Teaching Practice

Procedures of Teaching

Before teaching, I had to make lesson plan in accordance with Philippines lesson plan format. Their format is different from the one that I have in Indonesia, so I learned how to make it first. The English teachers in NIPSC Laboratory Junior High School (LJHS) at that time were very good in guiding me. I made the detailed lesson plan, so I should also include script dialogues that I would use in teaching and the expected responses from my students. After I finished my lesson plan, I gave it to my cooperating teacher and then she would give me some comment and suggestions for the improvement of my lesson. When I was done, I passed the final version of my lesson plans to my cooperating teacher and then I could start teaching in the class. I was not allowed to teach without the presence of my cooperating teacher, it was the rule of the school. She had to be in the class whenever I taught my students so that she could give me comments, suggestions, and to correct me if I made mistake.

However, even we have different formats in writing the lesson plans, our teaching procedures are similar. The procedures that I used to teach English in NIPSC LJHS were preparation, motivation, presentation of the topic, discussion, activity, analysis, and closure. Generally these procedures are classified into three parts; before the lesson, during the lesson, and after the lesson.

In ‘before the lesson’ part, the students will pray, and then I checked their attendance lists, made them ready to learn. I usually tried to know their background knowledge of the lesson, relate the lesson with what they already knew, and motivate them to be interested in the new lessons. This is the part when my students should know that the material they were going to learn that day is important.

‘During the lesson’ part, I was presenting the new material to the students. Considering the student-centred teaching, so my role was more as a guide, facilitator, and coach. Instead of always talking to convey the materials, I let my students to talk because basically they are really active students. I tried to help my students understand the materials, give them feedbacks that they need, and regularly check their understanding of the materials. 

This is the example when my students presented about the meaning of the poem that we had been discussing.

I like to use technology and game to make the lesson enjoyable and attractive. This is one of the example, I made a digital spinner. My students had a chance to spin it when they could answer my question or did my instruction correctly.

The Digital Spinner

I divided my students into two groups, so in case if group A could answer my question or did my instruction correctly, they could spin it, and in case if they stopped the spinner like the picture shown above, the representative of group B should sing like this:

‘After the lesson’ is the part when I let my students to summarize the materials. In this part, I also encouraged them to use and implement the materials that they had learned into their daily life. It would make the lessons meaningful and contextual.

Time Management and Organizing Activities

I found many clever students in the classes that I taught. Generally, they are quite fast in learning English. It made me could manage the time and organize the activities of teaching and learning in accordance with my lesson plans. Usually we started and finished our learning activities on the time, fitted with its allocation.

Problem-solving

The first problem that I got was because we speak different languages, sometimes some of my students could not understand my accent in speaking. To solve this problem, I repeated my speaking, made it slow, and use non-verbal language to help.

The second problem, the concentration of my major is actually Teaching English as A Foreign Language, but in Philippines English is considered as second language. So even in grade 9, their materials are quiet complex already. I did not have experience in teaching English literature in the class at that time, but some of my materials are about English literature like short story and poem. To make me ready, I did consultations with some of NIPSC teachers about how to conduct effective learning activities in teaching English literature.

The third problem, I often felt nervous before teaching in the class. It was because my cooperating teacher always there to observe me. I was afraid that I would make some inappropriate mistakes. I prepared my lesson well, studied until late night to reduce my nervous and to make sure that I was ready. I wish that I could give my best at that time. Then I felt that my nervous was just gone during the lesson. Sometimes yes I made mistakes, and my cooperating teacher would correct me in front of my students, but it was not a problem for me. As the time goes I just realized that because of my cooperating teacher always there, she could see my deficiencies then gave her best suggestions. That made me learned a lot about how to be a great teacher in the future.

Classroom Management

Classroom management of teacher is important to ensure that the learning activities in the class run smoothly. Before I started my practice teaching, one of NIPSC LJHS teacher told me that the students there are active in terms of keep asking questions and sometimes noisy. I must have a good command so that I will not be distracted during the lesson. My cooperating teacher also gave me suggestion to make my voice louder. Beside of implementing these two strategies, I also praised them and gave rewards to motivate them, humour and game so that they would not get bored, and tried to have a good relationship with them. Gratefully I did not get any serious problems in classroom management with my students.