FAIRY STORY INTEGRATION FOR MEANINGFUL CLASSROOM

FAIRY STORY INTEGRATION FOR MEANINGFUL CLASSROOM

Abstract: The National Indonesian Ministry of Education expresses the importance of educating friendliness by stating it in a Master Plan of National Character Development for 2010-2015. However the success of character education needs a meaningful classroom situation. Unfortunately, teaching materials to create meaningful classroom situation that enhances friendliness character is still  rare. Sainsmatika fairytale books are science and mathematic’s teaching material which was developed with the wisdom of fairytale, which is attractive to integrate friendliness value. The study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of sainsmatika fairytale books as a means of integrating friendliness  into teaching materials for fourth-grade students in Indonesia. A pretest-posttest control-group experimental design was used in this study to investigate the product effectiveness. This study involved 80 fourth-grade students at one of the districts in Indonesia. The experimental group was taught using sainsmatika fairytale books containing one of the character values in character education, i.e., friendliness. The quantitative data were collected through observation on student activity. The data were then analyzed using statistical methods to calculate the values and determine the frequency as well as the mean of pretest and posttest scores in both control and experimental groups. Through one way ANOVA statistical analysis, it was found that the use of sainsmatika fairytale books is significantly effective to enhance the student friendliness. 

INTRODUCTION 

Every child is a part of society. In the next decade, children will grow up and become changemakers of the world. As a part of society,  children  needs to be a friendly individual  who have friendliness value such as  showing genuine respect, caring for others, and communicating well. Friendliness is essential skill which important for student in all level of educa- tion. Children who have friends are more confident and accomplish better performance than those without friend. Unfortunately, most children had difficulty to make friendship with other. When children have difficulty in making friendship, it encourage negative selfconcept, feeling lonely and rejected by others. The three-year study in Florida show which involved 130 girls and 101 boys in the third and fifth grades, found that children who reject in circle is children with poorer socisl skills or perceived as overly aggressive. Social deficit also causes difficulties in children development (Bennett, et.al., 2009). In other hand, child’s pals can protect children from sadness, anxiety and even depression (Borba.2015).  Indonesia Government expressed the importance of educating friendliness, by stating a Master Plan of National Character Development for 2010-2015. This masterplan aim to develop Indonesia Golden Generation who aware to human value and social responsibility, belonging to friendliness. As consequences, character education should implemented in all grade of Indonesian School. However, there is no way that a child can possess these value in an instant. To have well-developed social responsible, a child is indeed required to get actively involved in the real situations of social interaction. Going along with the above-mentioned notions, Piaget (1932), Kohlberg (1969) and domain theories affirm that the development in the moral domain is encouraged through direct interaction and children’s real experiences

in social relations, as well as the consequences of every action when they build relationships with others (Nucci, 2014).  Therefore, teacher need to integrating character education with learning proccess.  Almost Indonesian school has implementing character education in integrated way with learning proccess in classroom, but not all character value can instructed clearly. Friendliness is a character value described as in the positive attitude toward others, eagerness to communicate, and ability to adapt easily to new environments. These interpersonal features are parts of basic social skills. However, friendliness has yet to be the concern of schools, particularly in elementary schools in some regency of Indonesia.  

Friendliness Indicators  “Friendliness is the best cure for loneliness” (Chandler, 2012). Being friendliness is effort to make another people feel welcomed. Friendliness defined by Fathurrohman, et al (2013) as the behavioral virtue of being kindly communicative and eager to make friends and cooperate with other people. The fact of children with ability to build friendliness have a skill to take pleasure in all activity, make relationship, and play with another children easily (Grose, 2008). Friendliness expresses in actions that demonstrate a sense of love to talk, hangout, and working with others (Indonesia Ministry of Education, 2010). When children enjoy conversing, this indicates that they feel comfortable with their environment and possess positive self-confidence.Within the scope of learning environment, this attitude is reflected in the bright enthusiasm of the young learners to express their opinions, deliver their ideas, accept criticism and answer questions without fear. When they enjoy making friends and cooperating with other people, this means that they have the conception about friendliness. 

One with a friendly personality is perceived to be an individual with great flexibility in establishing communications not only with his contemporaries, but also with other people of different ages. Another trait shown by a friendly individual is his capability of solving problems in teamwork. He does not close himself off, feels comfortable when interacting with other people,expresses his opinions clearly, respects other people’s opinions,and accepts criticism with an open heart.  Theoretically, friendliness is similar to the concepts of ‘social and emotional skills’ proposed by Davidson, et al (2014) in ‘Eight Character Strengths’.One with well-developed social and emotional skills is viewed as a human being who has healthy confidence and a positive attitude, has good manners, shows empathy and cares about others, andpossesses the abilities to communicate effectively, work together with othersand cultivate his emotions. Suyadi (2013) explain friendliness as open-minded attitude to another people through polite communication therefore created good cooperation. The indicator of friendliness have proposed 7 (seven) act such as, “initiate communication”, “support other”, “glad to share”, “open to discuss”, “appreciate”, “respect”, and “cooperate” (Sulhan, 2011).  As mentioned above, friendliness is generally demonstrated through a cooperative and respectful attitude as well as positive thoughts toward others. According to theory which explained, the indicator of friendliness are sociable, glad to share, respect to other, reciprocity, and openminded.

Friendliness Traits

 Friendship require responsible act, like give and take. Australian Primary Schools Mental Health Initiative (2013) propose that children in 4 (fourth) grades comprehend the concept of friend as someone who trusts you and is very important for children because it will help develop their conceptions of social and moral rules (Smetana, 2006; Turiel, 1998). Character education should be reinforced everywhere: on the playing fields, in classroom corridors, interaction between teacher and students  and even learning procces. Both science (read. sains in bahasa) and mathematics are subject which using book as teaching material. Teaching material is a systematically arranged component that presents some of the competencies that will be learned by students (Dick & Carey, 1996: 120). Based on this opinion, the teaching materials are arranged to facilitate students learning easily. In Indonesian School, science and mathematics book not only contain both subject information, but also character education content. Unfortunately, friendliness value is not fulfilled clearly.  The ideal book for lesson character education is not about show the value on words, but also bringing up the enterprise and students awareness about social in interesting way. Every textbook that offered to children should correspond to children’s cognitive and linguistic abilities to less frustrations and lack of interest in studies (Gabitov & Ilyasova, 2016; Solnyshkina, et.al., 2017). According to it, book which easy to read and understood for children is more attractive.  Saxby (1991, p.10) states that "a good book will make the reader hear, feel, and see." According to it,  a good book will make children as the reader able to hear, feel, and see another perspective. A fairy tale as a part of children’s literature can be the place into which the values of character education are integrated. Furthermore, Lepin (2012, p.5) explains fairy tales do not only bring “the atmosphere of mystery, thrill and wonder which makes fairy tales so uniques and valuable but they can bring the whole magic world to a young reader and learner. They can open the old wisdom and knowledge of humankind which we often forget about”. the city center. The respondents were selected through a purposive sampling technique, where only fourth-grade students of elementary schools which are appointed to undertake pilot projects of the national curriculum of Indonesia were involved.

Friendliness Indicators

  “Friendliness is the best cure for loneliness” (Chandler, 2012). Being friendliness is effort to make another people feel welcomed. Friendliness defined by Fathurrohman, et al (2013) as the behavioral virtue of being kindly communicative and eager to make friends and cooperate with other people. The fact of children with ability to build friendliness have a skill to take pleasure in all activity, make relationship, and play with another children easily (Grose, 2008). Friendliness expresses in actions that demonstrate a sense of love to talk, hangout, and working with others (Indonesia Ministry of Education, 2010). When children enjoy conversing, this indicates that they feel comfortable with their environment and possess positive self-confidence.Within the scope of learning environment, this attitude is reflected in the bright enthusiasm of the young learners to express their opinions, deliver their ideas, accept criticism and answer questions without fear. When they enjoy making friends and cooperating with other people, this means that they have the conception about friendliness. trustworthy. At this age, children can express some friendship skills such as sharing with confidences, making negotiation, and respecting one another. When children success at making friendship, they have more opportunity to learn and practice many social skills (Joseph, et.al., 2010). Trial and error proccess for making friendship are several discrete behaviors that children do during playing activity that seem related to having friends (Tremblay, et.al, 1981; Joseph, et.al., 2010).  Friendly act is typically expressed in mild act such as giving a greeting, waving to other, shaking hands, or doing a small favor (Hall & Domhoff, 1967).   A friendly interaction is defined as some following types of behavior such as (1) feeling friendly without outward expression; (2) friendly in action; (3) giving or loaning something; and (4) helpful act (Hall & Domhoff, 1967). This friendly interaction has similar defining with friendship skills which following some types of behavior such as (1) give suggestions; (2) share something (material/ non material); (3) reciprocity; (4) gives compliments; (5) understand how and when to give an apology; and (6) begins to emphatize (Joseph, et.al., 2010). Fathurrohman, et al (2013, p.111) explains that the traits of student with friendliness are: 1) the students are willing to take part in teamwork in the classroom; 2) the students want to converse with their classmates; 3) the students enjoy spending time with their classmates during recess; 4) the students enjoy interacting with other friends at school; and 5) the students confidently talk to the teachers, principal, and other school staffs.

MATERIAL & METHOD 

In this study, the student groups’ examined to respond some open-ended problem which presented during 3 (three) week instructions. Students responses and activity were scored on 5-point scale. The final result for this study is investigating the use of Sainsmatika Fairytale Book as a tool to enhance student friendliness.   

Problem Selection

Fairy Stories Content	Objectives	Friendliness Character
Atta found some random picture and requested to find the connection to be among mentioned picture.	Student randomly choose unusual mate to seat on the next her/him and help Atta to found the connection between some random picture	Try to working with random people (sociable)
The magical door in the gave only want to open if Atta could mention as much as thing which have area and perimeter	Mention as much as thing which have area and perimeter or usually looked for area and perimeter with your classmates.	Glad to share knowledge to another student
Guiliram (a dreadful monster) give a challenge for Atta to arrange his castle	Create a home plans in plot paper based on area and perimeter measurement and show it to your classmates. You need to see and properly score your classmates’ work	Learning to respect other work
Peri Hutan had a challenge to measuring fort (multiple shape)	Disccuss with your friend to find the possible way to measure area and perimeter of multiple shape.	Reciprocity to find the possible problem solving with another student
Every night, Atta seeing at star, he imagine could explore the space and investigate the sound of space.	Share and response as much as logically question about sound energy in space with  your classmates	Share and accept another student responses

Data Analyze 

 The collected quantitative data were then analyzed using a descriptive and one way ANOVA statistics method with the error rate at 5%. It is to determine if the use of sainsmatika fairytale books significantly affects students’ character of friendliness.

CONCLUSION  

 Sainsmatika Fairytale Books (SFB) is a tool to improve students’ friendliness character. The differences among SFB and the general fairytale is SFB containing science and mathematics’ content so SFB can used as a learning tool in instructional situation. The friendliness value, which developed to the fairy stories gradually changes student perspective about friendship and direct the student to reflect they behavior to another people. The direct activity content in SFB, had much role to improve student friendliness. During the instruction, student is encouraged to speak, listen and share their perspective, idea or responses to all classmates. One most difference atmosphere is they learn to apreciate and accept the another student without except for. The stimuli, like fairystories is a precise tool to enhance student friendliness. Teacher can also adapted this approach to improve student friendliness character using another popular fairystories, like ‘Tinkerbell’ or ‘Peterpan’ with a little alteration. So it can used as a learning tool in classroom situation and accepted by all students.      

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

The authors would like to thank of the Ministry of Research, Technology, and Higher Education of Indonesia for their funding support of  this research. https://journal.uny.ac.id/index.php/cp/article/view/19516

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