The effects of homeworks on initial literacy skills of primary school first grade students

The main purpose of this study is to identify the effects of the structured homeworks on initial literacy skills of primary school first grade students.The research is an experimental study and is designed in the frame of posttest control grouped model. The working group is composed of totally 48 first grade students at Polatlı İnönü Primary School in 2011-2012 academic years. 24 of which belong to experimental group and the other 24 belong to control group. Personal Information Poll for the students and parents, teacher?s view form, homework assessment form, schedule which shows the beginning date of first reading and the schedule showing the reading rate were prepared to gather data for the study. Additionally, for data collection, following literacy skill scales which were developed by Obalar in 2009 were used, namely, a) reading skill scale, b) dictation and writing skills scale, c) comprehension scale (sentence-paragraph), d) punctuation and spelling scale and e) visual reading scale. The data gathered in the frame of the research has been processed via ?SPSS 20 Package Software?. Frequency and quartile calculations, independent sample t- test were used to analyze the data.The results of the research can be summarized as:1. Structured homeworks have a positive effect to improve the primary school first grade students? reading, comprehension, visual reading, dictation and writing skills. Structured homeworks influence positively that the first grade students begin reading earlier and obey the punctuation and spelling rules more.2. Structured homeworks don?t have a significant effect to increase the reading rate of first grade students.3. According to the observations during the study, it has been seen that female students do their homeworks more carefully than the male students, the students having pre-primary school education write more legibly than those of the students without a pre-school education,4. When the views of the parents and the experimental group?s teacher are considered, it has been noted that they say not only homework must be constructed with the enjoyable and interesting activities but also the time for completing homework is important since time-consuming homeworks make the students careless and reluctant.Key Words: Constructivism, homework, initial literacy skills