The effect of literature circles on 4th grade students' reading comprehension and critical reading skills

The aim of this research is to ascertain the effect of literature circles on reading comprehension and critical reading skills of primary school 4th grade students. This research was designed as a quasi-experimental desing with pre-test-post test control group. At the end of the study, the research's diary was used which includes the interviews with the students and the observations that is made by the researcher during the process. Data collection and experimental study were carried out in a public primary school in District of Dörtyol, Hatay province in the second term of the 2021-2022 academic year. Two classes from the fourth grades in the school were selected as the experimental and control groups. The research is carried out with 28 students in the experimental group and 23 in the control group of which 28 of them are girls 23 of them are boys. While the literature circles activities were carried out in the experimental group in the seven week practicing part of the 11-week study, no intervention was made in the control group. In the research ''Reading Comprehension Test'' developed by Karabay and Kuşdemir (2009) to measure reading comprehension skills and "Critical Reading Pack" developed by Okur (2019) to measure critical reading skills were used. At the same time the datas which were obtained by the "Semi-Structured Interview Form" and "Researcher's Diary" were used to interpret quantitative data. In the study, covariance analysis is performed on the data acquired from the reading comprehension test and critical reading pack, and the significance level of analysis is found to be p<.05. Content analysis was done on the semi-structured interwiew form wich was about the descriptive analysis and the researcher's diary. In the study, when the pretest total scores acquired from the reading comprehension test and critical reading pack are controlled it is observed that there is a significant difference between the experimental and control groups for the good of experimental group in terms of protest and posttest total scores. When the codes and themes formed as a result of the semi-structured interview forms and research journals are examined it is seen that the students made positive evaluations about the application while they preferred the illüstrator role the most among the literature circles roles they had difficulities in the questioner, summarizer and travel tracer. It was also supported by qualitative analyzes that the literature circles method had a positive effect on students' reading skills. At the end of the study, it has is suggested that longitudinal studies can be carried out in order to determine the long-term effects of the literature circles. Keywords: Literature circles, critical reading skill, reading comprehension skill