An investigation of the effect of interactive book reading on early literacy skills

The study examines the effect of Interactive Book Reading on Early Literacy Skills. In this research, "pre-post-test control group model", one of the experimental models, was used. The universe of the research consists of children who are in pre-school education at 5-6 ages. The sample group consists of two kindergarten classes of a primary school in Battalgazi District of Malatya Province. These two kindergarten classes constitute the working group of the research. There are 19 children in the experimental group and 17 children in the control group. In collecting data; The questionnaire for book selection, the demographic information questionnaire and the Early Literacy Skills Assessment Tool (EOBDA) of Karaman (2013) were used to obtain information about the family and child. For the selection of books, 70 preschool teachers working in Malatya Province were asked to propose three books that would be suitable for use in interactive book reading activities. Teachers were asked to write their preferred books in order of importance. 56 books, which were scored high in order of preference, were used as application material in the experimental group. In order to obtain demographic information about families, a questionnaire consisting of 6 questions was applied. In addition, EOBDA was used to measure children's early literacy skills. EOBDA consists of a total of 96 closed-ended questions. The questions consist of two options: "right" and "wrong". Statistical package programs were used for the analysis of the data obtained; Significance tests such as Corelation, Mann-Whitney U, Kruskall Wallis were used according to the frequency (f), percentage (%) and whether the data was distributed homogeneously. As a result of the study, it was seen that there was a significant difference in favor of the experimental group between the children in the experimental group whose parents read interactive books and the children in the control group who did not perform any application from the EOBDA. However, it has been concluded that gender, family income status, parent's profession, number of siblings, number of children's books at home and parental education status do not have a significant effect on early literacy skills. Various suggestions were made based on the results obtained from the research. Keywords: Interactive Book Reading, Early Literacy, Early Reading, Early Writing