Journal of Mother Tongue Education

Abstract

Poetry is a
special literary genre with a unique place in our literature. Poetry is one of
the most effective literary genres for children to acquire passion and
consciousness for their language. Thanks to poetry, a child recognizes the
richness of his language, understands the different meanings of words, develops
his language skills and supports his emotions and thoughts, using appropriate
body movements. Poetry which takes place in people’s lives starting from
childhood must be dwelled upon continually at all stages of life. Children’s
poetry emerged late in Turkish literature, but its importance was acknowledged in
time and began to appear more in our literature. Children are inclined and able
to write poetry. If what children like to write about are paid attention to,
their interest in writing poetry increases and their writing ability develops;
but, if the process does not proceed well or if children are forced to write
poetry, using certain methods and patterns, their interest may be lost by the
time they reach the end of their primary education. Therefore, in writing poems,
methods that will positively affect students' attitude towards poetry writing should
be preferred. One of those methods is creative drama which develops children’s
imagination, artistic sensitivity, cognitive capacity and creativity as well as
their ability to express their feelings properly and improving their communicative
skills such as comprehension and interpretation. In this research, poetry
writing activities were employed, using the creative drama method. The aim of
this research was to determine the effect of the creative drama method on the
poetry writing attitudes of 6^th grade elementary school students.
Pre-test/Post-test design was used in the study. The research was done with a
group that consisted of 72 students studying in 6^th grade in the 2017-2018
academic year. The research continued for two weeks in three state schools in
the Haymana county of the Ankara province. The data of the research were
collected by using the "Attitude Scale towards Poetry Writing". In
the analysis of the data, t-test was used. Pre-test and Post-test were given to
assess any probable changes. The results showed that regarding students'
attitude for writing poetry, a significant difference was found in the
post-test which means that writing poetry, using the creative drama method,
positively influenced students' interest and attitudes for writing poetry.