Improving Student’s Reading Comprehension on Descriptive Texts by Using Numbered Heads Together at Tenth Grade of SMK Taruna Pekanbaru

This research needs to be conducted because the students at tenth grade of SMK Taruna Pekanbaru had problems in comprehending descriptive texts. Therefore, the researcher decided to solve these problems by conducting Numbered Heads Together strategy. The purposes of this research were to identify to what extent Numbered Heads Together strategy can improve students’ reading comprehension on descriptive texts and the factors that influence the changes of students’ reading comprehension of descriptive texst at tenth grade of SMK Taruna Pekanbaru. This research was a classroom action research. It consisted of two cycles and four meetings of each cycle. The instrument used to collect the data were reading comprehension of descriptive text test, observation sheets, field notes, and interview which was helped by a collabolator.The finding revealed that the implementation of Numbered Heads Together strategy could better improve students’ reading comprehension of descriptive texts at tenth grade of SMK Taruna Pekanbaru. The improvement was confirmed by the increasing of average studens’ score from cycle I to cycle II. The factors that influence the students reading comprehension during the application of Numbered Heads Together strategy were the materials and media, teacher’s strategy and classroom activities; and the teacher’s approach and classroom management. Finally, the classroom action research by using Numbered Heads Together strategy could improve the students’ reading comprehension of descriptive texts at tenth grade of SMK Taruna Pekanbaru.