Improving students’ vocabulary mastery through crossword puzzle at SD Muhammadiyah 1 Padangsidimpuan

This research discussed about improving students’ vocabulary mastery through crossword puzzle at SD Muhammadiyah 1 Padangsidimpuan. Most of students felt bored in studying English vocabulary by conventional technique that was given by the English teacher of grade VI, it was opening the dictionary technique. It made them tired and lazy to study English. The elementary students would be happy and funny learning vocabulary which is game more than books and dictionary because imagination, simulation, and motivation would be easy to memorize by game, such as crossword puzzle. This research is also intended to examine to what extend can crossword puzzle improved the students’ vocabulary mastery at grade VI SD Muhammadiyah 1 Padangsidimpuan. This research supposed to find whether crossword puzzle could improve the students’ vocabulary mastery at grade VI SD Muhammadiyah 1 Padangsidimpuan. To solve the problem, the researcher conducted classroom action research, by implementing crossword puzzle technique. The researcher applied four tests and two cycles in this research. The participant of this research was one class consisted of 28 students. The researcher used vocabulary tests as the instruments for collecting the data, observation sheet and interview. Based on the research result, showed that the students’ vocabulary mastery mean score of the students was in the first cycle was two tests; in the first test was 61.42 and the second test was 62.14. Then, the second cycle was two tests; in the third test was 84.28 and the last test was 91.78. Therefore, the mean score in the second cycle was higher than the first cycle. In the first cycle was categorized into enough category and the second cycle was categorized into very good category. The data from observation sheet indicated that the students got improvement. It indicated that the application of crossword puzzle technique improved students’ vocabulary mastery