<![CDATA[Beginning reading ability is one of the basic skills that elementary school students in the lower grades need to master. This ability becomes an important foundation for students to participate in learning at the next level. However, some first-grade students still experience difficulties in recognizing letters, distinguishing letter forms, pronouncing letters, and reading words. One of the media that can be used to stimulate beginning reading ability is letter card media. This study aimed to determine the effect of using letter card media on the beginning reading ability of first-grade students at SD Negeri 69 Banda Aceh. This research employed a quantitative approach with an experimental method using a one-group pretest-posttest design. The sample consisted of 32 students from class IB of SD Negeri 69 Banda Aceh who were selected through purposive sampling. Data were collected through observations of students' beginning reading abilities before and after the implementation of letter card media and through documentation. The data were analyzed using percentages and a t-test. The results showed that students' beginning reading ability before the use of letter card media obtained an overall percentage of 51.63%, categorized as sufficient, while after the implementation of letter card media, it increased to 87.25%, categorized as very high. The hypothesis test resulted in a t-count of 22.501, which was higher than the t-table value of 1.697 at a significance level of 0.05. Therefore, the alternative hypothesis was accepted and the null hypothesis was rejected. These results indicate that the use of letter card media had an effect on improving the beginning reading ability of first-grade students at SD Negeri 69 Banda Aceh. Keywords: letter card media, beginning reading, elementary school students, reading ability]]>
