SHARING

LESSON STUDY MAKES MY TEACHING PERFORMANCE BETTER
Last year during academic year 2008/2009 I joined a workshop what we called ‘lesson Study’. It was the first time I attended such meeting since I was a new English teacher in my school. The workshop was attended by English teachers from different junior high schools in the region. It took for about three months to complete the program with twelve times meeting and It was done every Tuesday from 8 A.M to 2 P.M. In the first day of the activity was a seminar attended by all subject teachers in the region with a keynote speaker came from the experts from our province. The seminar was talking about what is actually ‘Lesson Study’ and why we need to implement it in our teaching activity. It really gives me idea and opens my mind that teaching is not just teaching, teaching is something that should be well prepared, teaching is something that every student feels a joy learning, teaching would be great when we share materials what we are going to teach to our fellow teachers and that group teaching results much better than individual teaching (teaching alone).
The second meeting which was held on Tuesday, the following week, the English teachers gathered and were divided into groups based on what grade/year we teach. They are year 7, year 8, year 9 English teachers and conversation teachers. I was in year 8 English teacher group. We then discussed and decided the material going to be taught to the students. After that we started to make a syllabus and a lesson plan. We had a tight discussion and argument in how to manage the class and what steps of activities we were going to do. I feel that It was really a nice forum and for me myself it was really exciting. We can share our ideas and have a time to take from someone’s great ideas and give our ideas to compile a closely perfect lesson plan. This condition lasted up to the third meeting.
In the fourth meeting each group presented the lesson plan to other groups (peer teaching), there the group presenter received feedbacks and suggestions. It is a very important session since here we can make our lesson plan better. It can be better in the process of the teaching, the teaching instruments and the teaching aids. The following meeting we redesigned the lesson plan and as well as prepared everything we need to complete for micro teaching. The micro teaching was done in front of the students under the other fellow teachers’ observation.
The last activity of the workshop was doing ‘Open House’, teaching in real class and observed not only by the participants of the workshop but also observed by the experts, the university students and lectures, and all English teachers in the region. Here the best group was chosen by supervisors or coordinators of the workshop. It was really inspiring.

Name: Agus Nugroho Ponco Saputro
Job title and Institution: English Teacher at SMPN 1 Magelang (Magelang 1 State Junior High School) – Central Java – Indonesia.
Email address: karagus2@yahoo.com , aqielnugroho@hotmail.com
Telp : 085747002782 , fax (+62 293) 3216206