One Activity in Classroom

On Friday May 18, 2007 I gave my FSC 6 class the mid-term test. (FYI, FSC class is for junior high school students. My FSC 6 class consists of some first grade, second grade, and third grade students.) The students needed around 40 until 50 minutes to do the test. After all students finished doing the test (there is no time allotment to do the test so that I was quite lenient to wait until all students finished), we discussed the test together. It also means that I asked my students to help me score their classmates’ works so that it would be easier for me to record the score in the monthly report. )
For your information, while proctoring the test, I was busy scribbling something in my cutie notebook while thinking what activity to give the students after the test. (What a lousy teacher I am ) While looking at the music folder in the harddisk, I got that idea. I prepared some songs in the playlist, various kinds of music.
There was 30 minutes left after we discussed the test. After collecting the test booklets and the answer sheets, I asked the students to work in pairs. I told them that I would play some songs in the notebook. While the students were listening to one song, I asked them to write at least one sentence (that must be in English because this is a class in an English course. The students come to study English, don’t they?) The sentence is not necessarily related to the lyric of the song. Anything that comes to their minds while listening to one song can be written. I played seven songs at that time: “Kau Masih Kekasihku” from NAFF, “Snow on Sahara” from Anggun, “Ave Maria” (instrumental) from Embong Raharjo, “Song of Joy” from Julio Iglesias, “Ye Liang Tai Piau Wo Te Sin” from Teresa Teng, “Semusim Sekali” from Franky and Jane, and “Untuk Kita Renungkan” from Ebiet G. Ade.
After the time was over, I collected their papers, and then dismissed the class. When reading the students’ sentences, I recognized that they tended to write more sentences when they were familiar with the songs. Two songs that were quite familiar to them were “Kau Masih Kekasihku” and “Untuk Kita Renungkan”. The first song was quite popular around a year ago, together with another NAFF’s song entitled “Akhirnya Ku Menemukanmu”. The second song was released by Ebiet for the first time more than twenty years go. However, this song is often played on television especially when there was disaster that happened in Indonesia, such as Tsunami in Aceh, earthquakes, flood, landslides, etc.
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On Saturday May 19, 2007 a workmate of mine asked me to substitute her at 16.00-18.00. It was Intermediate 1 class. My workmate told me that it was the time for the students to get the periodic test 1. I was happy of course because I didn’t need to prepare any material, just proctoring the test. And to spend the rest of the time after the test, I would do the same thing like what I did in my FSC class the day before. This time I prepared more various songs in the harddisk of my cutie notebook, namely: “Gomenasai” from TATU, the original soundtrack of Doraemon, one popular cartoon on television, “Ketaman Asmoro” a campur sari song using Javanese Language, “Kembang Perawan” from Gita Gutawa and “Terlalu Cinta” from Rossa that have been popular for these past a few weeks, “SMS” one dangdut song that has been very popular in Indonesia since a year ago, if I am not mistaken. For songs using English, I chose “What a Wonderful World” from Louis Armstrong, “Can’t Fight the Moonlight” from Coyote Ugly and Leanne Rymes, “Song of Joy” from Julio Iglesias. I also played the same song again from Teresa Teng.
After the bell rang showing that the time was over, I quickly collected the papers where the students wrote their sentences. Then I dismissed the class. To my surprise, all students tried to catch the words uttered by the singers in those ten songs, and then wrote them down. So? For the songs whose lyrics are not in English, they wrote what they heard, such as some songs in Bahasa, they wrote exactly what they heard.
Since all of the students did the same thing, I had to accuse myself for not giving a clear instruction to the students: that they were supposed to write sentences in English!!! LOL. LOL.
PC 09.30 200507