Page 142 - E-Modul Pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris SD

that students generate their own questions to the reading text, rather than using the
true/false ones in the book.

One way that the teacher can plan for variety, is to have a recipe book of
these ideas to refer to. By “recipe book’, I don’t mean the kind of TEFL recipe book

that can be pulled off the shelf in a bookshop, but rather a personalized recipe book

that the teacher builds up over time. Another way to vary lessons is to incorporate
content from a range of sources. The textbook might be used as the main content

for the course, but it can be supplemented by material from other sources.

D. Lesson Planning with ‘threads’

Planning for variety means that we can keep ourselves and our learners
interested and engaged in our classes. At the same time, the opposite concept,

routine, can also be an important element in the class to add harmony and balance

to the learning experience. One way that we can structure this experience is to use
what would call ‘threads'.

Threads can be interpreted in different ways, but essentially they are
activities & routines that students are familiar with, and which they will have no

trouble picking up again. For example, if students start most ‘lessons with a review
of vocabulary using a word bag which the class regularly updates, they will know

what to expect at the start of the class, and this will help to provide a structure to

the learning experience. In this way, threads are ‘horizontal’ links that are created
across the individual lessons of a course, threading together the experience in such

a way that there is continuity.

Threads can be enormously helpful to the teacher by providing a readymade
assortment of activities for each lesson. Full-time teachers will probably be teaching

anywhere between 20-30 hours of classes per week. It can be very challenging to
plan effectively for such a lot of time. If we use ‘threads’, however, we already have

a good idea of what will constitute about a third of the time in our classes. The
remaining two thirds becomes far more manageable to plan, and we can concentrate

more clearly on the specifics, the 'how’, of this remaining content.

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