It is important to state that the researcher used only her personal planning time to conduct the students‘ lessons. The writer did not
withdraw, remove or reschedule school board time away from the school community while completing her research.
It was also essential for these students to feel good about their participation. All of the students were familiar with the researcher as their
English teacher too and perceived other classroom as a welcoming place. The sessions were held in other classroom not theirs, where the students
felt comfortable. Since all students in the school visit them during the week, the participants
did not feel like ―special class‖ students coming out for extra help. They were eager to come out for English lesson times.
Although the students were aware that they needed to improve their reading ability, they also understood that their participation would help
teach the researcher how to improve her own practice. The researcher repeatedly told the students that she was learning from them. They
understood that they were helping her to become a better teacher by letting her try out different reading texts includes Local Texts with them.
The researcher respected their privacy and she showed her appreciation of their efforts to help the teacher with this study.
4. Overview of Local Text With Scanning
It is appropriate at this point to describe in some detail the study that the writer developed and used during the classes she held with her
small group of ten students. Fountas and Pinnell 2002 indicate that the
explicit teaching of reading skill works best in small group settings. Consequently, during the course of three months January to March
2011, the researcher explicitly taught five of the reading texts Local Texts with Scanning and Skimming. The researcher was very aware that
in the preliminary plans, she more focuses on scanning but still not enough to improve students reading ability. The researcher began to build
students perspective of reading texts related to there are so many reading texts inside during national final examination; in second spoken was that
the problem was not what reading text talk about, not about what is the title of the text, but how to find the information or answer from the text
correct and quickly. Finally, the writer led students to generate correct information from Local texts with scanning and skimming. Students
struggled to summarize the main idea from a Local text. The researcher hoped that the students in this study would be using a variety of reading
texts independently. This would support them while summarizing. The Action Research Study Timeline outlined in Figures 3.1 an
overview of the action research study. The timeline depicts how the researcher used the study timeline to conduct Local Text with scanning
and also skimming, and notes both when and by which learning the different texts were taught. Each of reading text Local Text became a
focus for about a month. During that time, the lessons were designed to assist the students in their ability to understand and practice the desired
study. This timeline also shows that the written summarizing is often
taught in the early grades and, thus, the students were more likely to see success and achieve more independence. Additional reading texts from
text book were practiced too from January to April, to aid in the ability to summarize texts; when the group focused on text features, the writer
incorporated think-aloud in this learning technique, in an attempt to improve the quality of their written responses.
Figure 3.2 Action Research Study Timeline From middle to end of February, 2011, the researcher provided a
variety of local texts and other so that the students were able to practice their reading skill with greater flexibility. The writer also wanted the
students to become familiar with several kinds of texts. These learning opportunities occurred also in the library to find out other Local Texts,
during class time. The researcher felt that before or after school sessions would have reduced the students‘ willingness to participate, because they
would have felt that they were being penalized for their low reading ability.
Appendix B provides an example of some of the researcher‘
anecdotal comments, which were often written directly on the lesson page. After the lesson was over, the writer would reflect back on the
successful aspects of it has been put as the criteria of successful in action research and attempt to change the approach if the students were
inattentive or unsuccessful. She recorded each student‘s attitude and
ability to complete the tasks in her learning journal after each lesson. If the students asked for clarification or did not engage in the task, she
planned another way to teach the skill. This demonstrates the reflective nature of the action research process and how it allowed her to consider
the effectiveness of the learning process through local text with scanning. All the resources for the preparation and implementation of the
study were available in the school. No specialized software or equipment was required. The researcher had a series of guided reading materials that
matched the reading level of the students in this study. The writer reviewed a variety of recommended reading ability techniques, organized
them and planned a variety of mini-lessons to reinforce the specific reading ability using Indonesian language.
B. DATA COLLECTION
