Planning the action Implementing the action

commit to user 38 Nisa A. Azam

2. Cycle 1

a. Planning the action

In this stage, the lesson plan was made for the whole meetings in cycle 1. It was planned to have five meetings which was conducted once a week. The materials were taken from the internet and some of them were posted on the teacher blog. It was about recount text as aimed in the curriculum. Considering the students’ condition that they were really fond of being a second grade student, the topic of the lesson was all the same for five meetings; that was “school activities”. The main media used was student blog and the worksheet was mostly in the form of blog page.

b. Implementing the action

1 The first meeting The lesson started at 8.20 a.m. It was the second lesson on that day in RSBI 8G. At the beginning of the English class, the students were all ready to learn. It seemed that they were too enthusiastic and “when I came in, they were all vigorously turning on their laptop and got connected to the internet. It was quite noisy in that morning,” Research Diary, 06102010. Unfortunately, the server was not in a good condition as one student said, “Miss, pindah di luar kelas aja ya Miss. Di sini nggak bisa, tapi di luar bisa,” Research Diary, 06102010. So, they had to move the class outside the room. While waiting for the connection, they were divided into 5 groups consisting of 4 persons. After all of the students got a group, the class then moved again to the hall. In the hall, each group had a task to create one blog account. At that time, the connection was still unreached, so the students were getting noisy. Some of them even got bored because of the very low connection. This activity “take a longer time until the connection was accessible in recess,” Research Diary, 06102010. Until the end of the first session, none of the groups had made the blog account successfully. During the recess, there were groups which stayed in the hall and kept on trying to create the account. In was note in Research Diary 06102010: “Ada 2 kelompok yang masih bersedia menghadapi laptopnya dan berusaha membuat akun blog. Kelompok pertama birotrilili berhasil membuat akun commit to user 39 Nisa A. Azam serta melakukan initial post … Sementara kelompok kedua bloge8ge, waktu yang dibutuhkan sedikit lebih lama … .” When the connection was getting better, that two groups could create the blog and posted an initial text on it. For the rest of the group, “they still had no blog account, but they had wrote the draft of the initial post,” Research Diary, 06102010. Finally, the class was finished at 9.55 a.m. after the class reflection. 2 The second meeting The English class started at 8.20 a.m.. The topic in this meeting was still about the blog account and its feature. Considering the previous meeting, all of the tasks for this meeting were stated in the beginning of the lesson. The students were asked to continue the previous posting and to revise it. Then, they had to revise another paragraph having misspelled words on it. The purpose of this task was to make the students familiar with a blog feature, spelling checker. In this meeting, the representatives of each group wrote the name of their blog and its addresses on the board, so that the they could visit their friends’ blogs. The name of the blog were Theigolden, Sunshine Theigolden, Birotrilili, blogge8g, and thedeiia-thedeia Research Diary, 20102010. The students worked in group with, at least, one laptop per group. They had a small group discussion during the lesson. However, the seat arrangement was not arranged properly since not all of the students worked in the classroom. Then, “having given the instruction, more than half of the class went outside to find a place which had a faster internet connection” Research Diary, 13102010. They were allowed to go outside the class to find the better connection. The corridor was the more preferable place than the classroom. When it was coming to the end of the lesson, the students stopped working online and the lesson was reflected. Then, the students were asked to bring pictures photographs for the next meeting and they might discuss it in their groups for the rest of the time. commit to user 40 Nisa A. Azam 3 The third meeting The third meeting was conducted at 8.20 – 9.55 a.m. It was done in two sessions: “the first session was purposed to write the draft and the second session was time for posting” Research Diary, 20102010. In this meeting, all of the task were stated in the beginning of the lesson. The students were asked to write 5 sentences based on the pictures which they had brought. But then, they only had to write 3 sentences describing one picture each person. Started to do the task, the students worked in their group. Two groups were working effectively since they had only five pictures. While the other two groups, worked less effective because they had some stocks of photographs in their laptop. They got confusion in deciding which photos were better to publish on the blog as “I did not tell them to bring the sequenced photos”. It was supposed to let them work individually and made them not “not riveted on a rule in writing,” Research Diary, 20102010. There were two sessions in this meeting, the offline and online working. In the offline working, the students wrote their sentences about the photos on their papers or directly type it on their laptops. During this process, they might have discussion with other friends and consult their work to the teacher. Unfortunately, they also tried an alternative way to consult the translator: Seorang siswa berkata kepada temannya yang sulit untuk menerjemahkan kalimatnya ke dalam bahasa inggris, “Iki lho, nganggo Google Translate. Tulisen neng kono,“ Research Diary, 20102010. Finishing the offline work, they started to log on the group blogs. Each group had to post their works including the photos that they described. The result of the post was vary since not all group posted the works in one post. They preferred to post it individually or one post for two persons. 4 The fourth meeting The fourth meeting was scheduled at the same time as previous meetings, 8.20 – 9.55 a.m. The lesson begun with the review of the previous lesson. Then, the students got a model of short recount text taken from a blog post which was commit to user 41 Nisa A. Azam projected through the LCD. The students should pay attention on the use of conjunction and word order my friends and I. Once the students got enough model and explanation, they were given an exercise to rearrange jumbled paragraphs based on its content and the use of conjunctions. The next exercise was about correcting the punctuation and capitalization of a paragraph. All of the exercises were done together orally. After that, the students got an assignment to write a short story on the worksheet. They had to write 3 paragraphs about the school activity. The instruction was written clearly on the worksheet. After all students got the paper, they started to work individually. During the writing, some of them asked for some helps from their friends and consulted the work to the teacher. At the end of the session, all of the students had finished the story and collected the worksheet to the teacher. 5 The fifth meeting It was the last meeting in cycle 1. The lesson started at 9.00 a.m. and finished at 10.15 a.m. On that day, there was a ceremony before the first lesson, so that the schedule was changed. The situation did not really support to have a lesson, but “when I was coming to the end of the ladder-steps, one student who was outside her class greeted me cheerfully” Research Diary, 10112010. The meeting begun with a review of previous lesson which was related to the students’ last stories. After that, it was continued by new topics: past tense and preposition time and place. It was rather different from the previous meeting that “the students noted what I had explained explained about the grammar rules,” Research Diary, 10112010. Additionally, the material was not only about the use of past tense and preposition, but also the common mistakes found in students’ writing. …selain materi past tense dan preposition, saya juga menyampaikan kesalahan yang cukup sering ditemui pada pekrjaan kemarin. Diantaranya, penggunaan tobe dan penulisan ‘then’, serta penempatan kata ‘there’. Di tengah-tengah saya menyampaikan materi, ada siswa yang berkata lirih, ‘Tumben aku pinter,’ sambil tersenyum Research Diary, 10112010. commit to user 42 Nisa A. Azam The materials were accessible on teacher blog, so the students might access when they came online. Finishing the note taking, the students had a task to revise another blog post. They had to revise the use of tenses, punctuation, preposition, and spelling on the post Research Diary, 10112010. The students should discuss the text in group and report their finding. At the end of the lesson, all groups had found and revised all of the mistakes on the post.

c. Observing the action