Improvement of students’ creative writing literacy at SMPN 16 Malang

ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION teachers. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the learning process took place online. However, in the 2021/2022 academic year, this even semester, learning will be offline with the conditions required by the Malang City Education Office. The policy requires that classes only be filled with 50% of students; thus, shift classes are applied.
The school has implemented a literacy program by building a Literacy Corner in each classroom. In each class, shelves and books have been facilitated in the front corner of the classroom, where students can read at any time. The literacy program that has been implemented is religion-based literacy. This means that every Monday and Thursday, all students must be able to complete or finish reading 30 juz of the Holy Qur'an. All class members take turns being assigned to read the Holy Qur'an. Thus, every Monday and Thursday, students always finish reciting the Holy Quran (qatam).
In this literacy program, the initial stage emphasized is the habit of reading. Schools have also carried this out as a policy that students, teachers, and education staff must comply with this policy. On days other than Monday and Thursday, this reading literacy is aimed at various sources and types of books that are read for fifteen minutes at the beginning of each lesson. The school has prepared literacy activity journals which are distributed to each student. They write down the things they read in the available columns, such as the date of reading, the title of the book or a description of the contents of the book or article they read, and there is a column of initials given by the person in charge of literacy or the assigned teacher. Thus, students' literacy activities are monitored.
The policies and activities of SMPN 16 in managing and supporting the acceleration of the literacy program have been implemented. The steps that have been taken to reactivate literacy activities includes: 1) preparation; 2) outreach to the school committee about the activity implementation plan; 3) outreach to all teachers to support and participate in reviving literacy in schools, especially the homeroom teachers who will coordinate directly making reading corners in each class; 4) arranging provisions that will be implemented in procuring reading corners in each class, for example: types of books that may be included in cupboards or bookshelves, determining the variety of reading materials to be included in reading corners, namely youth novels, short stories, general knowledge books, religious books and children's magazines; 5) determine the time frame for creating a reading corner for each class; 6) conduct online socialization of reading corners to students and parents; 7) involve parents of students in making reading corners and procuring the types of books; 8) preparing literacy journals in the form of sheets containing: student names, classes, titles of books read, summaries, and signatures of accompanying teachers; 9) coordinating with the curriculum for setting literacy hours; 10) making a literacy journal format and duplicating it for a number of students; and 11) forming a Class Literacy Team to facilitate the implementation of literacy activities in class.
The stages of implementing the Literacy program at SMPN 16 Malang City includes: 1) literacy activities are held on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for 20 minutes after prayer and before class begins; 2) the teacher who teaches the first hour accompanies students who carry out literacy activities; 3) students read books from the sources the school has provided in the reading corner; 4) students write down their reading activity results in literary journals that have been provided by the school based on the number of students in the class for about five minutes before the literacy activity ends; and 5) literacy activities are carried out by adding a variety of activities, such as appointing one student to tell a story in front of the class and the other students listen and write it in the literacy journal.
Based on the literacy activities carried out in schools, the activities were evaluated. From the results of monitoring literacy activities, the conditions that obtained were: 1) literacy activities and reading corners have been well planned and prepared; 2) in practice, not all students did literacy activities due to running out of time, this means the students' awareness and discipline for literacy activities are still lacking and students have not been able to use their time wisely; 3) there were still many students who wrote what they read in one sentence only without writing the contents comprehensively; 4) there were students who did not write down literacy results and teachers did not check or pay attention to this; 5) some teachers did not sign students' literacy results in literacy journals; 6) students who were appointed to become the Class Literacy Teams facilitated literacy activities by distributing literacy journals; and 7) literacy activities by selecting one of the students to tell a story in front of the class did not go well because they found it difficult to tell the contents of the reading materials, instead, they prefer describing their experiences in front of the class.
Storytelling is also included in literacy activities. Literacy, including a person's reading, writing, and arithmetic skills from the basic level to a fairly complex one, has been known for quite a long time in education. In its development, digital literacy is defined as a person's ability to access, understand, and produce computer-based information. Gilster (1997) defines digital literacy as the ability to understand and use information in various forms from various sources that can be accessed via computer devices. To be able to be digitally literate, skills are needed in a complex manner, starting from the introduction of technological tools (e.g., computers), knowledge and understanding of the substance of information content, to the ability and skills to produce information that is worthy of being read by others. Therefore, someone with the ability and skills to be digitally literate does not easily produce hoax information containing slander, violence, and sensitive issues of ethnicity, religion, race, and inter-group relations (SARA) which throws one another down. On the contrary, the information displayed is more educational and useful for the benefit of society.
The current development of literacy has shifted to digital literacy so that it can be taught in education. This can be included in several subjects supporting students' technology-based literacy abilities. For example, in the Indonesian language subject, which consists of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, teachers ask students to do reading comprehension, be critical, and develop it into opinion writing published in the mass media. Thus, the teachers have trained students to listen to various sources of information, read and write down the results of understanding from various accurate sources to become new works, as well as arts and culture subjects which can develop information sources from the internet into a product of artistic and cultural works which can be demonstrated via video on YouTube. Thus, digital literacy can be taught and trained to students as a skill that can be practiced in everyday life. This is in line with Bawden's view that mastery of digital literacy is more associated with technical skills in accessing, assembling, understanding, and disseminating information (Bawden, 2001). The information that is disseminated is of various natures, such as related to business, health, education, arts, culture, social and social affairs, politics, and so on.
Efforts to teach digital literacy to students require maximum guidance and assistance. This is not only a matter of content emphasized in publishing information but more on building a responsible attitude and character. Why is that? We see and hear a lot of news coverage on television or social media, someone was arrested -whether a teenager or an adult -because the posts he posted violated the 2008 ITE Law, article 27 paragraph (3), which regulates the prohibition of insulting and/or defamation in public. This article still raises pros and cons for this rule to be enforced because it considers that it limits the human right to convey information by looking at the large number of criminal cases that use this article. However, without legal rules on the use of technology, it also does not provide lessons and education for people who lack ethical awareness of digital literacy. Kusumastuti et al. (2021) views that modern society has excellent opportunities to utilize digital media. However, its use also has the potential to cause problems if users lack skills, for example, teachers. For this reason, teachers still need guidance in increasing literacy (Siswoyo & Hotimah, 2021). An ethical attitude is required in the digital world. This was conveyed by President Joko Widodo when giving directions regarding the use of digital connectivity, which should be accompanied by sticking to national sovereignty by increasing digital ethics in social interaction in the digital space.
For this reason, education that educates the public, especially the younger generation and students in digital literacy, is vital to growth and development. Belshaw (2012), in his thesis "What is digital literacy?" suggests eight essential elements that need to be known in developing digital literacy. They are: 1) cultural, understanding the various contexts of users of the digital world; 2) cognitive, requiring intellect in assessing content; 3 ) constructive, the ability to create something from an expert and actual; 4) communicative, the ability to understand the performance of networking and communication in the digital world; 5) the existence of responsible self-confidence; 6) creative, doing new things in new ways; 7 ) critical in addressing content and not simply accepting it; and 8) socially responsible. If this is taught, our students will become intelligent, creative, communicative, interactive, and accountable people using digital technology.
Based on the evaluation results of the literacy program, SMPN 16 reflected on some of the weaknesses and discrepancies between plans and expected results. The results of reflection are: 1) literacy activities by telling stories have been carried out by students with the guidance of accompanying teachers; 2) students appointed by the teacher to tell stories are still lacking in confidence, so it takes quite a long time to wait for these students to appear in front of the class; 3) students look enthusiastic about listening to their friends' stories in front of the class; and 4) follow-up is needed for this activity, it is preferred to tell the book they are reading and students can mention the moral message taken from the book.
Some students at SMPN 16 have developmental literacy competencies; they have written several stories and two novels. It is expected that this literacy ability can be passed on to friends and students at all levels at SMPN 16. Of course, this would positively impact improving the self-quality of students apart from bringing the school's good name. For this reason, what do schools implement policies in fostering work competence for students and developing them into works that can be published? For this reason, the school proposes to partner with the Research and Service Directorate of the Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang in a community service program in the form of mentoring students, so they have confidence in developing literacy by producing written works.
The community service program at SMPN 16 Malang City aims to: 1) build a culture of writing literacy at SMPN 16 Malang City; 2) explore students' potential and interest in writing; and 3) appreciate student work. The benefits of carrying out this service activity includes a) reviving the school literacy team in building students' interest in writing; b) motivating and facilitating student writing; and c) completing school accreditation documentation based on student work recorded with an International Standard Book Number (ISBN).
The implementation of community service at SMPN 16 Malang City in improving students' creative writing skills is expected to create an atmosphere of literacy among all school members. This is the school's awareness of the future goals of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Padil & Antin, 2018). For this reason, schools can respond to the sustainability of this program by, 1) reactivating the school literacy team in assisting students; 2) making policies that implement literacy as learning development in all subjects; and 3) realizing the school's vision in literacy, namely an Environmentally Friendly School.

METHOD
The community service program at SMPN 16 Malang began with a field survey to understand the current condition of the activity's partner. Then, the students are given training for scientific writing in the form of a workshop. The scope and material of the workshop provided included, 1) the essence of writing; 2) types of writing; 3) stages or steps of writing; 4) finding ideas and titles; 5) surfing for sources or writing references; and 6) developing themes into writing. After that, begin the mentoring activities. Assistance was carried out after the workshop activities for students to accompany the writing process to produce works from various genres, such as poetry, short stories, essays, anecdotes, etc. Finally, the writing works are edited to be sent to the publisher and printed into a book. In detail, community service activities have three stages, pre-activity, activity implementation, and post-activity. Overall, the training and editing of the works lasted for four months, from August to November 2022.

Pre-implementation of Activities
This first stage was carried out before the community service activities began. The activities carried out at this stage included, 1) analysis of the situation and condition of the school in the form of discussions with the school principal to gather information regarding the problems faced by the school and possible solutions offered; 2) preparation and submission of service proposals; 3) preparation of forms and schedule of activities; and 4) preparation of material/workshop activities as well as the related documents when the community service team visited SMPN 16 and coordinated with the school's Principal, Ms. Mastini, M.Pd., and the Deputy Head of Curriculum, Ms. Miftahul, S, Pd. (Figure 1 and 2).

Community Service Implementation
The implementation stage included three main activities: training, mentoring, and editing. The training was carried out at an early stage. This activity delivered several materials focusing on writing concepts and finding ideas in writing. To achieve the targets, appropriate methods and strategies were applied. The training included lectures, discussions, and demonstrations. Further details are shown in Table 1. The training was conducted twice, on August 10, 2022, and November 11, 2022. In the first training, students were given three weeks to write after the training. Since the time coincided with the agenda for the Indonesia Independence Day celebration at school, there was an extension of time for collecting student work. Furthermore, the Community Service Team read and examined the writings submitted by as many as 64 students, with results that did not meet expectations. This was because the students' stories were too short, there were no conflicts, the plot was unclear, and the linguistic aspects were not mastered.
Based on the results of the scrutiny of student work, the community service team coordinated with the school to reinforce students who wrote and were still interested in writing. The next possible time to implement the second training was November 11, 2022, with 78 students as participants and conducted in the school mosque. The result of this second training was that many students submitted and corrected the writings that had been submitted. As many as 87 works were submitted, and 81 writing pieces were eligible to be published after being selected. Figures 3 and 4 illustrate the presentation used in the first and second training. The School Literacy Team assisted the students as a follow-up to training materials in producing works. The school's role was very supportive of students' creative writing activities. This was done so that the Literacy Mover in SMPN 16 participated and learned to organize writing activities for students of SMPN 16 in the future. Through the Google Form created by the dedicated team and passed on to students, they became very interested in writing short stories, poetry, fables, novels, and comics. However, due to limited time, the targets for writing were poetry and short stories, and there were 9 writings in the form of descriptive stories. The role of technology in implementing this program is vital. This is in accordance with Warsihna's research which shows that integrating technology (ICT) in developing literacy skills in students' reading and writing is very important (Warsihna, 2016). The community service team coordinated via WhatsApp and video calls with the school. Figures 5 to 10 depicted the assisting activities at SMPN 16 Malang.   Post-Implementation of Community Service Activities At this stage, the community service team carefully read the entire work of the students. All were read and then selected to determine eligibility to be published in a collection of stories with an ISBN. The editing team improv ed spelling, punctuation, and other linguistic aspects to make the writing readable and well-organized. The students did not master writing the direct form, namely the dialogue from the linguistic aspect. The editing activities were carried out by the team leader, assisted by the school literacy team. All names involved in this student creative writing activity were included in the book as editors. The editing process took the longest time, almost two months. Likewise, before the work was published, obtaining the ISBN from the central library took time.
Furthermore, coordination and reflection were conducted with the school and the Literacy Team on the training implementation and the products produced. Based on the reflection results, it was necessary to carry out the next stage of the training program by looking at the need to improve writing skills so that the spirit of the writing vibes spreads to other students. Hopefully, the Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang will still be willing to help and work together for the literacy program at SMPN 16 in the coming years.

Service Implementation at SMPN 16 Malang City
The community service program was conducted in three meetings, including: 1) coordinating the time for implementing creative writing training with the Principal and the Deputy Head of Curriculum of SMPN 16 Malang and then agreeing on the implementation of the service on August 10, 2022; and 2) the implementation of Creative Writing Training by students who were attended by students in grade 8 classes A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and H. The activity implementation took place in two sessions; the first session was at 07.10 -08.10 for Class 8 A, B, C, D, and the second session was at 08.30 -09.30 for grades 8 E, F, G, H. Overall the number of participants was 207.
As for the results of the first training, out of 207 students, 78 students submitted poetry, short stories, and descriptive stories. From the submitted writing, scrutiny was carried out, and it still showed some weaknesses, mainly from short story works. For this reason, the community service team conducted the second training. The time for the training was on November 11, 2022.
The second training was held at the school mosque, where 71 students attended. They were motivated to write, which can be recorded as joint work. The material presented at this second training was with the theme "Strengthening the Creative Writing Skills of Students of SMPN 16 Malang", which emphasized efforts to find writing ideas, linguistic and writing aspects, and the author's point of view in storytelling.

Writing Products Written by Students of SMPN 16 Malang City
After conducting the second training, the number of student writings submitted via the Google Form increased to 87 posts. Those who were not present during the second training also participated in sending writings. Until the selection was made, it was determined that there were 81 works that were eligible to be included in the anthology book of short stories and poetry "Menulis Kreatif: Ekspresikan Dunia". The following is an example of student poetry, entitled "Sebentar Lagi Kawan" and "Ibu Kita Kartini". Based on the two examples of poetry above, it can be concluded that students have been able to compose poetry verses. In the first poem, "Sebentar Lagi Kawan", students composed 6 stanzas. Each stanza consists of four lines. Students have tried to be consistent with the structure and form of poetry. The theme raised was also very interesting, such as the motivation for friends to be patient, fight tirelessly, and never give up on achieving goals. This idea is fascinating. Writers who voice their hearts in motivating others, of course, are aware of motivating themselves first. Likewise, in the second poem, with the heroine's theme, Kartini.
Kartini is described as a woman who contributed to the struggle for women to receive education. Even though Kartini was constrained and confined in the past, she could break through so that her courage against tradition bore fruit for women today. The author felt grateful for Kartini's services. Amalia Dwi Safitri was also consistent in writing the poem "Ibu Kita Kartini". The poem consists of four stanzas, and each stanza consists of five lines. The idea was quite clear and reminded us of Kartini women's struggle.
In the two examples of poetry above, the authors have conveyed ideas related to friendship and the hero, named Kartini. In writing, the thing considered difficult is when pouring ideas. For this reason, learning to write teaches students to develop ideas, thoughts, and feelings through writing. This is because students find it challenging to compose words (Nurjani, 2018). The following is an example of student short stories, entitled "Terbitnya Harapan yang Akan Pupus". Perawat berkata "Loh kok sudah bangun saja? Mau dibius lagi?", tanya perawat saat melihatku membuka mata.
The story writer Excellino Reza developed a story about someone with a hernia. He used the first-person point of view, Aku. In this way, the author seems to be the main character who is being told and can move the story. Generally, writers who use the first-person point of view have explored life events or experiences. Writing stories requires sensitivity, imagination, and perseverance to finish the story simultaneously. Writing as a product of literacy can be taught and developed from an early age. Creative writing skills in elementary school children are introduced to critical literacy with a conceptual approach considered more successful (Ninawati, 2019). Literacy ability, both reading, and writing, is an absolute requirement in developing students' writing and production skills while learning Indonesian (Iswatiningsih & Melati, 2023;Jatnika, 2019).
Strategies and methods are needed to improve and develop students' creative writing skills (Suyanto et al., 2021). In addition, theoretical understanding, direct practice, and feedback are essential for teachers to do on student work. Yarmi (2017) revealed that improving the creative writing skills of elementary school students is done by inviting them to write journals using the Whole Language approach. Amilia (2018) stated that conditioning students' writing habituation is vital in building practical and scientific writing competence. The use of learning media is also crucial in supporting creative writing skills. Melasarianti et al. (2019) utilized media images of Indonesian heroes and acrostic techniques in teaching students to write poetry. Pratiwi et al. (2016) stated that in the creative process of writing poetry, teachers use music media so students can find ideas. However, learning to write poetry still uses conventional methods, such as lectures, assignments, and evaluations (Hasanah et al., 2021). The results of Hasanah's research do not mention students' ability to write poetry or the teacher's evaluation of students' poetry. Thus, there is no teacher feedback on improving students' creative writing skills.

CONCLUSION
The implementation of creative writing training for students at SMPN 16 Malang City is considered essential and valuable. The training, accompanied by assistance in producing work, was very motivating for students. They were increasingly motivated by promising that good works would be published, and each writer would receive a book. For this reason, the school, especially the School Literacy Team, felt that the existence of a service team from the Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang had given color to literacy activities, especially for teachers and students. The book product is a joint work that has entered the printing press and would then be distributed to students who have contributed to encourage them to write further. It is hoped that in the second year, the Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang can continue the community service program at SMPN 16 Malang again.