Students’ Participations During Cooperative Learning Activities in Classroom in SMP Negeri 1 Salatiga

Abstract

Previous researches on students' participations showed that the more students participate and experience the material, the deeper understanding they will have. Strategies and activities have been developed by teachers and researchers to increase the involvement of students and to engage students' participations. One of the strategies is Cooperative Learning. Group work and Pair Work have been applied in order to increase students' chance of speaking. In this study, four observations and interviews were done to two classes of SMP Negeri 1 Salatiga to see students' participations while they were in group or pair work activities. The participations were described through 5 categorizations based on contributions or roles made by the students, which are Negotiating, Initiating, Questioning, Claifying, and Summarizing. High quality of questions, answers, and comments, in the term of critical, were found in every observation. However, almost all participations done by every group were delivered in Indonesian language and the teacher did nothing about it. The findings suggested that the use of Cooperative Learning was successfully increased the students' participations by providing more opportunity for the students to deliver their thoughts and ideas in the group discussion.