An investigation on the use of metacognitive reading strategies of fifth-grade and gifted students in junior high school

The main purpose of this research is to determine the effects of metacognitive thinking skills and metacognitive reading skills of students at normal and gifted levels on reading comprehension. The research was carried out by random sampling method with totally 408 students in Istanbul, including 83 gifted students in the fifth grade who are studying at two science and art centers, and 324 students in the fifth grade who are in normal schools in Istanbul. In this study, total data was generated with the combination of "A Form of Metacognitive Awareness Inventory", "Reading Strategies of Metacognitive Awareness Inventory", "Personal Information Form" perpared by researchers, and "Reading Comprehension Test" for testing the comprehension of what they read. Collected data, which is in accordance with the purpose of this study, was analyzed by 20 packets of IBM SPSS software programs. Firstly, we demonstrated the frequency and percentage distributions of demographic variables picked from the "Personal Information Form". Then, the arithmetic average and standard deviation values were calculated by using the sub-dimensions of "A Form of Metacognitive Awareness Inventory", "Reading Strategies of Metacognitive Awareness Inventory". The frequency and percentage distribution, mean, standard deviations were calculated and T-test score is analyzed by the one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA). Researchers also investigated whether there is a significant difference between metacognitive thinking and metacognitive reading scores and demographic variables in the student participating in the research. As a result, a significant relationship was detected, between metacognitive thinking, metacognitive reading and demographic information. Key Words: Gifted children, metacognitive thinking, metacognitive reading, reading comprehension