The effect of drama activities on 4th grade primary school students development of emotional intelligence

The purpose of this research is determining the effecttiveness of creative drama activities and developing suggestions according to result obtained for improvement the amotional intelligence skills of the 4th grade primary school studentsThe research group constitutes two 4th grade branches in a primary school attached to MEB in the central district of Bolu in the academic year of 2015-2015. 4/A Class is specified as control group and 4/B class determined as experimental group(Class in which drama activities are held). The research has trial model of pre-test, post-test control group. The theoretical dimension of the research was formed by literature review. Data from the research; developed based on sub-resources, related resources. Personal data form developed by researchers and "Emotional Intelligence Scale for Children" developed by Küçükkaragöz and Kocabaş (2012) were used as data collection tools. Total of 21 drama activities were administered to the children in the experimental group for 12 weeks. The control group was not involved in any intervention in the day-to-day educational activities. After 12 weeks of follow-up, the same scales were re-administered as a post-test to the experimental and control groups and the collected data were analyzed and evaluated. In the study, the data were analyzed using the SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science) 21.0 package program. The results are presented in the form of tables. The T test (Independent Samples T Test) was used to determine whether the difference between the independent groups was meaningful in the study. Significance of statistical results was studied at p <0.5 level. Research findings show that creative drama practices are effective in improving the emotional skills of 4th grade primary school students. As a result of the analysis of the data; It was observed that emotional intelligence levels measured at the beginning of the study were not significantly different from those of the experiment and control group. Afterwards, it was seen that the experimental group, namely the students who were educated with the creative drama activity, increased their emotional intelligence levels as a result of the creative drama activity (p> 0,05). Key words: Emotional Intelligence, Drama activities, Primary school 4th grade.