TEACHING AND LEARNING PROCESS USING A STUDENT

I taught three classes of eighth grade students. I felt sad every time I had to leave them for another duty. My students also felt the same. Both of us missed our English class. This good realtionship I think came from their very positive attitude toward English. This is because I always vary the process of teaching and learning. The following is one of what I did in my class
When we discussed folktale, I used one of my students to be our learning resource. I gave him a synopsis of “Timun Mas” and asked him to read the text aloud at the next day in front of the class. I coached him first to read the text phrase by phrase to check his pronunciation, stress, and intonation.
The next morning he read the story aloud enthusiastically. All students in the class were impressed with the story. After the students listened to the story, I gave them comprehension questions. Then I asked whether they had some difficulty in understanding some words. I wrote the words on the board by asking them the meaning. All at once we were involved in a vocabulary discussion. To make them more familiar with the words, I asked them to make sentences dealing with the story. Without being aware of the process, the students constructed a story of Timun Mas using their own words although it was not in a good order yet.
To improve the story, I formed groups of four students and asked the groups to retell the story chronologically. One student became the group speaker. Every member gave their ideas to the group. There was a competition in retelling the story since I promised to give scores. The class became very active. Each member of the groups gave input to their speaker about what and how to retell. I controlled the process of learning while bringing a rubric for assessment. After each group got their turn, I invited volunteers to act out the characters of the story in a kind of role-play. I found that my students were talented indeed on acting. They could act well and expressively.
To dig out their impression about the story I asked the groups to draw one character in the story. It could be Bhuto Ijo, Timun Mas, or the mother. The result was good. Some groups were impressed by Bhuto Ijo, the giant. So, they drew a frightening face representing the fierce giant. Some other groups drew the picture of Timun Emas, the beautiful girl in the story. The rest of the groups drew the picture of a very poor widow that represents the mother. I felt that I had succeeded in making them enjoy the lesson.

From the experience,I realized that when the students are deeply involved in every single learning activity, the process of learning can be optimal. The learning activity can cover as many activities as possible in limited time efficiently and effectively. There are listening, speaking, and writing activities besides vocabulary, structure, and pronunciation. In short, students can maximize their ability as long as we give them opportunity to develop it. Probably, you are doubtful and have big questions like the following. What if there is no special student in my class? Can the process above run well? If there is no excellent student the one I had, the teacher himself/herself reads the story in front of the class. But he/she should avoid looking at the text all the time to make the story reading more natural. When there are some difficult words, it is better to discuss first the key words only.

I hope my experience can show that teacher is not the only source of learning. There are still many others, such as our environment, school, surrounding, native speakers, people and things around us, and our the students. They are learning sources that we can use