Reading Skill Improvement in First Grade Students in Slb-B Karya Bakti Wonosobo through Multisensory Approach

Reading skill improvement in first grade students in SLB-B Karya Bakti Wonosobo through multisensory approach. This research aimed to reveal: (1) the process of improvement can be done by teachers to develop reading skills in deaf students, (2) the types of functional sensory improvement found for instructional reading in deaf students, (3) if multisensory theory can give contribution in instructional reading in deaf students. This study is a classroom action research. This research applied multisensory approach to improve reading skills. This study was conducted in SLB-B Karya Bakti, an extraordinary school in Wonosobo. The subjects of the research are four students with lower-level reading skill compared to their classmates. The data were collected through tests and observation on subjects and observation on teacher collaborator. The technique of analyzing data is descriptive quantitative. The result shows that multisensory approach applied in the instructional process can improve the reading skill. The visual aspects performed in students include viewing the writing, reading lips, viewing and mimicking teacher’s pronunciation, and observing sound meter to know the level of sound produced. In auditory aspect, students mimic teacher’s pronunciation and produce sound so it can be detected by sound meter, thus the sound produced is then heard. In kinesthetic aspect, students imitate mouth’s movements and understand the vibration and movements when reading. In tactile aspect, students feel the vibration of the sound produced when reading and they understand the difference between plosive consonant and continuant consonant. Keywords—deaf students, reading skill, multisensory