The effect of the story map method on the reading understanding levels of secondary school 5th grade students

In this study, it was aimed to determine whether the story map method has an effect on the reading comprehension skills of the 5th grade students. For this purpose, answers were sought for 5 sub-problems related to the reading comprehension skill levels of secondary school 5th grade students. The research was carried out with a pre-test and post-test measurement model on a total of 38 students, 18 of whom were in the experimental group and 20 in the control group. The subjects of the research were selected from the 5th grade students of Faik Güngör Secondary School located in the Yakutiye district of Erzurum province in the 2021-2022 academic year. 9 predetermined stories with the students in the experimental group were analyzed in accordance with the story map template developed by (Akyol, 2010) for 10 weeks. In the control group, the same stories were analyzed with the traditional method at the same time and at the same time as the experimental group. At the end of the experimental study, in order to understand the effect of the story map method on the reading comprehension skill levels of secondary school 5th grade students, an 11-question exam measuring the reading comprehension level developed by (Akça, 2002) and updated in accordance with the stories used was applied to both groups in order to find answers to 5 sub-problems. In order to increase the measurement reliability, the averages of the scores given by three different raters were used. In the study, the normality of the groups was examined with the Kolmogorov Smirnov test. In the analysis of the data, two different statistical analyzes named Mann Whitney U test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used and these analyzes were made on the computer with the SPSS 22.00 statistical package program. As a result of the findings obtained by analyzing the data, there was a significant difference in favor of the experimental group between the post-test scores of the students in the experimental group, who analyzed using the story map, and the students in the control group, who analyzed with the classical question and answer method At the end of the research; It was concluded that the story map method was effective in increasing the reading comprehension levels of secondary school 5th grade students. Keywords: Story map, reading comprehension level.