Teaching Recount Text to Grade 10 Students

The very first lesson I tackled as a practice teacher in SMAN-3 Medan was recount text for grade 10 students. Many mistakes were made, but many lessons were learned.

I did not have much time to make my lesson plan for this topic due to an earlier misunderstanding. Though I was able to make my lesson plan and PowerPoint, I did not make the lesson interactive enough for the students. I also did not make adequate use of multimedia, such as videos. I only planned to lecture about recount text then give an activity afterwards.

I first taught a Science section using this teaching plan. I had only one period to work however, because my co-teachers and I arrived late (UMSU originally did not let us leave until 8 AM. This rule was overturned later on). I was able to do my motivation, which was asking questions about diaries, then lectured about recount text. I tried to make my lecture somewhat interactive by letting the students write and identify keywords that could help identify the three parts of a recount text. Unfortunately, I was unable to give an activity afterwards due to lack of time. Things worked out in that class so I thought I could do this again in my next class, the Social section.

Hoo boy, I was very wrong.

Due to a misunderstanding I had with my student buddy, I did not have the sample diary entries I intended to use. I asked a student to print it out and she left with my supervisor to do so. The document I asked her to print was just seven pages long, so I thought they'd be done with it in no time.

Unfortunately, they were not around for the entire first period. I tried to apply my approach to this class. There was one problem though: practically no one spoke English. At all.

No one recited. No one took me seriously. No one understood me. Total recipe for disaster.

I tried to give an activity during the second period. That was the time when my supervisor came back. To my shock, she had printed probably forty or fifty copies of that document (even though I never asked her to print that many copies). Nonetheless, we tried to continue with the activity, which was letting the students write their own diary entries by group.

I realized however, that the students here did not seem to take their requirements as seriously as Filipino students do. The students who were bored didn't do anything at all. It was very disheartening.

All in all, I learned that you should not stick to lecturing during certain scenarios. You should communicate clearly with your supervisors, and you should make use of multimedia as much as possible.