PRESTASI ZAPO PADA OSN TAHUN 2014

"Tekadku adalah prestasi terbaik", agaknya semboyan inilah yang menginspirasi para siswa-siswa Zapo (SMPN 1 Ponorogo) pada tahun 2014 ini. Betapa tidak, dalam tahun ini sudah ditorehkan prestasi yang begitu membanggakan..tiga orang siswa-siswi Zapo meraih posisi passing grade pada OSN tingkat kabupaten di Jawa timur. Berikut adalah datanya.

No.	Nama	Kelas	Mata Pelajaran	Urutan Passing Grade
1.	Bryan prama Ardiansyah	VIII	Fisika	1
2.	Hasna Lutfia Herliana	VII	Matematika	23
3.	Alyaa Ulaa Dhiya Ulhaq	VIII	Biologi	31

Perlu diketahui pula bahwa untuk tiap mata pelajaran diambil 38 siswa se Jawa Timur untuk masuk pada kategori passing grade.

Melihat pengalaman pada tahun-tahun sebelumnya, pernah ada siswa yang masuk passing grade peringkat 8 dan 9 dan pada OSN Nasional meraih medali perak. Maka tidaklah berlebihan jika pada tahun ini, khususnya kepada Bryan Prama Ardiansyah untuk bisa meraih medali emas pada OSN Nasional nantinya. Tentu kita juga berharap kepada Hasna dan Alyaa untuk juga bisa meraih medali emas pada OSN Nasional nanti. Terlebih kepada Hasna yang notabene sekarang masih duduk di bangku kelas VII, maka tahun depan sangat diharapkan untuk bisa menduduki passing grade urutan ke-1 sehingga semakin terbukalah jalan untuk meraih medali emas pada OSN nasional tahun depan. Untuk itu marilah kepada semua warga Zapo, kita doakan bersama semoga mereka bertiga menorehkan tinta emas pada laga bergengsi ini.

CORRECTING FALSE ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT LEARNING

Contextual learning, that have dominated American education for many decades provides a more effective approach to teaching the majority of students because it is specifically geared to the way these students learn. 

Cognitive science and studies of the relationships between structured learning and the work environment have given us a better basis for evaluating the effectiveness of various methods of teaching and learning. Many educators, however, tend to interpret the learning environment according to their own experience as students. It means that they teach the way they have been taught— usually through traditional abstract lecture methods. To increase their effectiveness in the classroom, many educators may need to change some of their basic assumptions about how people learn.

Dr. Sue Berryman of the Institute on Education and the Economy at Columbia University has isolated five common misconceptions (false assumtions) about the ways people learn:

1. People predictably transfer learning from one situation to another.

Berryman questions, for example, whether most people actually use in everyday practice the knowledge, skills, and strategies they acquired during their formal education. For instance, a student training to be a radiology technician may have difficulty relating the theories she learned in physics class to the technical skills she is learning in her electronics courses.

2. Learners are passive receivers of wisdom—empty vessels into which knowledge is poured.

Each student approaches the task of learning equipped with a matrix of acquired skills, knowledge, and experience—and a set of expectations and hopes. The most effective learning happens when the student is invited (and taught) to make connections between past learning and future actions. But teaching techniques that require an essentially passive response from students, such as lecturing, deprive them of this opportunity to actively involve themselves with the material. They may miss the most important means of learning—exploration, discovery, and invention. Passive learners who are dependent upon the teacher for guidance and feedback may also fail to develop confidence in their own intuitive abilities.

3. Learning is the strengthening of bonds between stimuli and correct responses.

This misconception is based on a behaviorist approach to education, which tends to reward response instead ofunderstanding. Education based on behaviorist theory typicallyleads to breaking down complex tasks and ideas into oversimplified components, unrelated subtasks, repetitivetraining, and an inappropriate focus on the “right answer.” Itdoes not help students learn to solve problems on a moresystemic level.

4.What matters is getting the right answer.

 Students who focus primarily on getting the right answer tend to rely on memorized shortcuts instead of acquiring the problem-solving skills they will need in a real-life setting.

5.Skills and knowledge, to be transferable to new situations, should be acquired independent of their contexts of uses.

The process of abstracting knowledge, or taking it away from its specific context, has long been thought to make that knowledge more useful to a number of situations; this philosophy underlies much of our current educational system. However, Berryman points out that such decontextualization
can easily rob students of a sense of motivation and purpose. They may have difficulty understanding why a concept is important and how it relates to reality, and this may make the material more difficult to retain. For example, the definition of a term may be difficult to learn and retain without an understanding of the context of its use.

These are assumptions that may well be blocking many students from an effective learning experience. In each case, the contextual learning approach can help correct the false assumption and the inefficient educational processes that grow out of the assumptions.

ARE YOU TEACHING MATHEMATICS CONTEXTUALLY?

Contextual learning is a proven concept that incorporates much of the most recent research in cognitive science. It is also a reaction to the essentially behaviorist theories that have dominated American education for many decades. The contextual approach recognizes that learning is a complex and multifaceted process that goes far beyond drill-oriented, stimulus-and-response methodologies.

According to contextual learning theory, learning occurs only when students (learners) process new information or knowledge in such a way that it makes sense to them in their own frames of reference ( their own inner worlds of memory, experience, and response). This approach to learning and teaching assumes that the mind naturally seeks meaning in context-that is, in relation to the person's current environment-and that it does so by searching for relationship that make sense and appear useful.

building upon this understanding, contextual learning theory focuses on the multiple aspects of any learning environment whether a classroom, a laboratory, a computer lab, a worksite, or a wheat field. It encourages educators to choose and/or design learning environments that incorporate as many different forms of experience as possible-social, cultural, physical, and psychological-in working toward the desired learning outcomes.

To see whether you are teaching mathematics contextually, take this self-test.

This standards appear to some degree in almost all texts. But contextual instruction is rich in all ten standards.

1. Are new concepts presented in real life (outside the classroom) situations and experiences that are familiar to the student?
2. Are concepts in examples and student exercises presented in the context of their use?
3. Are new concepts presented in the context of what the student already knows?
4. Do examples and student exercises include many real, believable problem-solving situations that students can recognize as being important to their current or possible future lives?
5. Do examples and student exercises cultivate an attitude that says, “I need to learn this”?
6. Do students gather and analyze their own data as they are guided in discovery of the important concepts?
7. Are opportunities presented for students to gather and analyze their own data for enrichment and extension?
8. Do lessons and activities encourage the student to apply concepts and information in useful contexts, projecting the student into imagined futures (e.g., possible careers) and unfamiliar locations (e.g., workplaces)?
9. Are students expected to participate regularly in interactive groups where sharing, communicating, and responding to the important concepts and decision making occur?
10. Do lessons, exercises, and labs improve students’ reading and other communication skills in addition to mathematical reasoning and achievement?

In such an environment, students discover meaningful relationships between abstract ideas and practical applications in the context of the real world; concepts are internalized through the process of discovering, reinforcing, and relating.

Curricula and instruction based on this strategy will be structured to encourage five essential forms of learning: Relating, Experiencing, Applying, Cooperating, and Transferring.

Relating. Learning in the context of life experience, or relating, is the kind of contextual learning that typically occurs with very young children. For toddlers, the sources of learning are readily at hand in the form of toys, games, and everyday events such as meals, trips to the grocery store, and walks in the neighborhood.

As children grow older, however, providing this meaningful context for learning becomes more difficult. Ours is a society in which the workplace is largely separated from domestic life, in which extended families are separated by great distances, and in which teens lack clear societal roles or responsibilities commensurate with their abilities.

Under ideal conditions, teachers might simply lead students from one community-based activity to another, encouraging them to relate what they are learning to real-life experience. In most cases, however, given the range and complexity of concepts to be taught and the limitations of our resources, life experiences will have to be evoked through text, video, speech, and classroom activity.

The curriculum that attempts to place learning in the context of life experiences must, first, call the student’s attention to everyday sights, events, and conditions. It must then relate those everyday situations to new information to be absorbed or a problem to be solved.

Experiencing. Experiencing—learning in the context of exploration, discovery, and invention—is the heart of contextual learning. However motivated or tuned-in students may become as a result of other instructional strategies such as video, narrative, or text-based activities, these remain relatively passive forms of learning. And learning appears to “take” far more quickly when students are able to manipulate equipment and materials and to do other forms of active research.

In contextual academics texts, laboratories are often based on actual workplace tasks. The aim is not to train students for specific jobs, but to allow them to experience activities that are directly related to real-life work. Many of the activities and skills selected for labs are cross-occupational; that is, they are used in a broad spectrum of occupations.

Applying. Applying concepts and information in a useful context often projects students into an imagined future (a possible career) and/or into an unfamiliar location (a workplace). In contextual learning courses, applications are often based on occupational activities.

As noted above, young people today generally lack access to the workplace; unlike members of previous generations, they do not see the modern-day counterpart of the blacksmith at the forge or the farmer in the field. Essentially isolated in the inner city or outer suburbia, many students have a greater knowledge of how to become a rock star or a model than of how to become a respiratory therapist or a power plant operator. If they are to get a realistic sense of connection between schoolwork and real-life jobs, therefore, the occupational context must be brought to them. This happens most commonly through text, video, labs, and activities, although, in many schools, these contextual learning experiences will be followed up with firsthand experiences such as plant tours, mentoring arrangements, and internships.

Cooperating. Cooperating—learning in the context of sharing, responding, and communicating with other learners—is a primary instructional strategy in contextual teaching. The experience of cooperating not only helps the majority of students learn the material, it also is consistent with the realworld focus of contextual teaching.

Research interviews with employers reveal that employees who can communicate effectively, who share information freely, and who can work comfortably in a team setting are highly valued in the workplace. We have ample reason, therefore, to encourage students to develop these cooperative skills while they are still in the classroom.

The laboratory, one of the primary instructional methods in applied academics, is essentially cooperative. Typically, students work with partners to do the laboratory exercises; in some cases, they work in groups of three or four. Completing the lab successfully requires delegation, observation, suggestion, and discussion. In many labs, the quality of the data collected by the team as a whole is dependent on the individual performance of each member of the team.

Students also must cooperate to complete the many smallgroup activities that are included in the applied academics courses. Partnering can be a particularly effective strategy for encouraging students to cooperate.

Transferring. Learning in the context of existing knowledge, or transferring, uses and builds upon what the student already knows. Such an approach is similar to relating, in that it calls upon the familiar.

As adults, many of us are adept at avoiding situations that are unfamiliar—the part of town we don’t know, the unusual food we’ve never eaten, the store we haven’t shopped. Sometimes we also avoid situations in which we have to gain new information or develop a new skill (especially if there are likely to be witnesses)—using a new type of computer software or coping in another country with our fledgling foreign-language skills.

Most traditionally taught high school students, however, rarely have the luxury of avoiding new learning situations; they are confronted with them every day. We can help them retain their sense of dignity and develop confidence if we make a point of building new learning experiences on what they
already know.

ARE ALL NUMBERS EQUAL?

The title of this charmer is clearly preposterous! But as you will see from the demonstration below, such may not be the case. Present this demonstration line by line and let you draw your own conclusions.

We shall begin with the easily accepted equation:

Each succeeding row can be easily justified with elementary algebra. There is nothing wrong with the algebra. See if you can find the flaw.

When x = 1, the numbers 1,2,3,4,....,n are each equal to 0/0, which would make them all equal to each other. Of course, this cannot be true. For this reason, we define 0/0 to be meaningless. To define something to make things meaningful or consistent is what we do in mathematics to avoid ridiculous statements, as was the case here. Be sure to stress this point before leaving this unit.