THE DEVELOPMENT OF THAI ORAL READING SKILLS USING COOPERATIVE LEARNING THROUGH THE COOPERATIVE INTEGRATED READING AND COMPOSITION CIRC TECHNIQUE FOR GRADE 1 STUDENTS AT SURAO JORAKHE KHOB SCHOOL (KULANGKUROOPATHAM)

Abstract

The purposes of this research were: 1) to compare Thai oral reading skills of students before and after learning through cooperative learning management using the Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC) technique, and 2) to study the level of students’ satisfaction toward the learning management. This study employed experimental research using a one-group pretest–posttest design. The sample consisted of 21 Grade 1 students selected through cluster random sampling, with students as the sampling unit.

         The research instruments included: 1) five lesson plans based on the CIRC technique with an Index of Item-Objective Congruence (IOC) ranging from 0.67 to 1.00; 2) a Thai oral reading skills test with IOC values ranging from 0.67 to 1.00, difficulty indices between 0.45 and 0.63, discrimination indices between 0.33 and 0.44, and a reliability coefficient of 0.82; and 3) a students’ satisfaction questionnaire toward the learning management, with IOC values ranging from 0.67 to 1.00 and a reliability coefficient of 0.89. The statistics used for data analysis were mean, standard deviation, and t-test.

         The results of the research revealed that: 1) the students’ Thai oral reading skills after learning through the CIRC technique were significantly higher than those before learning at the .05 level of significance; and 2) the students’ satisfaction toward the cooperative learning management using the CIRC technique was overall at a high level. These findings indicate that cooperative learning management using the CIRC technique is an effective approach for improving Thai oral reading skills of primary school students and for promoting a participatory learning atmosphere in the classroom.