Creating Healthy Competition through Work Display's

Amrulloh, DBE3 District Facilitator from Bojonegoro reflects on the learning he has helped facilitate. He has found displaying student's work effective in encouraging students to become more active and creative in learning. The following is his account of his experience.

THROUGH the teaching and learning processes that I implement in my class, I have found that displaying student's work, both individual and group work, motivates students to become more active and creative. Displaying here refers to something more than just sticking up their papers on the wall. Students’ work displays make for a great learning resource. And it is our duty to motivate them to make use of these displays.

I, as a teacher, try to make the process of creating and displaying student's work a competition for students both individually and as a group. The work that is displayed is selected from the best work. Other students are encouraged to observe the displayed work and compare it to their own work. Students appreciate this process; students whose work is displayed are proud because they feel appreciated, while those whose work is not displayed feel motivated to work even better to get their work displayed.

This creates healthy competition amongst the students. This competition helps increase their confidence and their motivation for success. The writer considers that this competition encourages creativity and active learning and increases student enthusiasm. These displays also demonstrate that we have fulfilled in reality what was written in the lesson plan.

Making Mathematics Relevant to Our Daily Life Mathematics used to haunt students. But that is not the case now, in SMPN 2 Semanding, Tuban, Mathematics is now more enjoyable and contextual. Students here can be seen discussing and measuring the dimensions of a cylinder, cone and sphere (Photo 1 and 2). Students also visited a factory close to their school, and used it as a learning resource (Photo 3)