SMA Perguruan Cikini

(12 September - 7 October 2022)

Independent Teaching Journal and Reflection

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In this seventh semester, I am in the Independent Teaching stage in my School Experience Program. In this stage, I had the opportunity to develop lesson plans in terms of lesson plans, learning activities, daily assignments, and even assessments for four students' English skills such as listening, speaking, writing, and reading. I also get the opportunity to teach students independently, without being accompanied by a mentor teacher.

This semester I had the opportunity to do my School Experience Program at the SMA Perguruan Cikini in the Duren Tiga area. I was entrusted to handle three classes atMA Perguruan Cikini, namely classes X-3, X-4, and XI IPS 1. I feel that this semester is the most valuable and memorable experience for me because first, I got the opportunity to become a real teacher where I take part in all school activities like a teacher there starting from arriving before 7 am then returning home until 3 pm. In addition, I had the opportunity to become a teacher on duty and build good relationships with all teachers, staff and students of SMA Perguruan Cikini. The most important thing is that my mentor teacher gave me full opportunities to manage and teach three classes at the SMA Perguruan Cikini, and even invited me to help in fostering extracurriculars at school such as the English Club and others.

On September 12 2022, I started the School Experience Program by following the school's routine activities every Monday, namely conducting a flag ceremony. Then, my friends and I observed two classes, namely X-4 and X-5 to find out the characteristics and background of the students and observed the methods or strategies used by the mentor teacher in teaching the class.

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On September 13, 2022, I had the opportunity to make a lesson plan for Descriptive text material and arrange activities to be carried out in the teaching and learning process. I feel lucky that this semester I got the opportunity to teach students offline. I got the experience of doing Independent teaching for the first time on September 14 2022, I taught X-3 about Descriptive text. At first I made introductions and told the rules that students need to pay attention to when attending my classes. Then, I also started checking students' attendance by doing fun games, such as when students' names were called they had to state their hobbies and fun facts about themselves.

After that, class activities continued with a presentation of material where I used PowerPoint slides. After finishing explaining the material, I formed students in groups by inviting them to analyze the generic structure and language features of the Descriptive text examples I showed. After that, I invited students to play Quizziz to check students' understanding of the Descriptive text material and the end of the session was followed by a reflection session where students would give me feedback about learning activities that needed to be improved.

Before teaching, my mentor teacher told me about the characteristics of the students in each class and mostly students would be able to focus at the beginning of learning and the rest of the students would start asking permission to leave because they were too lazy to study or fall asleep in class. To overcome this issue, I try to invite students to do activities that move a lot where in the activity analyzing examples of Descriptive text, each group has a discussion session and they have to send one of their friends' representatives to look for generic structures and language features in turn. Then, I invite students to play fun games such as Simon Says, Marina menari di atas Menara, and Guess Words.

I also often do quizzes on Quizziz to utilize technology and get students engaged in understanding their learning. Based on this strategy, I saw that students were very active in responding to every question I gave and it was seen that students had a high interest in learning English, even students who liked to go to the toilet and students who were naughty said that they started to enjoy learning English.

Most importantly, I also often include learning videos and invite students to read each English text to improve their pronunciation. Furthermore, I chose those learning methods or strategies to support students who have a visual and auditory learning style so that they are able to enjoy and engage in learning.

One of the drawbacks of the strategy in my teaching practice is the discussion strategy where students who do not understand English will be passive and do not want to be involved in learning or discussion in class. Moreover, teaching and learning activities that focus on the use of technology also sometimes hamper the effectiveness of the learning process, for example, signal disturbances and slow projector performance when displaying PowerPoint slides.

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From the journal conducted by Zulfian, Z., Sahril, S., & Omolu, F. A. (2018) it is explained that one of the teaching strategies that can be used to engage students is learning that integrates technology because it can support classroom instruction by creating opportunities for students to complete assignments on the computer rather than the normal pencil and paper. Technology integration in class would help students to explore more. In teaching and learning activities, I have implemented an integrated technology strategy where I provide opportunities for students to explore something they do not know via the internet, for example in Anlytical Exposition learning in class XI IPS 1, they are confused about how to make sentences using causal conjunctions so I give opportunity for them to learn independently and explore things that they still do not understand, but are still under my supervision as a teacher. Likewise, in the final session I usually hold quizzes with the Quizziz and Kahoot platforms to make students more motivated to learn because they can see each student's learning progress and achievements.

Zulfian, Z., Sahril, S., & Omolu, F. A. (2018) also said that discussion is a learning method or strategy that is able to train students' skills in critical thinking and problem solving. In teaching and learning activities in class, I have implemented a discussion strategy so that learning focuses more on the student center rather than the teacher center. Besides that, through the discussion strategy, I was also able to analyze which students were active, critical, and had good problem solving and which students were passive and not interested in learning.

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An alternative strategy that I use to improve the previous method or strategy is by implementing cooperative learning methods such as Number Head Together (NHT) where this strategy is pedagogically systematic in nature which encourages small groups of students to work together to achieve common goals (Duplass, 2006).

The NHT strategy is also suitable for my students because this strategy focuses on group learning through completing tasks by sharing ideas, where each group must ensure that its members understand and master the task, so that all students understand the concept together. Thus, through this method I want to combine students who are passive in class with students who are active in class so that passive students can strengthen their learning individually and learn from fellow group members. In addition, another alternative strategy is to combine learning that integrates technology and conventional methods so that time management in class can run effectively.