AbstrakKemampuan berpikir tingkat tinggi mengajarkan siswa untuk mampu mengaplikasikan kemampuan yang mereka miliki dalam menghadapi permasalahan yang ada dalam kehidupan sehari-hari. Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) merupakan suatu kemampuan yang erat kaitannya dengan penalaran yang bukan hanya sekedar mengingat kembali, ataupun menyatakan kembali, kemampuan ini menitik beratkan pada kemampuan untuk menganalisis, membuat keputusan yang tepat dan memecahkan suatu masalah. Berdasarkan observasi yang dilakukan ditemukan permasalahan guru belum terlatih mengembangkan soal-soal yang berorientasi HOTS pada muatan IPA, guru masih kesulitan memahai soal soal berdasarkan kategori tingkatan kognitif siswa sesuai dengan taksonomi bloom terbaru. Untuk mengembangkan kemampuan guru dalam menyususn soal-soal berbasis HOTS maka diperlukan pelatihan yang dapat mengaktifkan guru dalam membuat soal-soal yang berorientasi HOTS. Pelaksanaan pengabdian masyarakat, dalam bentuk kegiatan pelatihan, diskusi,praktik dan monitoring serta evalusi. Pelaksanaan pengabdian dilakukan dengan mitra kelompok guru gugus Pandanaran Dabin IV UPTD Semarang Tengah yang bertempat di SDN Pekunden jalan Pandanaran 1 No.28 Pekunden Peserta terdiri dari guru-guru se-gugus Pandanaran sejumlah 50 peserta. Tingkat antusiasme dalam mengikuti kegiatan pengabdian sangatlah tinggi. Adapun materi yang diberikan saat pelatihan meliputi Pengertian HOTS, Karakteristik HOTS, Penyusunan soal-soal muatan IPA berbasis HOTS dan praktik membuat soal-soal berbasis HOTS. Kegiatan pengabdian berlangsung selama 2 bulan pada bulan Juli sampai Agustus 2019 dimulai dari observasi ke lokasi pengabdian, identifikasi masalah sampai dengan pelatihan. Dari kegiatan pengabdian yang sudah dilaksanakan ada harapan dari pihak mitra untuk menindaklanjuti kegiatan ini dengan kegiatan pelatihan penyusunan soal yang tidak hanya terfokus pada muatan IPA saja tetapi pada �muatan pelajaran yang lain.Kata kunci: Higher Order Thinking Skills; IPA; kelompok kerja guru�AbstractHigher-order thinking skills teach students to be able to apply the abilities they have in dealing with problems that exist in everyday life. Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) is an ability that is closely related to reasoning that is not merely recalling, or restating, this ability focuses on the ability to analyze, make the right decision and solve a problem. Based on observations made, it is found that teachers have not been trained in developing HOTS-oriented questions on science content, teachers are still having trouble understanding questions based on students' cognitive level according to the latest bloom taxonomy. To develop the teacher's ability to prepare HOTS-based questions, training is needed to enable the teacher to create HOTS-oriented questions. Implementation of community service, in the form of training, discussion, practice and monitoring and evaluation activities. Community service is carried out with teacher groups of Pandanaran Dabin IV UPTD Semarang Tengan group located at SDN Pekunden, Pandanaran 1 street No.28 Pekunden -Pandanaran group of 50 participants. The level of enthusiasm in participating in community service activities is very high. The material provided during the training included Understanding HOTS, HOTS Characteristics, Compilation of HOTS-based science content questions and the practice of making HOTS-based questions. Community service activities last for 2 months in July to August 2019 starting from observation to the location of service, problem identification to training. From the service activities that have been carried out there is an expectation from the partners to follow up on this activity with the training activities of the preparation of questions not only focused on the content of science but in the grasp of other lessons.Keywords: Higher Order Thinking Skills; natural sciences; teacher working groups

This descriptive research investigated the level of English writing anxiety experienced by Indonesian EFL students. The respondents were 38 undergraduate students of English Literature program of a university in Semarang Central Java, Indonesia taking Essay Writing course which adopted portfolios as the assessment method. Data were collected by two closed questionnaires; the one was for collecting data of English writing anxiety and the second was for collecting data of writing problems faced by students which may trigger the anxiety arousal. The results show that the students experienced a high level of English writing anxiety and cognitive anxiety was the students suffered most. Gender doesn't affect the level of anxiety experienced by the students; neither does the perception of writing difficulties. Grammar problem becomes the most mentioned-cause of anxiety followed by vocabulary problem and insufficient writing practice. To reduce the anxiety, therefore, it is recommended that writing teachers sufficiently address the issue of grammar and vocabulary as well as provides students with a lot of more writing practices.

Writing is said to be difficult for the undergraduate students of second semester students of English department of UNISSULA. They found many difficulties in some aspects such as topic sentence, supporting sentence and concluding sentence. There were 10 of 23 students who got 75 on their writing score. Hence, the writer wanted to help them in improving their writing quality especially on those main structure of a paragraph by applying graphic organizers. Graphic organizers were used in the teaching learning process by conducting action research. The action research used two cylces. The results were that the students’ writing is better. The way they wrote topic sentence, supporting sentence, and concluding sentence were better than the previous one in the preliminary cycle. It was proved by the percentage of the students who got the score under the standard score of writing, namely, 75.

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to investigate how students perceive about guided writing as a means of learning descriptive text. Descriptive quantitative method was employed, and a questionnaire served as the data collection tool. Seventy ninth graders from one school in Central Java made up the study's sample. The questionnaire has 16 questions broken down into 4 categories: the effectiveness of the timing, the easiness of using correct spelling, the support from the teacher, the benefits of guided writing. The data analysis showed that students had a favorable impression of guided writing. It also demonstrated the usefulness of guided writing as a teaching method for writing a descriptive text.