Effect of 7th grade science and techology lesson supported with creative drama on critical thinking skill and success

Studies performed in recent years show that science instruction is one of the main factors that forms individual's way of thinking. For a such important factor there is not any choice other than following up the developments in education field. Creative Drama studies may be considered as one of new methods in the world and in Turkey as well. In this research, this method was adopted to science instruction, applications were done and how this method affects students' critical thinking was checked. Study was conducted on basis of pretest - posttest with experimental control group. 45 students in 7th grade in primary education compose working group. During experimental process which took six weeks, at experimental group, eight creative drama workshops were applied in addition to lesson plans which were prepared according to Ministry of National Education's book while performing Science and Technology Lesson. At control group, only lesson plans which were prepared according to the book were applied. While collecting datas, validity and confidence works performed by us. Achievement test and Cornell Critical Thinking Test were applied. Related sampling t test and unrelated sampling t test were processed to analyze the data. Results of the research shows that creative drama workshops that were taken beside the lesson increase student achievement and attitude meaningfully compared to control group. Creative drama studies in science instruction affect critical thinking skill which is one of the basic purposes of science instruction in positive way, in this point of view, it is suggested to generalize this method in science instruction and to be applied correctly.