A research on developing levelized texts and formulation for primary school students

Primary school period is the period when children step into reading and writing. The attitude that students will develop towards reading in this sensitive period may also affect them fundamentally in the next learning years. In this period, it is possible to obtain fruitful results with correct and effective applications taking the needs of children into account. Children who have problems with reading comprehension will not be able to maintain a productive education life without solving this problem. Reading texts, which are one of the basic elements of reading, have a critical importance in the formation of attitudes that students will develop towards reading. For effective reading instruction to occur, readers need to have opportunities to read texts that they can read more comfortably, rather than constantly experiencing frustration with difficult texts that are not suitable for their level. Readability aims to make the most appropriate match between the reader and the text. The readability of a text by the reader group can be effective in developing a positive attitude towards reading comprehension and reading. Readability formulas, on the other hand, use language elements (syllable, word, sentence) to provide authors and readers a more functional and convenient way of doing this matching. In this research, it is aimed to create an equation (formula) that will calculate the readability score for primary school texts and to level the primary school texts on the basis of grades through the scores to be obtained from this equation. In order to test to what extent this goal has been achieved, students' reading comprehension rates and correct reading rates were calculated using the texts leveled through the developed formula. The design of the research is survey method and the research was carried out in two stages. In the first stage; The texts to be used in the application and the open-ended reading comprehension questions for each text at the end of the text were created, evaluated according to expert opinions, a readability formula was created for primary schools by formulating the procedures, and their pilot applications were carried out. In the second stage; The text levels calculated through the new formula created were applied to the texts they were related to and readability values were calculated for each text. According to the readability value obtained, the texts were applied at the level of their respective classes. Students were asked to answer the open-ended reading comprehension questions at the end of the text for each text. By calculating the accuracy percentages of the answers given, the students' reading comprehension rates were found and given in the table. In addition, 1 minute video recordings were taken by reading the texts appropriate to their level to the students. Based on these records, the correct reading rates of the texts scored in accordance with the level of the students were calculated and given in the table. These results are also presented in chapters 1-8 of Hasbrouck and Tindal, which were translated into Turkish by Baştuğ (2021). The results were evaluated by comparing them with the Reading Aloud Norms for the Classrooms. The universe of this research consisted of all primary school students in the Central District of Adıyaman Province. Within the scope of the research, 1979 primary school students answered the reading comprehension questions, and video recordings of 93 students were taken in addition to these students in order to calculate the correct reading rates. According to the data obtained, the reading comprehension rates were 85%-88% at the 1st grade level, 85%-87% at Grade 2, 3rd grade level 86%-88% and at the 4th grade level, it was calculated between 86% and 93%. These values are above the 85% criterion score determined for reading comprehension. Similarly, the correct reading rates calculated separately for each grade level are in the range of 96%-99%. These findings show that the texts whose readability values are calculated according to the newly designed formula are highly understood by the students at the grade level they are related to, they are read and pronounced correctly, and the number of words read per minute is at the expected level.