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What did they do?
The activities started with each member of the class observing and noting down the activities of a group of goats for a period of 30 minutes. They watched every movement of the goats carefully and noted down the activities.
After they had finished this, they took turns in presenting what they had noted and this was commented on by other groups. Then the teacher asked a question, "Do you think the goats you're watching were alive or dead?" all the students agreed that the goats were indeed alive.
Each group then used the data they had noted down to identify the goats' activities which showed that the goats were alive. Each group wrote a report. These group reports were then presented and commented on by the other groups.
At the end of the lesson the students concluded that living creatures need food, water, excrete waste products, reproduce, grow, move, breathe and respond to stimuli.
Why use a goat as a learning resource?
The goat is easily accessible to the students, easy to observe and it is easy for students to identify its characteristics as a living creature. If you only use plants as a learning resource, the children will have difficulty in identifying some of the characteristics such as breathing, needing food and water and getting rid of waste products, as these are not easily visible.
Who was proud of this lesson?
The children themselves were able to find out for themselves the characteristics of living creatures. They had discussions and reached conclusions and produced varied kinds of work (descriptions, poetry and pictures).
By Supiono, Science Facilitator from Situbondo district
BANYUWANGI: Religion & Sports Teachers Learn PAKEM
Religion and sports teachers in Banyuwangi Subdistrict recently took part in PAKEM training. The activity was supported by the MBE facilitators, who developed PAKEM lessons for Islamic Religion and Sport. For Islamic religion one of the teachers from MIN Sobo, Bpk Fathurahman developed a lesson using games which the children enjoyed.
He developed a number of games based on snakes and ladders and monopoly as teaching aids. These proved effective in gaining students interest in learning. It was possible to simulate the use of these games and it inspired other teachers to be creative. The same thing applied to the sports teachers when they did teaching practice using PAKEM.
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One of the games the teachers made: Monopoly becomes Islamic monopoly!
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PACITAN: Teacher Creativity in Using Learning Resources
School Principal and Teacher Interviewed by Students
As part of the effort to teach the students, teachers need to show creativity. Teachers need to make use of concrete and relevant learning resources. This is the opi-nion of Ibu Titik, a teacher at SDN Ploso 2 in Pacitan district.
In her opinion, if teachers are really willing to learn, to understand the compe-tencies and the steps and activities (PAKEM) needed to achieve this, teaching is not as difficult as they think. If teachers don't understand these points, their use of learning resources will not be effective.
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1. Ibu Titik patiently helping a group of children.
2. The student conducting a discussion.
3. The students interviewing the school principal.
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Below the writer recorded his observations of a grade 6 lesson, where the school principal was interviewed. This is what happened:
The teacher called on one of the students to ask questions (a simple interview). The other students listened. The student was free to ask anything. The aim of this was to give an example to encourage the stu-dents in preparing for the next activity.
There was then a question and answer session between the students and teacher about the planned observation and interview.
By drawing lots, the person who was to be interviewed by each of the five groups was chosen from a list of five people.
Each group made a list of questions for their interview.
For practice each group tried out the interview questions with their friends in their groups.
The groups then conducted their interviews with the resource persons (the school principal and four teachers), each member of the group asking questions as planned.
The groups then held a discussion about the answers from the interview in order to make a report. The groups exchanged the reports with other groups and gave their comments on what was missing in the reports.
The students and teacher discussed their conclusions on how to write a report of the interview.
The lesson resulted in a report of the interview. For homework the children made up another interview.
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