Creative drama and gamification sessions will be conducted under the guidance of a creative drama facilitator and will consist of four stages:

Warm-up phase (10 minutes)

Games and activities phase (30 minutes)

Improvisation and creative participation phase (30 minutes)

Evaluation and feedback phase (20 minutes)

In each session, students will be divided into different groups of equal size to promote cooperation and interaction.

The experimental group will receive training based on creative drama and gamification, while the control group will be taught using traditional instructional methods. Both groups will participate in two sessions, held once a week.

The content of the training will be structured around the themes of nature connectedness and recycling behaviors, with each session lasting approximately 90 minutes.

The control group will be taught the same topics using a traditional instructional method, without the use of creative drama or gamification elements.

Each session in the experimental group includes four phases:

1. Warm-up (10 min): Students engage in ice-breakers and movement activities to relax and prepare mentally and physically.
2. Games & Activities (30 min): Drama and game-based tasks related to nature and recycling promote experiential learning and teamwork.
3. Improvisation (30 min): Students take part in role-plays and skits (e.g., acting as a tree or a recycled item) to build empathy and deepen their connection to environmental themes.
4. Evaluation (20 min): Students reflect on their learning, share feelings, and receive feedback. Facilitators summarize key points and reinforce the session's goals.

In this study, the Nature Connectedness Scale developed by Cheng and Monroe (2012) and adapted into Turkish by Alkış Küçükaydın (2024) will be used to measure children's emotional and cognitive levels of connectedness to nature. The scale consists of 16 items designed to assess children's relationships with nature across emotional, empathic, and responsibility dimensions.

The instrument uses a five-point Likert scale: "Strongly Disagree", "Disagree", "Neutral", "Agree", and "Strongly Agree."

The Recycling Scale for Middle School Students consists of a structure with 15 items grouped under three factors. However, one item was removed from the scale due to its standardized regression weight falling below 0.5, and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted again. As a result, the final version of the scale was confirmed to include 14 items under three dimensions: awareness, behavior, and attitude. The reliability of the scale was determined using Cronbach's Alpha, yielding a value of 0.856, indicating high internal consistency.

The Demographic Information Form developed by the researcher will be used to collect participants' demographic characteristics and basic information regarding their environmental attitudes. This form consists of 14 questions in total. In addition to demographic data such as participants' gender, grade level, age, and parents' educational background, the form includes items about participation in school activities related to nature and the environment, use of recycling bins at home, attitudes toward spending time in nature, knowledge levels about environmental and recycling issues, types of materials separated for recycling at home, frequency of time spent in nature, emotions felt when recycling is not practiced, family recycling habits, and interest in acquiring information about nature and environmental topics.

The study data will be collected from selected middle schools affiliated with the Istanbul Directorate of National Education.