The Techniques of Cooperative Learning The Understanding of

students are rewarded for doing better than they have in the past, they will be more motivated.

5. The Techniques of Using Student Teams-Achievement Divisions

The general procedures to follow when preparing Student Teams- Achievement Divisions STAD include the following step:

a. Materials

Prepare reading materials, the materials are designed specifically for Student Teams-Achievement Divisions STAD and adapted from textbook or other published sources or with teacher-made materials.

b. Assigning Students to Teams

Teams in Student Teams-Achievement Divisions STAD should be heterogeneous. Do not let student choose their own teams, because they will tend to choose others like themselves. Here are the following steps: 1. Make copies of team summary sheets for every student in your class. Table 2.1 Team Summary Sheet Team Name: _________________ No Team Members Meeting Total 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 Total Team Score Team Average Team Award Team Average = Total Team Score: Total Team Members 2. Rank students in your class from highest to lowest performance. In this case to rank the students, it could be based on the latest students score or based on your judgment. 3. Decide on the number of team. Each team should have four or five members if possible. 4. Assign student to teams Table 2.2 Assigning the Students to Teams Students Rank Team Names High-Performing Students 1 A 2 B 3 C Average-Performing Students 4 C 5 B 6 A 7 8 9 A 10 B 11 C Low-Performing Students 12 C 13 B 14 A

c. Determining Initial Base Score

The base score represents students’ average score on past quizzes. Otherwise, it can use the students’ final grade from the previous year.

d. Team Building

Before starting any cooperative learning program, it is a good idea to start off with one or more team-building exercises just to give team members a chance to do something fun and to get to know one another. For example, teams might be given a chance to create a team logo.

e. Grading

Report card grade should be based on students’ actual quiz score, not only their improvement points or team scores. 16 From the details, the writer sums up that before implementing Student Teams-Achievement Divisions STAD in class, the teachers must know the techniques of using STAD itself, in order to make teaching learning activities fun and enjoyable.

6. The advantages and Disadvantages of STAD

Just like any techniques, Students Teams-Achievement Divisions STAD also has advantages and disadvantages. The advantages are: a. Encourage learners to work together for both the common and individual good b. To make students feel better about themselves and to be more accepting of others. c. Students will have an equal opportunity to learn and to be success. d. Students with lower abilities are more likely to improve their achievement in mixed group. 17 In contrast, based on the writer experience in the classroom the disadvantages of Students Teams-Achievement Divisions are: a. Taking much time in organizing the group b. The class situation becomes noise because students work in group. It means that they have to interact with their teammates to discuss the task given. It is natural that when students work in group they will much talking than when they learn individually, here the teacher needs to control the student often. c. Sometime, the discussion is not working well. There only one or two students who active follow the discussion and doing the task. In this case, 16 Robert E. Slavin, op. cit., pp.73-83. 17 Donald R. Cruickshank, Deborah Bainer Jenkins and Kim K. Metcalf, The Act of Teaching, New York: McGraw-Hills, 2006, pp.238-239. the teacher should pay more attention by asking randomly the students to answer the question. d. Wasting instructional time. Teacher has to stated clear instruction, sometimes he has to repeat the instruction often because they concern with their group and they ignore the teacher.

B. Reading 1. The Understanding of Reading

Each person has their own opinions about reading. Most of us think reading as a simple, passive process that involves reading words in a linear and internalizing their meaning one at a time. However, reading is a very complex process that requires a great deal of active participation on the part of the reader to keep and use the information. 18 Reading is not only translates each word but also involves a cognitive process of understanding a printed message. It must be viewed from every angle in order to complete the process of understanding . Reading could be defined as a communication between what the reader already knows and what the writers writes on a page. 19 When people want to know about something or new information, usually people ask to someone who knows about what they want to know, or read the information in the article, newspaper, magazine, and textbooks. Similarly, when people read a text, they need to perceive and decode letters in order to read words and gather meaning from what people read. 20 Thus, if people do not want to read, they will not get the information. It becomes reading activity is very important in our life. 18 Arthy. V and Dr. P Nagaraj, Enhancing Reading Comprehension Skills through Small Group Interaction Techniques: A Comparative Study, International Journal of Scientific Research, 2012, p.1. 19 David Nunan, Designing Task for the Communicative Classroom, Sydney: Cambridge University Pree, 1999, p.33. 20 Penny Ur, A Course in Language Teaching, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p.138.