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

Tedjaatmadja, Herwindy Maria and Renandya, Willy (2012) Hook, Book, Look, Took: keep it simple. Modern English Teacher, 21 (4). pp. 58-61. ISSN 0308-0587

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Abstract

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.

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