Effect of digital stories on the development of reading skills of third grade students in primary schools and their attitudes towards reading

This research aims to determine the effect of digital stories on the development of reading skills of 3rd grade students in primary schools, and their attitudes towards reading. The sample group of the research consists of a total of 44 students in 3rd grade, selected with convenience sampling method from a primary school in Bursa province Yıldırım district center. For collecting information in the research, Reading Attitude Scale for 1st–6th Grades (Kocaarslan, 2016) with "Garfield" Pictures in order to determine the students' attitudes towards reading was used. Moreover, for determining the students' reading skills, the reading evaluation forms developed by Akyol (2014) for 3rd grade students was used. The students' reading skills and their attitudes towards reading were defined with measurements in the beginning, middle and end of the research. A detailed analysis was carried out in the research process by using interviews with teachers and students, audio/video records and products for students. The research continued for 60 class hours in total, around 36 hours in the first semester and around 24 hours in the second semester of the 2017-2018 school year. The students were lectured the texts in the Turkish course schedule by using digital stories in the first semester of the school year, while the students were made to prepare 2 digital stories in the second semester. According to the results of the research, it was seen that the Turkish courses lectured by using digital stories contributed to the development of students' reading speed and reading comprehension aspects of the reading skills; however, the major development occurred after preparing digital stories. It was concluded that the students' points for word recognition, reading speed, prosody and reading comprehension increased to a great extent with the practice of preparing digital stories. As a result, it was seen that Turkish courses lectured by having the students prepare digital stories instead of benefiting from ready-to-use digital stories were much more effective on the development of students' reading skills. While reading skills did not show a significant difference according to gender factor, attitude points towards reading were found out to show a significant difference according to gender factor in girls' favor. It was found out that the students' attitude points towards reading did not show a significant difference after the practices performed.