d. P : Ponder what you read by thinking and talking with others in order to make personal connections, develop questions about the topic, andor connect
this reading to other reading you have done.
21
The others said REAP is designed to improve thinking, the underlying musculature for active reading and meaningful writing. The idea for this reader-
writer exchange system was proposed some time ago as a means ofimproving and supporting a national content area reading and writing project essentially for
urban schools. Shortly afterwards it was collectedinto a teaching learning approach called REAP
—Read-Encode-Annotate-Ponder . The REAP system for responding to text has been in use in elementary through college classrooms for
two decades. It is based on a scaffold form of writing that invites creativity, much as does haiku, or any other disciplined form of art.
22
2. Procedure of REAP
“The procedure of REAP is divide in some ways. The teacher should begin with easy reading materials. Students will require practice in determining
the message or main idea. Several examples should be examined and critiqued. The teacher could model the process by thinking out loud.
Students will find it useful to share annotations in pairs or small groups for evaluation, clarification and further development.
”
23
The use of this strategy will cause the students to revisit the text during each stage of the REAP process. In the Reading stage, the students read to figure
out the writer‟s message while taking note of the title and author. As students move into Encoding, the students must take what they have read and place it into
their own words. This allows the students to internalize the content of the reading while thinking about representing the main ideas, message in the author‟s and
their own words. Once in the Annotate stage, students look at the main ideas and the author‟s message by writing a statement that summarizes the important points.
21
Allen, J,
Tools for
Teaching Content
Literacy. Stenhouse,
2012 http:www.west.net~gerindex.html
.
22
Eanet, op. cit., p. 2.
23
Eanet. op. cit., p. 2.
Annotations are brief summaries of a text that explain and or critique the text. Annotates can be done by writing the message in notes or in a journal form. In
this stage, the student should look at important words and quotes of the text. Once students move to the Ponder stage of this activity, they must connect
with the text at a higher level through analysis and synthesis of the reading. In Jeff Zwiers book Building Academic Language, he talks about making connections
through examples. This requires us to know our students so that the examples weuse actually do connect. Furthermore, when we use examples in the ponder
stage it helps to clarify content for the students and models for students the process of supporting their claims and opinions with examples, explanations and
evidence.
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D. Teaching Reading Using Reading, Encoding, Annotating and
Pondering REAP
First activity that writer will be held is the teacher helps the student in building their background knowledge about the will be learned. Such as shows
some pictures, the title of the text and asks some questions. After that, the students may have some references in their mind about text
that they will read. The next step is dividing the students into some groups. In each group consist of three or four people. Because there are four steps in REAP
strategy, divided students make a group can help them in learning reading with REAP. Then, the first activity should teacher do is giving a descriptive text to
each member of the group. Next, the teachers guide students to do the first phase of REAP strategy;
Reading, in this phase, the teachers can ask one of the students to read aloud in front of the class, during this students read aloud, the other students listening
carefully. After that the teachers ask all of students to read the text by two or three times by themselves. This activity may take time about 10 until 15 minutes.
24
Allen, op. cit., p. 4.
The second activity is Encode; in this phase the teacher leads the students to explore their idea about that text into their own words, also some of the difficult
vocabularies. In this stage, the students may discuss to other member of their own group. In Encode step the teacher also add an activity; discussing the new or
difficult vocabulary. Teacher asks a student of each member to write down the difficult vocabularies in the whiteboard. After that, the teacher leads the
discussion about the meaning or the synonym of the difficult vocabularies. The third step is Annotate, this activity take time about 15 minutes. In
annotate step, the student should write down their idea about the content of the descriptive text that teacher gave them before. To make it easier, the students can
make the generic structure of the descriptive text they have read, such as identification, description and conclusion of the story line and the contents of it.
In this activity, the student work alone. The teacher looking around the classroom for checking
the students‟ work. In this activity there is possibility that there are some groups or students who are
not understand about what to do in Annotate step. The last stage of REAP strategy is Ponder, in this stage, the students work
by group. They pondering the significance of text, by thinking, discussing, or talking with their member of the group, then make one perfect summarize about
the text. The summary is using their own language.
E. Previous Study
The writer has found a relevant study which related to this research. That journal was written by Janet Allen with the title Teaching Content Literacy. In this
research, Allen used Reading, Encoding, Annotating and Pondering REAP as a technique. Her classroom consist of twelve students, and she divided it into two
