Hook, Book, Look, Took: keep it simple.

Are you teaching English to young
children and looking for a simple
lesson framework that you can use
and reuse productively?
The Hook Book Look Took (HBLT)
lesson structure might be the answer.
Originally developed by Lawrence O
Richards and Gary J Bredfeldt (1998),
HBLT is a four-step strategy that is
particularly popular with Sunday
school teachers. The four-step lesson
structure enables the teacher to
introduce and prepare the children
for the lesson through various fun
activities (the Hook), to focus the
children’s attention on the contents
of a section of the Bible (the Book),
to guide the children to think about
how to apply the message in life (the
Look), and to summarize the lesson
in such a way so that the children
finish the lesson with a concrete
takeaway (the Took).
We stumbled on this lesson structure
quite accidently when someone
mentioned it casually to us and
said that she fell in love with it the
moment she learned about it and
had since then tried it out with her
Sunday-school children. It dawned
on us almost immediately that this
could be adapted for teaching English
to young children. The structure is
simple, which goes down well with
teachers working with young learners,
and is versatile enough to allow for
creative interpretations and variations
within each of the steps. The name
is also quite catchy and easy to
remember, which we think is another
plus point.