Maintaining Students’ focus (My SEP Experience)

Honestly, my latest school experience program this semester was quite hard for me. I was shocked because I had to teach a class with 40 students. Moreover I also had to handle the eleventh social class with the same amount of students too. The difficult parts were to get and maintain their attention to my explanation and when I had to guide them in doing the group work.

When teaching about a topic, I tried to start it with make a little conversation about something that common for them in daily life which was still relate to my topic. For example when I had to deliver a material about procedure text to tenth graders, I asked them about what they had for dinner last night or for breakfast this morning. After that they asked to explain briefly about how to make that food. In the other class I tried to start with different topic of conversation. I asked them about the step how to use their gadget, how to activate their social network accounts. I though that topic was really close to the teenager in digital era like now. Finally I could get their attention and I used it to explain the procedure text topic to them.

Also I used the same method while taught the eleventh graders. At that time I had to deliver the material about analytical exposition to them. I tried to ask their opinions about some famous singers from Indonesia and other countries. I asked their opinion about the influence of music genre from other countries to Indonesian music. Some students shared their arguments about it. After we had enough conversation and shared our arguments, I guide them to know that what we had talked about is called analytical exposition.

From their reaction while I asked them about the question to guide to the main topic, I was happy because they paid attention to me. Although sometimes they talked out of context and made some jokes but I tried to guide them to come back to the topic slowly.

Although they paid attention to me while I was explaining, when they do a group work with instructions that I had given to them first some of the students till did not understand yet about what the topic is about. So I had to re-explain to them one by one. From that I realize that maybe it is easier to make students’ eyes look at the teacher but it will be more difficult to make their mind in the same track with the teacher. This is what I need to learn more for my next school experience program.