Improving the critical literacy skills of primary school 4th grade students

This study aims to improve the critical literacy skills of primary school 4th-grade students in line with the program prepared by associating them with Turkish lessons. Throughout the research, the data obtained were collected through the activity papers developed by the researcher, the semi-structured teacher - student interview form and the researcher observation form. The study was conducted in the 2019-2020 academic year in a public school consisting of lower and middle-level socio-economic level students. The study group in the study consisted of 27 students studying in the 4th-grade of a primary school in the city centre of Usak. The critical literacy implementation process lasted 18 weeks (72 sessions). The implementation process took place in four stages as associating, questioning, multi-perspective, and social action. During the process, activities developed by the researcher were used. While designing the activities, critical literacy strategies were used from the "character's point of view, the substitution of the character, comparing texts - images and problem solving". In-group comparisons were made in line with the research questions by calculating the arithmetic mean of the scores obtained by the students in the study group as a result of the pre-test, post-test and retention test. In-group comparisons, dependent groups t-test (paired sample test) was used. Semi-structured teacher and student interview forms were analysed by hand-coding. In line with the scoring key developed for critical literacy skills, a difference of 43.62 points between pre-test and post-test scores and 4.40 points between post-test and retention test scores was found. There was a significant increase in the scores the students got before and after the application. According to these results, it is possible to say that the application contributed positively to the critical literacy skills of students. In the interviews with the teachers, while the teachers pointed out that critical literacy skills are not sufficiently included in the Turkish curriculum and textbooks, they emphasized that the critical literacy skills should be organized as a curriculum dimension, textbooks, teacher trainings and lessons. As a result of the interviews with the students, the students stated that they enjoyed critical literacy practices, found the activities entertaining, and had a positive attitude towards Turkish lessons and also, they stated that the social actions carried out improved their social awareness and empathy feelings, and their ability to look at the events from the windows with a difference. Besides, the students stated that they had difficulties from time to time in the problem solving and questioning stages. Moreover, critical literacy practices have enabled Turkish lessons to be transformed into a more entertaining, dynamic structure that enables active participation of students, preparation of sketches, debating, making presentations and social action studies by taking Turkish lessons out of their traditional structure. As a result, the critical literacy practices associated with Turkish lessons enabled students to reinterpret what they read, listen to, and watch from different angles from a critical point of view. Accordingly, suggestions were made to present to researchers, teachers and professionals regarding the use of critical literacy practices in learning environments that can generate active learning environments, and the offer of democracy and free-thinking, open to criticism, willing to take action activities Keywords: Turkish Education, Critical Literacy, Action Research, Social Action