FOURTH GRADE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' UNDERSTANDING LEVELS OF AREA SUBJECT: CASE STUDY
With the help of geometry education, students learn geometric figures, their properties, and how to use the relations between them effectively. Students begin learning area concept in elementary level. They find the areas of the given shapes by using the geometric shapes properties which they learnt before. For this aim, teachers use complementary materials in teaching areas such as isometric papers. The purpose of this study is to determine in what degree and how students understand to find the areas of given shapes, as well as, to determine how students' abstract thinking processes are in area subject. This study is a qualitative case study. In this study, one fourth grade level class (31 students) in a public school in center of Kars city is chosen as a case. One question paper which includes open-ended questions and one semi-structured interview form are administered to students in this classroom. Processes in which students try to find the answer in the question paper are analyzed. In addition, students are subjected to an interview according to solve the questions, so how students perceive and understand the questions are examined. In the data analysis, descriptive statistics is used by means of percentage and frequency tables.