The effects of active learning methods in teaching the subjects about the unit ?The Place We Live in? in social sciences in the fourth grade of the primary school

In this study, the effects of active learning methods in teaching the subjects aboutthe unit ?The Place we Live in? in social sciences in the fourth grade of the primary schoolwere tried to determine.The objects of the study were chosen from the fourth grade students at GaziUniversity Foundation Private Primary School in Çankaya, Ankara in 2008-2009 educationalyear. It was conducted with 40 students in the classes 4/B (20) and 4/C (20). The controlgroup and the experimental group were chosen randomly.It was designed in an experimental research technique including pre-test andposttest. Accordingly, it was conducted in three steps. Firstly, experimental and controlgroup was handed out the pre-test about climate, weather events and earthquake. Then, whilethe experimental group participated in the lessons conducted in accordance with the activelearning methods, the control group continued learning the lessons in a traditional way.Following the implementations, both groups were handed out the posttest.As a data collection tool, SPSS 15.0 (Statistical Package For Social Sciences) wasused. T-test was used to determine the effects of active learning methods in teaching thesubjects about the unit ?The Place we live in?. The findings of the study may be summarizedas followings;1. T here is not a statistically significant difference between the experimental andcontrol group?s pre-test.2. There exists a significant difference in the posttest in favor of the experimentalgroup3. The average of the difference scores shows that there is a significant differencebetween the experimental group and the control group.Consequently, it can be said that the methods of the active learning in teaching theunit ?The Place We live in? are more effective than the methods of traditionalteaching.