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writer would like the students to learn something from the messages. The lessons would be very useful for them to improve not only their reading skill but also their
attitudes in their societies. According to Kennedy and Gioia 1999: 5, the characters in a fable may be
talking animals, inanimate objects, or people and supernatural beings. However, the characters are not widely developed in a fable because their actions are led to a
certain message. By its very bareness and simplicity, fables seem to be designed to teach lessons about human life. It means that fables are read to let the readers
understand what the message is. Therefore, the designed materials do not focus on the characters’ development of a story, but they offer some valuable moral lessons to
the students.
2. Teaching Reading
Apart from the vocabulary and language matters, teachers should know that teaching reading is not an easy task. According to Urquhart and Weir 1998: 183,
there are three phases, or sometimes called three strategies in teaching reading, which are called pre-reading, whilst reading and post-reading.
a. Pre-reading strategies According to Pearson and Fielding’s generative learning as quoted by
Urquhart and Weir 1998: 183, there are two pre-reading strategies, namely previewing and prediction. In Urquhart and Weir’s opinion 1998: 184, previewing
can be used to make a decision whether to read a book, an article or a text. In the classroom context, previewing may be very useful. Previewing has obvious links
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with expeditious reading strategies. Prediction is often a case of supplying or activating appropriate background knowledge such as lectures, discussion, debate,
real- life experiences, text previewing or introduction of vocabulary. b. Whilst-reading strategies
Whilst-reading phase is meant to lead the students to understand the content of the reading passage. The skills involved are:
§ Scanning It helps the students search quickly for specific information from the materials,
such as finding the meaning of a word in dictionary, finding statistical information and finding answers to certain questions from a text.
§ Skimming It means to quickly read part of the text to obtain the general impression of what
the text is about and to select the sentences that are worth reading. c. Post-reading strategies
Questions of evaluation and of personal response are also seen by teache rs and course book writers as valuable post-reading activities, relating the text to the
outside world. In addition, Nuttal 1996: 167 also suggests that the reading activities in this strategy may be done either ora lly or in written.
3. Implementing the Theories of Reading to the Developed Materials
From all theories above, the writer would like to apply them as the basis of the instructional design. Since teaching reading is not as easy as teaching the other
skills, the writer feels challenged to make a design of interesting reading materials. In
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designing them, the writer considers two things in order to develop students’ reading skill. They are the students’ needs and the strategies of teaching reading.
The writer agrees that students must be put as active subjects. They need to be exposed both physically and mentally to the reading passages that are suitable and
interesting in order to make them understand the context or the message from the passages. The writer also wants the students to learn something valuable and
meaningful for the students’ social life. Therefore, the instructional design uses fables as the passages so that the students will not only develop their reading skill but
also learn something meaningful because there is a moral lesson taught in each fable. Considering the success of teaching reading using fables as the materials, the
writer applies the three strategies proposed by Urquhart and Weir 1998 and Nuttal 1996. They are pre-reading strategies, whilst-reading strategies, and post-reading
strategies. In the design, however, the terms of the strategies are changed into Warming-up
, Let’s Read, and Cooling Down.
4. Instructional Design Models
