IMPROVING THE VIII- B GRADE STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION AND READING COMPREHENSION ACHIEVEMENT BY USING NUMBERED HEADS TOGETHER

Abstract

Improving the VIII-B Grade Students’ Participation and Reading Comprehension Achievement by Using Numbered Heads Together This Classroom action research was intended to improve the VIII-B students’ participation and reading comprehension achievement by using Numbered Heads Together Technique at SMPIT Al-Ghozai Jember. This research was started by doing preliminary study with the English teacher to get the first hand information of teaching English. Based on the preliminary study in the form of interview, it was revealed the class VIII-B had the problem in reading comprehension achievement because of some reasons; they had not comprehended the word, sentence, paragraph and text well. It was shown by the percentage of the students who got the standard minimum score ( This classroom action research was carried out collaboratively with the English teacher. This research had been done in two cycles. Each cycle was conducted in three meetings covering two results for the application of HNT and one meeting for reading comprehension test. There were four stages of activities in each cycle, namely planning the action; implementing of the action; observing and evaluating; and analyzing the data and doing reflection the action. The evaluations conducted in this research were product and process evaluations. The process evaluation was conducted by observation was done in each meeting to evaluate the students’ participation during the teaching learning process of reading comprehension by Numbered Heads Together Technique. The product of evaluation was conducted at the end of each cycle by administering the Reading comprehension xiv test. The students participation could be seen from the students work cooperatively in Numbered Heads Together team in doing the task, the students do the reading exercise in the given time, the students shared the idea with other member of the groups, the students wrote the answer individually and the students in each group answered the teacher’s questions when their numbers were called. The students were categorized as active students if they could fulfill at least three indicators above. This research was regarded successful if 75% of the students obtain at least minimum score category The average result of the observation in the first and second meeting in cycle 1 showed that 79.5% of 22 students were actively involved in the teaching learning process. Then the improvement could be seen from the result of the reading comprehension test in cycle 1. It showed that 77.2% of 22 students got score ≥ 75 in the first cycle. Both of the results of the students’ reading comprehension achievement and the observation met the target, however it was still necessary to continue the actions to the second cycle to ensure the consistency of the result in the first cycle. The result of the actions in cycle 2 showed the improvement. Both of the result of observation and reading test in the second cycle were higher than those in the first cycle. The average results of the observation in the first and second meeting in cycle 2 showed that 84% of 22 students were actively involved in the teaching learning process. Then, the results of reading comprehension achievement test in the second cycle showed that 81.8% of 22 students got scores ≥ 75. It means that the results of cycle 2 gave the consistent results as well as cycle 1. The improvement of participation improved as much as 4.5% while reading comprehension achievement improved as much as 4.6%. Based on the result, it can be conclude hat the use of NHT technique could improve the students participation and reading comprehension achievement especially for VIII-B grade students’ at SMP Islam terpadu Al-Ghozali Jember.