The effect of digital mind maps on reading comprehension skills of 4th grade primary school students

Reading comprehension is a highly complex mental process. This skill is one that students should be taught from the early years of basic education. Studies on reading comprehension typically focus on examining the impact of a strategy or technique on students' comprehension skills. One of these techniques is digital mind mapping. The effect of this strategy on reading skills is undeniable. The aim of this research is to examine the impact of digital mind maps on the reading comprehension skills of fourth-grade primary school students. The study group consists of 28 students attending the fourth grade of a primary school in Ordu province during the 2022-2023 academic year. There are 15 students in the experimental group and 13 students in the control group. The research is designed according to a pretest-posttest control group quasi-experimental model. In the study, two different reading comprehension tests were used as data collection tools. The first is the Reading Comprehension Test 1, which includes questions related to the "Cracked Pot" text developed by the researcher. The second is the Reading Comprehension Test 2, which includes questions related to the "Everything Started with a Kite" text developed by Sulak (2014). Both tests consist of a total of 10 questions, including 5 multiple-choice and 5 open-ended questions. Arithmetic mean, frequency, percentage, standard deviation, and independent samples t-test analyses were used to analyze the data in the research. According to the data obtained from the research, a significant difference was found between the mean scores of both groups, favoring the experimental group (α=0.05). As a result of the research, it can be stated that digital mind maps are effective in improving students' reading comprehension skills. In this case, teachers can use this strategy not only in Turkish lessons but also in other subjects