An investigation into the effects of creative reading activities on classroom management

When reading is considered as a way of life rather than an action, it can be a suitable tool for creativity. In other words, reading, which is a receptive linguistic skill, can be transformed into a transmitting linguistic skill. At this point, teachers can use creative reading as a springboard for students to put forth a new thought, emotion and concrete product. Thus, multifaceted results that also develop affective and psychomotor skills such as empathy, self-confidence, and artistic self-expression in addition to mental gains such as problem solving and flexible thinking that emerge with creativity can be obtained. The reflection of these results on the educational environment can be seen supportive for the teachers in terms of classroom management. The objective of this study is to investigate into the effects of creative reading activities on classroom management at primary school level. This research, designed as qualitative research, is a case study. The study group, which was determined by criterion sampling, one of the sampling methods, consists of 30 volunteer classroom teachers. They worked in primary schools affiliated to the Amasya Provincial Directorate of National Education in the 2020-2021 academic year, received training on creative reading and were experienced with creative reading activities. Data were collected through a semi-structured interview form which was developed by the researcher. Content analysis method was applied for analysing the data. In the scope of this research, the contributions of creative reading activities to the children, the effects of these activities on classroom management processes and on discipline in the classroom, how teachers can be solutions to the problems in the classroom, undesired behaviours confronted during creative reading activities and the methods to deal with these problems, and the effects on classroom management for other lessons were identifed in line with the teachers' views. Within the research, it was found that creative reading has positive effects on the students, on enhancing in-class communication, motivation, on learning-teaching process, on eliminating or preventing undesired behaviours, and on classroom management processes for other lessons. Within this context, creative reading activities in classroom management can be used as a tool in order to attract learning attention, provide concretization, reach the goal of the lesson, create a positive classroom atmosphere, create a team spirit in the classroom, enhance in-class communication, eliminate or prevent undesired behaviours. In addition, creative reading activities should be extended to the common and competencies of teachers to implement creative reading activities should be improved.