#7^th PETA REFLECTION

Hi Assessment, nice to know you ^_^

            The last PETA’s class was really different, really fun, and enjoyable. We were not study as usual; sit down in the chair, a little bit awkward but we were study naturally, sit together in the carpet, had chitchat and laughed at that time. Well, we were asked to draw anything that represented what we felt at that day then we have to share it among each other. Amazingly, we had same feeling; stress, tired because of so many assessments to do. After that, we had to draw something about assessment. When I heard the word ‘assessment’ then I draw something ‘burn it!’ and ‘we want more assessment!’ which means that I am ready to have a remedial if I got bad score :D. Overall, it was so enjoyable, you rock the class Ms. Inne ^_^

            After the ice breaking, Ms. Inne asked us to work in a group of four and answered several questions about assessment. Actually, we had already learnt about the assessment in LTM class, so it quite easy to answer the questions because we already had prior knowledge about that. The first question was about the assessment itself. As we may know, assessment is a tool to measure the student’s learning progress through collecting data or information while the assessment is important because it can be a media for reflection both of teacher and student. Through assessment, the teacher could assess and reflect their self about the learning methods that they used, the material that they gives and etc. while for the students, it can gives feedback, response, and evaluation for them.

            Sometimes, we are getting confused about the assessment and evaluation. In simply, assessment is concern with the students’ learning progress while the term evaluation on the other hand, refers to the process of collecting data and making judgments on the quality of student’s ability; more concern in the final result. Actually, it doesn’t matter about those terms because sometimes people in education world still tend to use the term ‘evaluation’ rather that assessment. Then, there were others assessment’s friend which is formative and summative. I am sure that you guys have known about that. The formative assessment is assessment that given at the end of the chapter; the summative assessment is given at the end of the semester.

            Assessment is really take a big role in learning process so that it can support learning by converting output become input again (refers to Krashen’s hypothesis). In order to get comprehensible input, the assessment should be effective. Based on my group discussion, assessment will be effective if it is valid, reliable and has clear objective. Valid means that the assessment provides information on the ability we want to assess and nothing else and reliability refers to the consistency with witch our assessment tools measure language ability. In addition, it will be better if the teacher consider about the students’ multiple intelligences, learning styles and learning strategies in designing the assessment.

            The last part, we have to reflect about the assessment at SSE and in PETA course. Was it effective or not? To be honest, it was not always effective because sometimes we had same type of assessment in one course or more. In PETA course, the assessment is effective but the number of reflection journal was too much and sometimes it makes us bored to do that. We want more varieties of assessments like the interesting one; exhibition. Overall, it is effective yet still needs improvement. As a teacher candidate, we have to understand our new fiend which is ‘assessment’ and assessment will help us to create the effective teaching and learning. Let’s love our everlasting friend, ‘Assessment’ start from now!

            

#6th PETA e-Reflection

Effective Teaching and Effective Teacher

November 23^rd, 2011

That was the day of my new session of PETA course after I suffered enough doing the mid-term test for about two weeks. I am definitely happy to have a great occasion to do everything in my class again; learning and sharing together just like as usual. That was what I did on the previous session. To be honest, I was pretty overload yesterday becausethe material that should be covered was awfully crowded to be learnt in one session. That condition made me cannot absorb well all the material that has explained by my friends and I knew it was my personal problem. I did not really pay attention to the others group presentation because I tend to focus on my own material. Though, it was complicated for me at least I still remember what I had learnt on that day which were differentiate model, cooperative learning, effective teacher and effective teaching, developing lesson plan and last is learning style and multiple intelligences.

For that reason then Ms. Inne divided us into five groups and my group got the material about effective teacher and effective teaching. Well, actually it was not new material for me because I have got it in the very beginning of PETA course. However this material concern about the key stages in order to create effective teaching and what was beyond the effective teacher. As we may know, an effective teaching is the teaching that makes effective learning happen and if the teaching process is effective then it will empowering learners to become effective learners. From that chain I could assume that effective teacher is the main role to create the effective learning process. In order to know beyond the effective teacher I will describe 10 qualities of an effective teacher.

1.      An engaging personality and teaching style

2.      Clear objectives for lesson

3.      Effective discipline skills

4.      Good classroom management skills

5.      Good communication with parents

6.      High expectations; in this case the high expectations means that the teacher encourages the students to always work at their best level. If the teacher did not have the positive expectations so the students will just become ordinary students. 

7.      Knowledge of curriculum and standards

8.      Knowledge of subject matter

9.      Passion for children and teaching; According to me, the basic thing that should be come first is about passion to teach and like to deal with children. With a great passion then there will be a great teacher.

10.  Strong rapport with students

After knowing what should be considered to be an effective teacher now I will describe about how to conduct an effective teaching. According to the Burden & Byrd there were 5 key behaviors to create effective teaching:

1.      Lesson clarity; make it everything clear includes the lesson, concept and the way teacher delivered the lesson.

2.      Instructional variety; use the variety of models of instruction

3.      Teacher task orientation; mastering the topics, and time management in classroom.

4.      Engagement in the learning process; refers to the time students actively engaged in learning.

5.      Student success rate; refers to the rate at which your students understand and correctly complete exercises and assignments.

Talking about the effective teaching and learning, I assumed that previous session could not be taken an example of effective learning because there was lack of monitoring students’ comprehension.I believe that not only me but there were several students who felt overloading to absorb five topics in one session. Somehow, I could not merely blame to the teacher but maybe you have to consider the situation, students’ mood and the time itself. That's all my reflection.

#6th PETA Reflection

Last Reflection before Mid Term Test

Sharing session

This is my reflection after I did the Teaching Assistance Program and I called as sharing and reflection week. Firstly, my friends and I had a sharing session in groups, we shared about our experiences when did the teaching assistance program. I really enjoyed that time because I loved listen to their experiences, especially for the funny part. I laughed when my friend shared about funny experiences, I felt sad when one of my friends had a bad experience, and I smiled when many friends of me had gorgeous experiences. When I looked their big smile, I could conclude that we had same feeling; we could not wait any longer to be a real teacher. Huge thanks for Miss. Ine who taught me about the lesson plan and how to conduct effective teaching. It was really helped me when I did teaching practice with my partners, that’s why my teaching practice did well and awesome J

Cooperative learning

Honestly, the previous session was the most interesting session during PETA course. The activity was designed for the kinesthetic learner, that’s why I really enjoyed when learnt while moving a lot. Miss. Ineasked us to work in group and gave a role for each individual, and the roles were facilitator, recorder, material manager, encourager and illustrator. I just realized that Miss. Ine tried to make cooperative learning so we were worked in group. From my understanding, the aim itself was to achieve a common goal and helped one another to learn through social interaction.Commonly, my friends and I often faced a problem when we conducted group interaction. Sometimes, worked in group was not really effective because only several members who really worked. I assumed that gave a role for each was a good way to make worked in group become effective because the whole members in group have their own duty.

Compare and contrast in Models of Interaction

In past I got confused between the Lecture discussion and direct instruction because it seems similar. In contrast, for the lecture discussion the teacher is lecturing and makes a chain discussion toward questioning, meanwhile in direct instruction the teacher just lecturing and take a main role as an information provider. It could be boring for students who are the kinesthetic learners. For guided discovery, the teacher only guided students to discover new material and shape their own understanding. Perhaps this model only could apply effectively for the students who already have HOT (Higher Order Thinking). The last is group interaction, and I think it was clear enough for this model, nothing confused me.

Reflection..

I took a quote from Howard Gardner about individual learners’ needs, styles and interests. He said that “The biggest mistake of past centuries in teaching has been to treat all children as if they were variants of the same individual, and thus to feel justified in teaching them the same subjects in the same ways.”It is a good reflection for me as a teacher candidate in order to consider that every student has different needs, and also different learning styles, so I cannot merely teach them in the same method.

Teaching Assistant part 1

First week teaching assistant in SMAN 61

>> Getting known each other

It has been four days I was doing my teaching assistant in SMAN 61, duren sawit. SMAN 61 recorded as one of the best RSBI School in Jakarta. This school is really has good building, nice teachers and also nice students. On first day, Monday 17^th, I and my friends has getting known each other with all of the teachers after that we were divided into groups. How lucky I am because I got very amazing partners for team teaching which is Rindy and Ferina ^^.

>> The uniqueness culture of SMAN 61

This school is really applied politeness among each other. One of their culture is the students have to greet others like teachers, their friends, senior even me the other one and they really do that every day. And the unique part is they were still drilling (making a form of line) in front of class before come in to the class. Why do I say it’s unique? Based on my previous experiences, commonly high school students really do not care with that kind of politeness culture.

>> Amazing master English teacher

The other amazing part is our master teacher. Her name is Miss. Laila and she was graduated from teacher institute of Sampoerna Foundation. This is why I did not shock when I observed her class, because mostly it was same with learning process in SSE. She is really fluently in speaking English and Germanic, and she’s really energetic. I love the way she teach and threat the students. She usually teaches based on her lesson plan. Once, I ever saw her daily notebook and it showed me how organized she is. Everything is arranged well.

>> Brief observation

I only have three times to do observation and it should be finished in two days. The conclusion is they adopted Cambridge curriculum for English lesson and it is new because this is just started for the new batch which is class X. They also have compulsory program from the government which is should use one hour learning for dynEd (dynamic Education). DynEd is software made by American corporation for language learning. This is really contradiction with the curriculum, right? And one thing that made me shocked when I knew about the standard minimum graduate is 80 for every subject. Wow, too high and really hard for the teacher to drive students reach that score. I entered two classes which is class X1 and X3. At that time she taught the students about derivation words. She used the different ways in teaching and I could conclude that she used lecture discussion at that time.

>>Teaching Practice

Friday, October 21^st, 2011

The time is coming. Yeah. Miss. Laila told me to do teaching practice in X2 and she also told me and my partners to continue her explanation about derivation words. We made a lesson plan and prepared the material and games for teaching practice. Surprisingly, we have to teach three classes and finally, it was well done although I really tired but I felt happy because the students could absorb what we explained. They said that they really enjoyed because it was fun, interesting and the explanation really informative. Hopefully they really got something today. Somehow, I cannot wait any longer to be a real teacher and meet them every day ^_^.

#4th PETA Reflection

# 4^th PETA Reflection

MICROTEACHING

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On previous session I and my friend had microteaching about the application on teaching based on the lesson plan that has been developed by each group. I just realized that every session that I had was gaining and developing my ability to be a teacher who good in arranging lesson plan and apply it in my class later on. After I learnt about the model of instructions, the next stage that I will face is combining it with the lesson plan and makes it effective and clear for learning process. My group was focus on listening. We developed its lesson plan and added some activities in it. We used group interaction model because we assumed that it was the great one to make a class a life at least we didn’t expect the class situation will be like in funeral.

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Actually in real context, I found that lesson plan did not take a big role in class. I have do the observation on second semester in one elementary school and it showed me how useless lessons plan for the teacher. Commonly, they just used it only if they need it, for instance when they have to make a report for school. The phenomenon was the teacher did not have a preparation for their teaching, it doesn’t matter whether the students will reach the learning purposes or not. They teach based on their mood or sometimes I saw the monotone pattern of teaching which is actually kind of lecture discussion. Once I ever asked one teacher about the lesson plan, and she said that they didn’t need to make lesson plan because the lesson plan usually has decided from rayon so they just followed it without any consideration. So, big question mark comes up in my head instead what should we change? Do we need to change the teacher’s habit who just as follower, the government’s rule or their main set toward effective learning process? Do we need to set up their awareness?

By the previous presentation, I could take at least a precious lesson for me that well preparation is absolutely needed before teaching. The utilizing model of instructions it depends on learning goals itself.

3# PETA Reflection

#3 Reflection

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Models of Instruction

This is quite hard to understand, maybe because among each models of instruction looks like similar except the one model which is group interaction.  Now, I try to review what I’ve got on previous session based on my understanding.

There are 4 models of instruction:

1.      Guided discovery

This model refers to scaffolding and it can enhance students’ intrinsic curiosity in the topic being studied. The main phases or I called as a point which is make it different with others is in open-ended phase where the teacher provide the material first including the examples and commonly teacher ask students to compare or make an observation then the students will construct their knowledge. And the convergent phase, actually I do not really understand about it but here is what I knew. In this phase the teacher will guide the students based on schema and the pattern that has been forming and focus on social interaction among them.

2.      Lecture discussion model (LDM)

Well actually this model is good for beginner teacher because of this model is pretty easy to practice. Besides that, this model is flexible and easy to planning. LDM is focused on how make students can connect their prior knowledge and the new information/material and make it stay in long term memory. So, the phase itself is just repetition schema. In a point of mine, LDM is not good enough because the teacher just asking the questions to student, actually those questions are to stimulate the students’ cognitive but it seems that the teacher put students in passive role and commonly students become overload. But there are also good points from this model which is the teacher can expose students to different point of view, besides that this model help students to integrate the new information and their prior knowledge.

3.      Direct Instruction

This model is quite similar with two above but this model a bit authoritative because the students are under high teacher’s control and guided. Maybe the difference with LDM is because of this one providing students’ involvement on their academic task or the simple word, students are practice and do activities.Teacher emphasizes on how students can understand, therefore the teacher should describe and model the skill also explain the examples of the concept clearly. The students will practice the skill meanwhile the teacher will provide scaffolding.The flow is like this:

1.      Introduction and review, connect it to the prior knowledge

2.      Tell the objective

3.      Presentation of new material

4.      Guided student, assessment

5.      Independent practice

4.      Group interaction

Students’ involvement is the main point. It needs individual accountability and collaborative skill. To make group interaction become effective, we have to pay attention on three basic principles.

1.      Meaningful learning takes place within a social context

2.      Knowledge is co constructed as more knowledgeable others interact with and share their expertise with others

3.      The culture that a person grows up in provides “cultural tools” or ideas that help make sense of the world.

(Retrieved from PETA S3.ppt)

And the next meeting I and my friends have to presenting role play based on lesson plan that has been made before and use one of four models of instruction. Hopefully I and also my friends can apply it appropriately.