The Understanding of Know Want Learn Plus Technique

The teacher and students begin the process by doing brainstorming together what they know about the topic given. Here, the teacher has an important role to motivate and guide the students to investigate their prior knowledge in order to stimulate so that they can explore everything that they have already know about the topic. 37 After brainstorming and discussing, students note on their individual worksheet what they know about the topic in the column K what I know. 38 Then, the students have to categorize the information that they have already know. That will be useful to students in reading to involve them in thinking of the more general categories of information. 39 For example, from the figure 1 the students categorize what they know about “killer whales” as description, food and location. The second step of the logical procedure is exploring students’ curiosity. Using the list of information and categories generated, students identify areas about which they want to uncover more information. This activity develops the students’ own reason for reading-reading to find answers to questions that will increase their source of knowledge on the topic. 40 The students should note again the question that they have on the worksheet column W what I Want to know. After brainstorming and questioning the topic, moreover the students have finished their reading. The last step is “what I did Learned”, here the teacher ask the students to describe, usually in written form, what they learned from the completion of reading. This will take much time for students to describe what the important information from the reading text. 41 To make the explanation clear, the example of K-W-L chart activity is given as follow: 37 Blachowicz, op.cit., 2008, p. 114. 38 Carr and Ogle, op. cit. 1987, p. 627. 39 Ogle, 1986, loc. cit. 40 Ibid, p. 566. 41 Philippot and Graves, op. cit., 2009, p. 123. A 9 th grade disable reader’s K-W-L worksheet on killer whales 42 K Know W Want L Learned They live in oceans. They are Vicious. They eat each other. They are mammals. Description Food Location Why do they attack people? How fast can they swim? What kind of fish do they eat? What is their description? How long do they live? How do they breathe? D – They are the biggest member of the dolphin family. D – their weigh 10,000 pounds and get 30 feet long. F – they eat squids, seals, and other dolphins. A – they have good vision underwater. F – They are carnivorous meat eaters A – they are the second smartest animal on earth. D – they breathe through blow holes. A – they do not attack unless they are hungry. D – warm blooded. A – they have echo-location sonar. L – they are found in the oceans. Final category designations developed for column L, information Learned about killer whales: A = abilities, D = description, F = food, L = location. Figure 2.1 The last in K-W-L plus strategy explains how far students can learn from their reading. A written component which features concept mapping and summarizing increases students’ independent learning to think critically. A map is a graphic outline to organize text information. Otherwise, making summary can help students improve comprehension. 43 The following are the example of mapping and summarizing. 42 Carr and Ogle, op. cit., 1987. p. 628. 43 Carr and Ogle, op. cit., 1987, pp. 628- 629.