Monthly Archives: December 2012

A Contemplation Result

The background

On the 17th of February, I, together with my three other colleagues, were assigned to teach EC. 2A students. At first, I was feeling like..oh, Ok..I have ever taught little EC class before, so I could sort of figure out the situation I was going to face in that class, and besides..I had seen Ms. Winda in that class before..so..hehe…I sort of knew the students in that class.

After a quite long discussion, finally we decided to teach these expressions : “ I like burger. Do you like burger?” “ Yes, I do” and “No, I don’t”. And the long and winding road began……..

The Preparation
Teaching EC classes means massive preparations. We collected pictures of many kinds of food, we copied, we cut, we sliced..hehe *cake?*, we glued, we made simple questionnaire..in short, we sacrified all of our knowledge and our life for the sake of an hour session teaching EC class. We enjoyed it, though..*wink wink*

 

The scenario

Here was the scenario…

The warm-up
The idea of warming-up was that, we wanted to tap students’ schemata about food. Besides, it would be a review of the previous lesson. As usual, something always happened when we talked about lesson plan and doing the lesson plan. Lol. I was the one who had to do the warm-up. And I was luckier I guess, because I got the first turn, meaning that, the students were still on their first thirty-minute attention span. The real plan was..using their pictures and introducing the concept of like and dislike. Again, I was luckier, because it seemed that most of them had known the concept of likes and dislikes. The thumb cards did a great job, though! * thank you for lending us the cards, ma’am.. *

The presentation
The presentation went in line with the warm-up, which meant that, I was the one who did it. Actually I wanted to conduct drilling activity, but I cancelled that, it was because of the time limit. So in that point, my job was done.

 

The practice
Ok. A bit flashback on the theory of child development about cognitive, social/emotional, physical, and Language development. We tried to apply that theory into practice. There were two activities we planned. Here are the activities :
• We were trying to involve the students to build the four development. We seated them into a big circle and tried to make them practice the speaking skill using the expressions taught by asking a friend next to him the question “do you like banana?” we expected that the friend would answer the question with “yes, I do” or “No, I don’t”. It was very effective at the first round. Some students didn’t get the gist of what they must do, but, the students who knew how to conduct the activity told them what to do, so I guess, the social interaction, as well as the language interaction were formed here. Funny was when one of the students tended to form the question began with “ what “, so the question was formed “what do you like pizza?” Lol..but then, again, there was a sort of peer correction here, the friends corrected him. The activity was successfully executed. Executor : Miss Devi.
• The second practice was pair work. Students were paired up by the teacher. At that time, the golden thirty minutes has already lost its charm. They started to become restless. That was not the point, anyway. In my opinion, the aim of the activity was achieved. They could do the pair work, some of them DID enjoy the activity. A little bit idea, though. I think, It would be better if the teacher paired them up first, then gave the instruction later after she was sure that everybody was listening. Or, she could seated them on the chair, already with the partner, to keep them from wrestling or chatting with their friends, thus, making them readier for the activity. Executor : Miss Didy.

The production
Here was the last stage. We intended to give them questionnaires, and ask them to ask five of their friends. Again, because the students’ attention were already gone, they didn’t listen to their teacher’s instruction well. Actually, they were supposed to ask their friends, but instead of asking the questions to their friends, almost all of them had answered the questionnaire by themselves without asking their friends! ..Lol…but finally all of them could do the activity. Executor : Miss Rahma a.k.a the class teacher.

All and all, those were the stages of the practice teaching. It was fun though..hehe…although things were not exactly done as we expected before, but hey, we must be careful with our expectation when dealing with teaching children, right? But one thing for sure, there was one thing that I realized later on, we accidentally designed the questions or the lesson in such a way that the answers were all “ yes, I do “..Lol…we forgot to insert the name of food that the student might not like. So, we can see that, the space for the “No, I don’t” answers were blank! Lol….

( taken from my teaching journal submitted to my trainer on teaching Children )

 

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Jeannie

December 19th, 2006

Jeannie….
Jeannie….
One of my dearest best friends.

My first acquintance with her was in 1989, first grade of Junior High School. Her classroom was next to my classroom. I was in 1D, she was in 1E. She didn’t give me enough impression, though. She was loud. In a real meaning..LOUD. She likes talking and laughing. Cheerful. Lots of friends. On the contrary with me. I decided not to like her at the first time.

I don’t remember when she suddenly became my friend. Ah….I remember…on the second grade, she became my classmate..and we became friends..just like that.

We enjoyed our time together. We laughed, we talked, we shared..I remember when she had a hard time with her family…I was the only one she confided in..I felt very sorry for her. Actually, it’s rather coincidence for both of us, because somehow..she’s just like me..she was raised by her uncle and aunt, she is the third child in her family, and she has a little brother, just like me. Well actually, those are only our similarities.. She’s more beautiful than me(of course..I think she has Arab blood, you know..almond shaped eyes..pointed nose..and fair skin, even my little brother fell in love with her at the first sight..whoaaa…!!)

Her full name is actually Nur Handayani, but she hated to be called Nur, let alone Handayani…”just call me Jeannie..cause that’s my name” Uh..fine..

I still remember when we did things together..I always came to her house, she never came to my house, because her aunt (she calls her ‘mama’) never allowed her to go anywhere after school, soo…I went to her house instead..we had a great time together…We laughed together..even we cried together..and most importantly..she always helped me with my math homeworks..(I could never compared to her in math ;p)

We were separated when we finished Junior High School. She went to SMA 1, I went to SMA 6..quite a distance..but although we were separated we still kept in touch..This time, she was the one who sometimes came up at my door. I witnessed her struggle when she was wearing JILBAB at the first time. I heard her story about her “relationship” with someone..nothing happened at last..

When we finished Senior High School, we went to the same University in Semarang…She went to English Department (DIII), and I went to Indonesian Literature. We started to lose contact. She had her own friends, I had my own. I still saw her sometimes with her friends..but in my heart, I believe that we still have a strong bond. We had been through many things..

The last time I saw her was in 2000 or.. 2001 I forgot..The time when she got married. When I approached her to congratulate her, I protested, because she didn’t tell me about that earlier. She promised me to call me to tell the whole story. She didn’t do that. The last time I heard her news was..after her marriage she moved to east Java. I don’t know where. Probably she already had several children by now. I don’t know for sure.

Her old house is still there. Once I passed her house, and wondered..who are living in that house now..since I heard that her aunt and uncle had passed away. And I was wondering, where is she now?

Jeannie….
She is my first best friend.

(note: I finally met her again in 2010. She DOES lives in East Java, and she owns three boys now 🙂 )

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