Initially, nurturing the reading interest of SDN Punten 01 students was not easy. “We needed to push them a little so that the students would start to love books,” explained Zizah, who is commonly known as Ibu Zizah.
The literacy movement by SDN Punten 01 is one form of the school’s support and collaboration to promote the call for “Batu City, the City of Literacy,” which was proclaimed by the Batu City Youth and Sports Education Office in November 2016. This literacy movement, which has been running since 2016, is supported and participated by teachers, school principals, supervisors, stakeholders, and the parents of SDN Punten 01 students.
The principal of SDN Punten 01, Prihastutik, M.Pd., established this 15-minute reading activity with a literacy program called “I Can Write”. In this program, all of the students not only read but also write reviews about the books they have read every day.
In grade 3A, this program activity takes place every morning before the start of the main lessons. Zizah guides the activity by collecting interesting reading books for the students and putting them in the reading corner of the classroom. Each child may choose one book to read for 15 minutes.
It’s not only the students who are required to read; the teachers in the program are also required to read during the 15-minute reading activity. After 15 minutes, students are asked to write a daily review in the form of a short summary from the pages they read that day. Working in pairs, the students are also asked to tell each other about the books that they have finished reading.
“Every day, students are usually able to read one to three pages of the book they have chosen. The pages that they read are put into a brief daily review, and this goes on until the students are able to finish one book,” she explained. Zizah has also prepared a board with “What I Read Today” written on it. Each student is asked to write the theme of the book that they read that day on the board in one short sentence.
Thanks to this routine, grade 3A students are becoming proficient at writing stories. This achievement has not made Zizah complacent. On the contrary, by using a creative approach, she continues to encourage her students’ writing skills. One way she does this is by providing a challenge to write a prose with a certain theme.
One time, Zizah gave the writing theme Beautiful Friendship with the sub-theme Animal Friends. She linked the theme with a grade 3 thematic lesson. On this occasion, each student was asked to bring a pet fish from home. Zizah prepared an empty aquarium in the classroom to put the fish in.
When the time came for the students to bring their fish to school, they were excited to fill the aquarium with water and decorate it to make it as pretty as possible. After all of the fish had been put into the aquarium, Zizah invited her students to observe them. They started off by identifying the type or name of each fish and its habitat, and then they continued their observations right down to explaining how to care for fish and loving their pets.
Using this creative approach resulted in an extraordinary learning outcome beyond expectations. The students succeeded in making various very interesting short stories about fish. It was then that Zizah said to herself, “It would be a shame if the short stories written and created by the grade 3A students were only used as displays in class.”
This thought led Zizah to take the initiative to collect all the students’ writings to be published as an anthology of short stories. She discussed this idea with the association of alumni of her class. The association members were very happy to hear about her idea and supported it with enthusiasm.
With the association’s support, Zizah retyped the entire manuscript and designed a cover for the book. Zizah brought the anthology manuscript to a publisher to be printed into a book. She also registered the book with the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (Lembaga Ilmu Pengetahuan Indonesia or LIPI) to get an ISBN.
The book Antologi Penulis Cilik Kelas 3A SDN Punten 01 (Anthology of Grade 3A SDN Punten 01 Child Writers) was successfully published in 2017. Those who wished to own a copy of the book could buy it for Rp 20,000, which covered the printing costs. The book sold out, as it was bought by the parents and the students.
The parents were very proud to see that their children were able to produce a book. In fact, Zizah has been asked to re-publish her students’ books. SDN Punten 01’s innovation in literacy has made it a target school for a study to map promising practices being conducted by the INOVASI team.
Head of the Work Achievement Support Division of Batu City Education Office, Abdul Rais, S.Pd., M.SI., noted that the Batu City Education Office greatly appreciates innovative teachers like Zizah.
In the future, teachers in Batu City who have produced work or learning media useful for students will receive awards. The award will be in the form of a certificate, and recognition of their work will be counted as a credit score. This credit score will be a very important capital for teachers to accelerate their promotion to a higher position in their career as civil servants (pegawai negeri sipil, or PNS)).
“The teacher who produces the most work and achievements will be promoted more quickly because s/he will have received many certificates from the Batu City Education Office,” said Abdul Rais.