The relationship between primary school 4th grade students' reading understanding and success in solving mathematics problems

The aim of the study is to determine the effect of 4th grade primary school students' reading comprehension achievement on their problem solving success. The research was designed in the context of the relational survey model, which is one of the quantitative research methods. The study group of the research consists of 4th grade students studying in Kahramanmaraş in the 2021-2022 academic year. The study group was determined with the convenience sampling technique, and as a result of the technique, a total of 45 students were determined as participants, Seventeen of them in village schools and 28 of them in district schools. The data were obtained with the "Reading Comprehension Achievement Test" consisting of 13 questions and the "Mathematics Problem Solving Achievement Test" consisting of 15 questions. The data of the research were analyzed by content analysis method. In order to analyze the quantitative data, the data obtained from the achievement tests of children were analyzed, while percentage, frequency, arithmetic mean and standard deviation results from descriptive statistics were determined. As a result of the analysis, it was decided that the data showed normal distribution, and t-test and Pearson correlation analysis, which are parametric tests, were used in the analysis. In the findings, it was determined that the level of reading comprehension achievement was moderate in both village and district school children, and the students' reading comprehension and mathematical problem solving success of the students studying in the district school were higher than the students studying in the village school. It has been observed that there is no difference in the reading comprehension and mathematics problem solving achievements of the students in village and district schools according to their gender, and as the students' reading comprehension increases, their mathematics problem solving success also increases. In addition, although there is a high positive correlation between reading comprehension and success in solving routine mathematical problems, a moderate positive correlation was found between success in solving non-routine mathematical problems. Keywords: Elementary school teaching , reading comprehension, mathematics, problem solving