Özet:

In today’s society, the importance of educating individuals who can communicate effectively with others and who have a critical look at the events going around him has increased even more. On the one hand, written and visual communication tools such as books, magazines, newspapers, television, Internet make people’s life easier; on the other hand, those tools can lead people facing with unnecessary, incorrect, incomplete information. For this reason, the information must be questioned, criticized and investigated for its accuracy by the people rather than accepting the information as it is. In this process, critical reading appears as an important element. Critical reading means that a reader reaches to a conclusion through argumentation, questioning, assessment, using his own mind and taking advantages of reliable resources. It can be said that using critical reading in social studies courses is important in the acquisition of critical thinking skills. Reading of textbooks and the other written materials such as newspapers, magazines, articles, brochures, books, encyclopaedias by using of reading strategies helps students for comprehending, understanding, analyzing a text and learning information in an active way. In this research aiming to reveal the views of students about the social sciences lesson, which was arranged according to critical reading, qualitative method has been used. For the research the lesson materials were prepared by arranging namely “the bridges between the nations” unit of 7th grades according to critical reading. Seven students among the 7th grades of Ankara Atlioglu Primary School were chosen. These students were applied the lesson materials which were arranged according to critical reading. After the application the views of the students about the critical reading were searched through “focus group interview”. According to the study, from the students’ point of view learning the effectiveness of the social studies lesson based on critical reading is important in indicating the dimensions of the work done more clearly. All participants mentioned positive contributions of the social studies lesson based on critical reading. According to the findings of the study social studies lesson based on critical reading can be said to be processed by the participants by questioning, effectively attaining the course, criticizing, suggesting and commending. The willingness of the participants to attain the social studies lesson more actively can be interpreted to be students’ having positive attitudes and considering the lesson to be useful for them. In addition, social studies lesson can be said to contribute positively to them. In general the participants stressed for questioning what they read, criticizing it and inquiring the accuracy of it. It can be stated that besides the differences like the parts which were prepared based on critical reading and will be filled by the students themselves and the key concepts there are also similarities between two books of the participants. Related to the differences the students expressed that in general they liked the book prepared by the researcher. In general the participants stated that social studies textbooks should be prepared according to the critical reading, this method increased their knowledge, they could also contribute to a book, a critical perspective helped them in answering the questions, an environment for discussion in the classroom was created and they were taught to see the issues from different perspectives. The participants expressed that in general they preferred the textbook based on critical reading for the reasons that it provided more active participation of the students to the lesson and the students did different activities. In addition, all the students expressed that social studies textbooks should be prepared according to critical reading. According to study teaching of critical thinking in a skill based way makes a significant difference from respect to other teaching methods. Considering that critical writing is also skill training for critical reading should be said to be skill based. So, it can be concluded that critical reading at schools should be taken into consideration as skilled based. In this way the students can be gained skills of critical thinking. According to research it is revealed that social sciences lesson which was applied according to critical reading brought important contributions to the students, prepared social sciences text books are generally accepted to be enough however they should be prepared according to critical reading in fact and text books prepared according to critical reading get the students more effectively participated in the lesson. Consequently it can be said that besides critical reading is important for the social sciences lesson the text books should be reviewed and revised according to it, information technologies should be more benefited, applications that providing the critical thinking ability should be given place and social sciences laboratories should be opened at schools

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