The Effect of Traditional Child Games on Fifth-Grade Students' Attitudes Related to Geometry

Abstract

This study aims to define whether geometry teaching was carried out with the help of traditional children's games for middle school 5th-grade students. In other words, it was tried to understand if it affected students' attitudes towards geometry while keeping traditional children's games alive and their importance in general education and teaching activities. This study was quantitative, and "a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with paired control group" was used. The results were handed with the "Attitude Scale Towards Geometry" in the 2021 and 2022 education year. The scale was developed by Ozmen (2019), and while operating this scale, Ozmen benefited from Bindak's (2004) "examination of students' attitudes and behaviors towards geometry." The study group of the research was composed of 42 5th-grade students in total in two classes, including 21 students each. They had education at a state secondary school in the Nusaybin district of Mardin. One of these classes was defined as the experimental group, and the other one as the control group. In the experimental group of the research, the geometry subject of measuring area and length was handled with 5 traditional children's games, and the same subject was taught by using traditional/old methods in the control group. Dependent and independent t-test was used to reveal if the application to the experimental group significantly affected students' attitudes toward geometry. According to the t-tests' result, it may be said that the use of traditional and cultural children's games used in the experimental group developed academic success more than the control group in which the traditional/old methods were used. So, it can be thought that using traditional and cultural child games in geometry lessons developed students' academic success. Keywords: Traditional child games, Attitude, Game, Geometry.