An investigation of fifth grade students' problem posing skills suitable for using four operations on natural numbers

The aim of the study is to examine the problem posing skills of secondary school fifth grade students; structured, semi-structured and unstructured problem posing types. Case study pattern was used as a qualitative research method. The research was conducted in the spring term of 2019-2020 academic year with 40 students in a public school in Bilecik province. Problem posing activity papers and problem solving activity papers were used as data collection tools. The data obtained were categorized by examining the evaluation situations obtained from the literature review and by analyzing student responses. According to the results obtained from the findings, the students had the most difficulty in semi-structured problem posing activities. In terms of the problem text of unstructured problem posing activities, there are more spelling mistakes and expression disorders than the problems created in structured problem posing. Addition and multiplication operations were used the most in the activities that did not have any operation limitations. In multi-operation problems, addition and subtraction, addition and multiplication are used together. In order to improve student's problem posing skills in-class practices should be given importance problems should be examined in the classroom and attention should be paid to mathematical expressions in problems related to subtraction and division.