Making a Worksheet the Students Enjoy

A WORKSHEET should be the 'spirit' of the learning process. A worksheet should encourage students to innovate and to explore their ideas. It should not only help them in achieving learning objectives but also encourage the students to participate actively in the lesson and make it more meaningful. Such a process was implemented by the teacher in a Bahasa Indonesia lesson, where the basic competencies being taught included expressing agreement, argumentation and rejection in a discussion and giving reasons.

The teacher started the lesson by exchanging opinions with the students on discussions or debates that they have seen directly or on television. Then in groups, the students discuss the worksheets. Each group was given worksheet with a different theme. A group leader was appointed for each group. The result of the discussions were written on a flow-chart paper and then presented in front of the class. Other groups were asked to express their opinions or argumentations. A moderator supervised the presentation process.

Group Work Helps Students with Difficulty in Writing

STUDENTS at MTs NU Al Hidayah Kudus are not yet accustomed to or interested in writing. This is especially true for writing in English. Because students are not used to writing, they are not able to express their ideas and have problems because they have a limited English vocabulary. To address this, Ibu Sri Hartatik, S.Pd, an English teacher at MTs NU Al Hidayah tried to incorporate a learning method that will encourage students in class 7 semester 2 to work collaboratively on writing 'descriptive texts'.

The lesson began with a guessing game quiz in English. The teacher would give physical clues about a picture and a member of the class. Students were then asked to guess who the person was and then match the clues with the appropriate picture. This was all done in groups. When the students had mastered vocabulary related to physical characteristics, each group was then given a picture to write a descriptive text about. Each student in the group, guided by the group leader, took turns in giving ideas in the form of a sentence related to the picture.

This process was then continued with students visiting other groups to see their work. For the last activity, students were asked to write a descriptive text individually, using "my mother" as the theme. By using collaborative learning, teacher could see that there was an improvement in student's ability and confidence to develop ideas and that there was a positive interdependence among students in working on the worksheets they were given.