Misconceptions of elementary school students in 5th grades about the perimeter, area and volume concepts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the 5th grades? content knowledge about the perimeter, area and volume of the geometric shapes and objects, and also was to determine their misconceptions about these concepts. There were a total of 262 students involved in this study. They were at the 5th grades at the seven elementary schools in Uşak city center. In this study, we used survey method. One instrument with 40 items, the perimeter-area-volume evaluating test in Geometry, was used in data collection. Data analysis involved descriptive statistics.The results of this research indicate that: The students could easily solve the problems, only requiring them to figure out the perimeter, yet they could not do problems which require extra thinking. Moreover, the research identifies that the students do not have difficulty applying the characteristics of the geometric figures such as square, rectangle, triangle and equilateral quadrangle, but they do not exactly know the charactreristics of some geometric figures like paralleograms. Some students are also confused by perimeter and area calculations. On the other hand, the students have difficulty with questions about standard and non-standard measuring units, and have difficulty converting the measuring units to each other. The students mostly have difficulty with the area-calculation problems and these are the type of questions they skip to answer most often. The students also make mistakes counting the square units composing a structure on graph paper, as well as counting the number of cubic units filling a prism. When the types of mistakes are grouped by taking the students? solutions into consideration, the mistakes are generally transaction errors about perimeter, area and volume topics, and irrelavant, missing or extra transactions with given or non-given numbers, and the mistakes associate the solutions with the angles.