Use of Big Book Learning Media to Improve Students’ Beginning Reading Skills in Primary Schools

This study is motivated by the fact that there are still many lower grade students who have not been able to read fluently. Big book learning media can be used by teachers to teach beginning reading to lower grade students. The purpose of this study is to describe the use of big book learning media to improve beginning reading skills. The study employed a qualitative descriptive method. The subjects were second-grade primary school students who were still unable to read. The research was conducted in one of the primary schools in Tasikmalaya City. The results revealed that students were more enthusiastic in learning to read using big book learning media, which could be seen from an increase in students' reading skills in each meeting. By using big book learning media, in addition to learning to read through a series of letters, students were able to learn to read through images followed by the writing. Therefore, big book learning media can be used to improve students' reading skills.

Gagne in Susilana & Riyana (2008) and Arsyad (1997) explained that media are various types of components in a student environment that can stimulate students to learn. Learning media has a very important role in the learning process to deliver information provided by the teacher to students. Learning media should be used by teachers to facilitate their students in learning, especially learning to read.
Big Book media is one of the learning media that can be used by teachers to teach beginning reading.. This media can help students' recognizing the writing symbols. If students usually learn to read from smallsized books or teacher's notes on the board, the Big Book media can help students learn to read from large-sized books, and even interesting images in the books. Besides the size of the book that is larger than usual, the Big Book media also presents reading material with certain themes so that it facilitates students to understand the contents of their reading.
The big Book media can be used by students for the beginning reading learning.
Since first-grade and second-grade primary school students are still in the stage of recognizing and pronouncing the letters, thus learning media are needed.

Research Data Sources
The data obtained in this study are as follows: 1. Classroom teachers Classroom teachers are managers and leaders of teaching and learning activities in classroom. Therefore, the researchers really need data relating to research from classroom teachers who are involved as research subjects.

Students
Students are the subject of learning.
Therefore, the researchers really need accurate information about the teaching and learning process in the classroom from all students.

Document
The document is a support in this study.
The document used as a source of data by the researchers is the student learning outcomes

Research Instruments
This study employed descriptive qualitative method. The main instrument is the researchers themselves. Researchers try to see the problems objectively that occurred in the field. In addition, the instruments in this study were interview sheets and observation sheets, and documentation.

Data Collection Technique
The data was collected using a combination of strategies in collecting data to obtain valid and reliable data, so that the subjectivity of the researchers is needs. In addition, triangulation was carried out so that the data collected was more convincing to be described.

RESULTS
The research on the use of Big Book media in the beginning reading learning was carried out for second-grade primary school students in the 2019/2020 school year. Based on the results of the preliminary study, there were some students who were still able to read fluently. However, classroom teachers recommend five students to be given treatment in this study.
The students included in this study were students who had difficulties in reading learning, even though most of their classmates were already able to read fluently.
This study was divided into three stages of activity using three different Big Book media. The first stage is the introduction of vowels and consonants following simple words using the Big Book media called transportation equipment. The second stage is the introduction of words with multiple vowels and consonants using the Big Book media called the animal world.
The third stage is the processing of simple sentences using the big book media called vegetables. consisting of the letters K, R, T, and P. Then each consonant was added with the following five vowel letters. The students took a turn to read the words compiled by the teacher. The following was the results of students' reading learning in the first stage.  Spell ny 3 2 Table 2 shows that there were four students who were able to spell syllables consisting of three letters fluently (80%). Meanwhile, there were two students who had not been fluent in the pronunciation of ng and ny, especially when the letters ng and ny are in the middle of the letters.

Third Stage of the Research
At this stage, the students were taught with simple sentences consisting of two-three words. The Big Book media used was entitled "Vegetables". This book contains pictures and writings of wortel (carrot), timun (cucumber), jamur (mushroom), brokoli (broccoli), and tomat (tomato). In general, the students were able to read well what taught by the teacher, because they had been taught to read the words before in the first and second stages, while at this stage, the students were evaluated what had been learned in the first and second stages.
Before teaching the concept of simple sentences, the teacher reminded the students to read one word contained in the big book.   Table 3 shows that there were three students who were able to read multiple consonants fluently, and two students who had not been able to read them fluently.
On the other hand, there were two students who were able to read multiple vowels fluently, and three people who had not been fluent in reading multiple vowels.
Meanwhile, there were three students who were able to read the letters ng and ny fluently, and two people who had not been able to read them fluently.

CONCLUSION
Learning to read in primary schools, especially in low classes, must be accompanied by the use of learning media. One of the media that can be used in the beginning reading learning is the big book media. This media is in the form of a large book containing certain themes, such as animals, plants, activities, and more.
The research results revealed that the use of big book media can improve students' ability to read in the beginning reading learning. This can be seen from the increasing ability of the students from day to day in the beginning reading learning.
However, there are still some difficulties experienced by students in learning to read, such as difficulties in reading multiple vowels, multiple consonants, combinations of letters ng and letters ny. [339]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was a grant from the Ristek-Dikti.
The researchers would like to express my gratitude and appreciation to the Ristek-Dikti for the support and assistance provided in the implementation of this study as one of the three pillars of higher education that must be carried out by lecturers. In addition, the researchers would also like to thanks the teachers, students, the principal of SDN Dadaha and other parties involved in this study.