ENHANCING CRITICAL READING SKILLS OF SIXTH GRADE STUDENTS USING SCAFFOLDING AND SQ4R STRATEGIES

The objectives of this research were to 1) develop a reading instruction program based on the scaffolding approach and the SQ4R strategies for sixth grade students, 2) study sixth grade students’ critical reading ability before and after the experiment using the developed reading instruction program and 3) investigate the students’ development of critical reading ability from learning through the reading instruction program. The sample in this research was sixth grade students and the cluster random sampling was used in this study through a sampling unit method from nine classrooms into one classroom which had thirty students as the sample. One Group Pretest-Posttest Design was used through 16 time’s length in the first semester of academic year 2024. The research instruments included lesson plans in Thai language subjects, a multiple choice in critical reading ability test and six written tests for studying a development on critical reading. The data were analyzed by using mean, standard deviation, Wilcoxon signed-rank test and one-way ANOVA with repeated measures. The results revealed that 1) a reading instruction program based on the scaffolding approach and the SQ4R strategies had the quality criteria set, as evaluated by experts through a validation procedure using the Index of Item-Objective Congruence (IOC), registered between .067-1.00 and 2) the result of the study after the experiment showed that the critical reading ability of sixth grade students was higher at the 0.05 level of significance. During experiment, the results demonstrated that sixth grade students attained significantly higher development in critical reading at the 0.05 level of significance.