The Development of Thai Consonant Reading Skills Using Educational Games for Kindergarten 2 Students at Banyuak School, Ban Yuak Subdistrict, Udon Thani Province

Abstract

    The objectives of this research were: 1) to develop Thai consonant reading skills using educational game activities, and 2) to compare the Thai consonant reading skills of second-year preschool children before and after the implementation of educational game activities. The target group consisted of 11 second-year preschool children at Banyuak School, selected through purposive sampling. The research instruments comprised: 1) three educational game activity plans, including the hook-and-loop image-to-Thai-consonant matching game, the clothespin image-to-Thai-consonant matching game, and the Thai consonant bingo game, validated for content validity by three experts with an Index of Item-Objective Congruence (IOC) of 1.00; and 2) a 44 item Thai consonant reading skill test for preschool children with an IOC of 1.00. Data were analyzed using mean, standard deviation, and dependent samples t-test.
     The research findings revealed that: 1) after receiving learning experiences through educational game activities, the second-year preschool children demonstrated a distinct improvement in Thai consonant reading skills, with the mean score increasing from a pretest score of 33.82 (SD = 4.98), representing 67.64 percent, to a posttest score of 45.36 (SD = 3.53), representing 90.73 percent; and 2) the comparison of Thai consonant reading skill scores before and after the activities indicated that the posttest mean score was statistically significantly higher than the pretest mean score at the .05 level (t = 13.31, p < .05). This study demonstrates that educational game activities can effectively enhance the Thai consonant reading skills of preschool children