Comparison of the effect of the activity questions in third grade Turkish textbooks and thinking routine questions on the skills of expressing oneself in written form

The aim of this study is to compare the activity questions in Ministry of Education third grade Turkish textbooks and thinking routines questions on the skills of expressing oneself in written form. In the study, activity questions of the textbook and thinking routines questions are used as data collection tools. The participants are 26 third grade students enrolled at a public primary school in the 2017-2018 educational year. The school was serving students mainly from low socioeconomic backgrounds in Gaziantep, an industrially developed city in the Southeast of Turkey. The data sources are students‟ responses to textbook activity questions and thinking routines questions. Every single sentence of students‟ written responses is analyzed by coding with the course objectives of expressing oneself. It was found out that thinking routines questions are more effective in bringing the objectives of expressing oneself in the written form and in improving thinking skills.