Improving reading comprehension skill and reader self-concept of Turkish 3rd grade students through literature circles

Literature circles are a learning environment where students come together to discuss and exchange ideas about the same books and texts. The aim of this study is to use literature circles to improve reading comprehension skills and reading self-perception of 3rd grade primary school students. The study was conducted with action research, one of the qualitative research designs. The study was conducted with 30 students studying in a primary school in Sinop Center in the fall semester of the 2023-2024 academic year. Participants were selected through convenience sampling from purposive sampling methods. Data were collected through narrative and informational reading comprehension tests, reader self-perception scale and semi-structured interviews. Quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques were used. The action plan developed was implemented for 48 lesson hours. Students' comprehension skills of narrative and informative texts and their reader self-perceptions were measured separately before and after the implementation. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data, and Paired Samples t-Test, Independent Samples t-Test and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were used to analyze the quantitative data. The results of the study show that after the action plan, the mean scores of students' reading comprehension skills from narrative and expository texts and their reading self-perceptions increased and students improved.