General Concept of Group Grid Technique

2.2.5 General Concept of Group Grid Technique

This part presents the general concept of group grid technique, including the description of group grid technique, procedure of group grid technique, and benefits of group grid technique. 2.2.5.1 Description of Group Grid Technique “Group grid is probably most useful in introductory-level courses where students are building basic schema, learning a large number of new terms, and trying to understand the categorization rules of the discipline ” Barkley et al., 2005:211. This teaching technique is also known as categorizing grid. Students will thoughtfully sort a list of scrambled items into the correct blank cells of the grids in a limited time. In connected with this study, group grid was used to help students grasp the concept of the simple past tense, and also learn many new terms that are closely related to the simple past tense such as regular verbs and irregular verbs. 2.2.5.2 Procedure of Group Grid Technique According to Barkley et al. 2005:212 there are four steps in the procedure of using Group Grid technique in teaching and learning process: 1 Form groups and distribute the blank grid as a handout, or have students copy it from one that you project in an overhead transparency or draw on the chalkboard, 2 Give students the list of scrambled items of information, 3 Have students fill in the blank cells of the grid. Groups can discuss and come to consensus about how the items should be sorted, and fill out the grid as a group project. Or individual students can take turns in a Round Robin order, filling in one cell per turn, 4 Students submit completed grids for assessment and evaluation, or you post a correctly completed grid for them to check for accuracy. In this context of study, the students were given pieces of information related to the simple past tense and ordered to put them in the blank grid. They did it in group so that they could learn the simple past tense together, and their understanding of this material would be checked through group grid too. The completed grids then were easily to be scored by the researcher. 2.2.5.3 Benefits of Group Grid Technique As asserted by Angelo and Cross 1993:163, group grid technique offers some benefits. They say: The Categorizing Grid is a quick, simple procedure that assesses students‟ basic analytic and organizing skills and also reinforces effective categorization and recall. Practice in this simple CAT provides students with one more tool they can use in studying other subjects. Based on the statements above, group grid technique as one of the Classroom Assessment Technique abbreviated as the CAT is considered to be a great teaching technique utilized to assist students in learning a specific subject through grids and in developing their categorization skill as they have to analyze the scrambled items, think again, consider again the categorization arranged by the students in order to decide precisely which items are appropriate with which grids. Other benefits stated by Barkley et al. 2005:211 are: Organizing and classifying information helps students to clarify conceptual categories and to develop categorization skills. By making students‟ conceptual organization explicit and graphic, Group Grid also helps students remember all information which belongs in categories. Therefore, it is hoped that using group grid technique will help them memorizing the grammatical structures of the simple past tense, and the forms of regular and irregular verbs more easily.

2.2.6 General Concept of Action Research