communicate English in natural way.
Lastly,the KSSR has a lot of features that could attract the pupils to love learning the target language. The new way of learning the English which is fun, creative, contextualised, meaningful, purposeful and other aspects could suitable to be applied in emphasising six key areas which are communication, spiritual attitude and values, humanitarianism, literacy in science and technology, physical and personal development in targeting to produce holistic individuals among young learners in primary schools.This new syllabus also has indicated that the building a strong foundation of competencies in basic literacy skills such as reading through phonics, penmanship, basic listening and speaking is one of the key principle that should be highlighted in strengthening the pupils knowledge at early age. Therefore, we as future teachers should awake and ready to take this enormous responsible and challenge to implement this new KSSR syllabus in schools later on.
CONCLUSION After reviewing each curriculum, we found that there are differences between KBSR and KSSR.First of all, KSSR curriculum document is called standard document. It means that there is no more syllabus and syllabus description. KBSR sets the learning outcomes as the goals to be achieved after completing teaching and learning process, while KSSR focuses on standard of content and learning as the objectives when teachers plan teaching and learning process.
In KBSR, the objective is stated in terms of learning outcomes, but in KSSR, it is the content standards which pupils need to achieve.From here, we will probably have to switch how we usually design our lesson plans because we are very used to the KBSR syllabus where we need to achieve the learning outcomes, not so much the content. The KSSR curriculum is very pupil-centred with an emphasis on fun learning amidst promoting critical and creative thinking, reasoning skills, communication and ICT literacy. Learning is more fun and the approaches used include projects-and-activity-based and problem-based learning, with ICT components introduced as early as Year One.
This was not fully emphasised in KBSR syllabus, so in this case, we definitely have to modify the materials we used to show in class so that English will always be a fun subject for young learners. Also, with the new syllabus, we need to try and design activities that will develop their reasoning skills. Since it is very pupil-centred, we need to withdraw from being the focus of the lesson and make our pupils to be in the centre of learning. That is what we will probably have to keep in mind.
