Improving the writing skills of gifted primary school students through process-based writing studies with a focus on metacognitive skills

Written narration is one of the most effective tools for the individual to express and communicate in accordance with his/her right and purpose. Write a text; it is a complex cognitive activity in which a variety of cognitive and high cognitive skills are used together, including writing, correcting, reviewing what is planned by planning, and monitoring performance during this process. For this reason, the renewed Turkish language teaching program also adopts a process-oriented approach rather than a product-oriented approach. It is understood that metacognitive skills are also essential in the development of process-based writing skills. While the thinking method used to produce the writing constitutes the cognitive dimension of writing, the control method used to reveal the written product constitutes the metacognitive dimension of writing. Beyond what strategies the student will use, the metacognition is about the effectiveness and efficiency of the strategy it will use, first of all, after its suitability and appropriateness. If students have developed their cognitive knowledge and cognitive editing skills, they are using metacognitions and academically superior. Gifted students have a much wider knowledge base and are more successful in using their knowledge to their advantage, prefer more complex and challenging environments, are faster in problem solving, but spend more time in planning the solution and identify problems more effectively. This study, it was aimed to improve the writing skill of a gifted student with process-based writing studies focused on metacognitive skills. For this purpose, the study is modeled as action research. The study group of the study was determined by the criterion sampling method. The research consists of a primary school third year student enrolled in Bilsem in Marmaris district of Muğla province in the 2018-2019 academic year. The story writing evaluation form developed by Izdeş (2011), the basic writing skill evaluation form developed by the researcher and the Fluent writing skill evaluation form were used to obtain the data. In addition, student-written texts and researcher observations have also been used for data collection. The research was carried out for 18 weeks. The pre-writing study continued for 1 hour, the writing process continued for 1 hour, and for a total of 36 hours the practice and studies were carried out. Researchers' diaries were utilized during the data collection process. The data was analyzed by content analysis method. Student's writing studies were evaluated separately at the beginning of the practice (week 1), in the middle of the practice (week 8) and at the end of the practice (week 18). When the student's writing studies at the beginning of the practice are evaluated; In the basic writing skill, it has been reached that the student had difficulties in creating a paper and page layout and had the wrong words, when evaluated in terms of fluent writing skills, he did not enter the text appropriately and there was no harmony between the beginning and the end of the sentences, the details in the original writing skill that the events were understood and the paragraph order of the text was not sufficient. When writing studies are evaluated in the middle of the practice; It was determined that he/she paid attention to the paper and page layout in basic writing skill, but the errors in the word writing continued, the harmony between the beginning and the end of the sentences was better in terms of fluent writing skill, while he/she made mistakes about word repetitions, and in defining the heroes in the original writing skill. In the last week of the practice, when writing study was evaluated: it was determined that he had all the qualifications in basic writing and fluent writing skills, that he was good at drafting original writing skills and that he could not create an interesting title. When the results were examined, it was concluded that the basic writing and fluent writing skills of the gifted student had developed positively and were at a very good level, while the original writing skills of the student were at a good level.