Individuals are exposed to an intensive flow of information and messages as a result of innovations in communication and technology; for instance the Internet has facilitated easy and quick access to information and compensated for the distance between people. Thus, current need for critical reading is drastic.

Critical reading activity can be conducted in a variety of courses, from social studies to science and technology. However, the fact that reading is one of the target skills of language art course makes it reasonable to teach critical reading skill in this course, and then transfer this ability to other learning experiences taking place in other courses.

In Turkey, language art is carried out through a course titled Turkish Language. This study regards the question of how to teach critical reading skill to students in Turkish language course as a problem in need of solution. Turkish language courses in primary schools are taught in accordance with constructivist approach, which is the start point for Instructional Program for Turkish Course. Thus, activities that will be developed for this study as a solution to the problem of teaching critical reading skill will be built on constructivist approach.

The primary purpose of this study is to determine how to teach critical reading skill through activities developed in accordance with constructivist approach in Turkish Language course of the fifth graders in primary school.

Accordingly, activities aiming to furnish students with critical reading skill were developed for the themes “Production, Consumption and Productivity” and “Natural Disasters” in the learning areas of listening, speaking, reading, writing & visual reading, and visual presentation for Turkish course at the fifth grade. Directed to teach critical reading skill, these activities were formed in accordance with Constructivist Learning Model developed by Gagnon and Collay (2001). Consistent with this model, constructive instructional activities such as conducting research in the classroom environment, creating conceptual conflict, creating discussions based on investigation, real life examples, and portfolio activities were carried out. The processes of these activities were videotaped. Besides, researcher’s diary was kept in order to track the interaction occurring in the learning environment.

Developed by Acat and Unal (2006), “Critical Reading Scale” was administered both at the beginning and at the end of the study in order to evaluate students’ level in relevant skill. Arithmetic average and standard deviation were utilized during the analysis of the data obtained following the administration of Critical Reading Scale. Furthermore, t test was applied to see if there was any significant difference between the results of pre-test and post-test.

Comparison of pre-test and post-test results obtained from Critical Reading Scale has revealed that scores of post-test are higher than those of pre-test. According to the result of t test, the difference between pre-test and post-test scores is significant; yielding positive gain on behalf of post-test. In other words, students’ critical reading scores for the post-test are higher than those of pre-test. Under the light of these findings, it is possible to conclude that the implementation carried out in this study for the teaching critical reading skill has been effective.