Evaluation of the effectiveness of the Turkish lesson writing skills teaching curriculum developed for gifted and talented students

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the fourth grade Turkish lesson writing skills curriculum developed for gifted and talented students. Embedded design, one of the mixed research methods, was used in the study. Convenience sampling and criterion sampling methods, which are among the non-random sampling methods, were used as sampling methods. The sample of the study consisted of fourth grade gifted and talented students studying in a science and art center of Ankara province. Two groups were formed from these students as experimental group (n=17) and control group (n=17). While the developed writing skills curriculum was applied to the students in the experimental group for 15 weeks, the students in the control group continued to receive the existing science and art center curriculum. As data collection tools, writing product evaluation scale, writing anxiety scale, attitude towards writing scale, Torrance test of creative thinking, Cornell critical thinking test, interview form and reflective diary were used. Within the scope of the experimental procedures, data were collected between September 2022 and January 2023. Descriptive analysis, Independent Samples t Test, Two-Way ANOVA for Repeated Measures and content analysis were used to analyze the data. Within the scope of the quantitative data obtained as a result of the research, it is determined that the students in the experimental group, to whom the writing skills curriculum is applied, have improved their written expression performance, their writing anxiety has decreased, their attitudes towards writing have increased, and their creative and critical thinking skills have improved. Within the scope of qualitative data, it is determined that the students have improved in cognitive, affective and psychomotor fields in terms of writing skills, they have learned text types, the subjects are related to student level and interest, the subjects are up-to-date, the learning environment is capable of developing students, the activities are related to the subjects, the activities are progressing in integrity, the time and materials allocated to the activities are sufficient, different methods and techniques are used, thinking skills are integrated into the activities, different evaluation tools such as self-evaluation, peer evaluation, reflective diary and pretest-posttest applications are used in evaluation. It is determined that the results obtained from quantitative and qualitative data are compatible with each other.