This research focuses on the improvement of students’ participation in English classroom. The objectives of the study are: (1) to describe the implementation of ice breaker games in improving the students’ participation, and (2) to identify the difficulties of students’ participation in class when the method is implemented. Action Research which is implemented in this study is done in two cycles, consist of three meetings in each cycle. The subject of the research was students of a junior high school in Surakarta. The techniques of collecting data are observation, interview, participation assessment rubric and questionnaire. The qualitative data are analyzed through constant comparative techniques and quantitative data through descriptive statistic. The results of the study are: (1) the implementation of ice breaker games improves the students’ participation. The improvement is supported by the graphic of students’ participation score which tends to improve, from 38?come 75%. Besides, the indicators are improved, they are: (a) asking question, (b) answering question, (c) giving opinion in discussion, (d) doing assignment, and (e) taking notes; and (2) the difficulties during the implementation of the methods are: (a) transition in the beginning of the research, (b) classroom situation which is not conducive, and (c) time in conducting the research was insufficient.
Keywords: classroom acton research, ice breaker games, students’ participation
