The purpose of this development research is to produce Higher Order Thinking Skill (HOTS)-based pre-service training model for students of PGSD Study Program of STKIP Muhammadiyah Blora who take Mathematics I courses. The teaching materials are in the form of HOTS-based teaching materials and evaluation questions to measure students’ mathematical problem solving abilities. Teaching materials developed meet valid and effective criteria. This type of research is development research following Borg and Gall procedures. This research leads to the improvement of students’ mathematical problem solving abilities after applying Mathematics based on Higher Order Thinking. In addition, through this teaching material, students become accustomed to high-level thinking so that they are able to solve any mathematical problems given even the average student’s mathematical problem-solving ability was increased from 57.50 to 87.90. Thus, the development of HOTS-based mathematics learning modules can improve students’ mathematical problem solving abilities.

This research aims to analyze the needs of students for teaching materials in the Basic Concepts of Social Studies course at STKIP Muhammadiyah Blora. Social studies basic concept courses are subjects that must be implemented by first semester students of the Primary School Teacher Education Study Program STKIP Muhammadiyah Blora. Currently, the teaching materials used are simple teaching materials made by lecturers without paying attention to what students need.This type of research is descriptive qualitative, which analyzes the results of observations, interviews and user questionnaires on the basic concepts of social studies teaching material needs. The research was conducted at the Primary School Teacher Education Study Program STKIP Muhammadiyah Blora. The subjects of this research were students of the Primary School Teacher Education Study Program who carried out the Basic Concept of Social Sciences courses. The result of data collection is that the teaching materials that need to be developed in the Basic Concepts course for Primary School Teacher Education students are textbooks. The development of teaching materials is based on student needs, namely in the content / material aspect, the feasibility aspect of the presentation of teaching materials, and the aspect of linguistic feasibility.

The research aims to develop social studies basic concept teaching materials containing Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) for college students of the Primary School Teacher Education Study Program. This research uses your Research Development (R&D) method and uses an experimental study using a one group pretest-posttest research design. This type of research is a quasi experimental research with one group pretest posttest design. The subjects of this study were students of STKIP Muhammadiyah Blora Primary School Teacher Education Study Program. The data collection instrument used was an assessment sheet for the quality of teaching materials, an analitycally skill test, and a student response questionnaire. Based on data analysis, it can be conclude that: teaching materials based high-level thinking in the basic concepts of social studies course is stated to be practical and gets a response positive from students. Based on the expert’s assessment, teaching materials are declared feasible and valid. Teaching materials have a positive effect on general activities and skills activities high level thinking. The used of teaching materials developed effective in improving the analytically skills of students.

The objectives of this research are: 1) to develop of learning book based on guided inquiry; (2) to investigate the feasibility of learning book based on guided inquiry; and (3) the effectiveness of learning book based on guided inquiry for the students achievement on the topic Water Cycle for Grade V of Elementary School. The research used the Research and Development (R&D) method, which referred to the model claim by Thiagarajan (4D), namely: (1) Define; (2) Design; (3) Development; (4) Disseminate. The respondents of learning book development included field testing respondents consisting 2 validates and 2 practitioners, limited-scale main field testing respondents consisting 8 students, and operational field testing respondents consisting of 28 students in class existing learning. The data of research were gathered through questionnaire, observation, in-depth interview, and test. They were analyzed by using the descriptive qualitative method. Meanwhile, the result of cognitive learning was analyzed by using normalized N-gain to investigate the effectiveness of the developed learning model; Paired Sample T test to investigate the students achievement prior to and following the model use; Independent t test and Anava, to investigate the difference of the result of existing learning class, module class, and that of aggregation class. The results of research are as follows: 1) The product developed is the learning book which is in accordance with guided inquiry, it has student’s work sheet, and it is contextual; 2) The result of learning book based on guided inquiry is feasible to be applied on the topic of Water Cycle. Therefore, it is feasible to be used in Elementary School. 3) The results of the effectiveness of the developed learning book based on guided inquiry are indicated by the average scores of the knowledge learning result obtained by the existing control class and book class. In term of attitude learning result, the control class has more students who obtain the very good score (72,65) than the learning book class (65,65) in each aspect. In term of skill learning result, the average score of the students of the control class is higher than that of the book class. Based on the results of research a conclusion is drawn that the characteristics of the developed by guided inquiry-based learning book, it has student’s work sheet, and it is contextual. Therefore, it is feasible and effective to improve the student’s achievement on the topic Water Cycle for Grade V of Elementary School.

The success of teaching and learning process is largely determined by students’ ability to write. However, most teachers still apply inappropriate teaching method, so this is important to find a new innovations in teaching. One of them is through contextual approach. This study aims to find out whether contextual approach can improve the 4th graders’ descriptive writing skills or not. This is a classroom action research in the form of collaboration between researchers and class teachers. the data source used was information data from the people as participants. They are 4th graders teacher, students' daily test scores, observations of the learning process using contextual approach, and other information about the school and its history. To test the validity of the data the writer uses triangulation. The analysis technique used is data reduction, data presentation, and drawing conclusions. The result of the study shows that the contextual approach can improve 4th graders descriptive writing skills of SDN 01 Padaan, Japah, Blora in the academic year of 2019/2020.Keywords: descriptive writing, contextual approach