The impact of middle school students creative reading activities on critical thinking skills

The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of creative reading activities on the critical thinking skills of middle school students. In the study, sub-problems, the purpose and importance of research, limitations, assumptions and related researches were included in the research; thus, the conceptual framework of the thesis was established.The research was conducted by 1 experimental group of 29 and 1 control group of 30 people in the fall semester of the 2017- 2018 academic year. Creative reading activities in the experimental group were designed and performed by the researcher. Creative reading activities are set at 3 lessons per week. The experimental research process spans a period of 10 weeks. In this process, creative reading activities were applied to the experimental group, while the control group did not go outside the annual plan determined by the Turkish Curriculum.The data of the study were collected using quantitative research techniques. Experimental and control group trial models were used to collect quantitative research data. In the study, "experimental" pattern with "experimental and control group" based on "pre-test-final test" was used. For this research, this researcher used the "Critical Thinking Scales (EDÖ) and Turkish Success Tests (I, II)" to develop data collection methodology.The data collected in the research were transferred to the computer and analyzed with the SPSS 23 program. As a result of the research, it was observed that there was a significant increase in the critical thinking ability of the experimental group. On the other hand, considering the scores obtained from the success tests, there was no significant difference in the reading comprehension levels of both groups. Based on the findings, it was concluded that creative reading activities positively affect the critical thinking skills of students in the experimental group. Keywords: Creative Reading, Critical Thinking, Middle School Student