My First Week Classroom Observation in Teaching Assistance Experience

            In my first week classroom observation, I found many things to be shared. Both of effective and ineffective teachings were applied by teacher in the classroom. At that time I observed a teacher who taught about text. Firstly, teacher asked students to discuss text together with her. Students were asked to read the text first than they were given questions about what was the main idea and what were the meanings of some difficult words. There was a student who knew the answer and gave the response. It also happened in the next paragraphs. If there was no response from a student, teacher would point a student to answer the question. Teacher helped student to answer by giving a clue but sometimes the clue was like a “burung beo” way. I think it is totally a wrong method because they have already Senior High School students. In answering other questions, sometimes students read together the sentence in the text so it did not sound clearly. Those statements included into ineffective teaching because it can make some students who did not pay attention much to the big discussion class became sleepy or did something else.

            Anyway, the effective part is the teacher always said thank you and also said the name too to students who had already answered the question. It made students were appreciated and motivated to do answering in next time. In teaching time, teacher tried to move from one side to another side in the classroom so she could get attention from all of students. In the end of discussion, teacher asked someone to make a conclusion or repeat what was the last answer so everyone should pay attention if suddenly he/she was pointed by teacher. In the last, teacher asked students to do task in the textbook and when students were doing the task, teacher moved around to check or help their work.

            I was surprised when after students did the task, one by one of them went to the teacher’s table to collect their tasks by queuing while teacher checked and gave mark. Oh, it also happened in my Elementary School in the much previous years. The rest of students who finished to be checked just did chat with their friend because there was no something to do. It was the most ineffective part of the classroom activity.

            For me, if I had to teach the same lesson to the students, I would create group discussion to make it more effective and did not waste much time. For the discussion of the answers, each of group could shared the report of their discussion result and the other groups paid attention and could gave response or feedback to the report. In out of grouping time, if I asked students to answer my question, I would asked whoever wanted to answer to raised her/his hand first and then she/he said the answer. It would be clearer than answering by said together. Of course I would not do the same thing like checking the task like that. May be I could bring their task to the home and checked it later on or while I checked their task, I gave them something else to do. I think it was better if I did a short reflection to the students before I closed my teaching time.