The quality of a child’s work is dependent on: The tasks/commands/kinds of questions given by the teacher The level of the teacher’s demands. Example: If a sports teacher places the high jump bar at 40 cm, all the children will jump 40 cm, even though some of them can probably jump higher. What if the teacher kept raising the bar? Closed ended questions only get a single answer, whereas an open-ended question can get many answers. “Write down what causes floods” gets fewer answers than the questions, “What are the various causes of floods?” or “How many different causes of floods can you find? Explain your opinion.” If a teacher writes 10 questions on the blackboard the children will do a maximum of 10 questions, but what if the teacher concerned gives one example of a question and then asks the children to make up as many as they can themselves, a lot of children will do more than 20 questions in the same time. A grade 1 child can already write, “I go to school on a rickshaw (becak). My friend goes by car.”, but the children in grade 4 in a social studies lesson just write in a table: “Kinds of land transportation: rickshaw, horse and cart, motor cycle, car, train.” (because the teacher doesn’t demand any more). To raise the quality of the work in Social Studies what tasks, commands should the grade 4 teacher give besides filling in the table? What tasks should a grade 6 teacher give?

Stories and Questions from the Field We are ready to answer your questions about PAKEM, Contextual Learning, SBM or anything else. We also ask you to send in your stories to us from MBE or other areas about innovations or educational issues at school, community and district levels. Send them to us in Jakarta for Suara MBE. If they are accompanied by photographs, so much the better. Send by post, fax or e-mail. Our address, fax number and e-mail address are at the bottom of this page.

TIPS FOR TEACHERS 3 - PAKEM

Many teachers wish to know about innovations in education including Active, Creative, Joyful and Effective Learning (PAKEM). They visit schools which have started to implement PAKEM. The thing they often notice most is that the chairs and tables are arranged in groups. Then the teachers go back to their schools with the idea that PAKEM is just group work, and that all tasks should be carried out in groups so that there are no longer any individual tasks. They fail to understand that PAKEM is about the tasks the children do, not how they sit. These tasks should be challenging and develop skills and competencies like creative thinking, expressing children’s own thoughts and solving problems independently.

The benefit of sitting in a group is that it encourages interaction with other students. They can discuss problems and compare their work. This is important for developing certain skills. But is is important to recognise that only some tasks are suitable for carrying out in groups. Tasks which are suitable for work in groups include:

• Children exchange ideas about a problems or a story which they are going to write;
• Children solve a problem together;
• Children do practical work which cannot be done individually, as it needs discussion or because of a limited amount of equipment available

PAKEM is about the activities the children do, not just how they sit!