Investigation of elementary school students' mathematical real life connection skills through the children's literature

Within this research, in the context of children's literature, mathematical real life connection skills of primary school third class students are investigated thoroughly according to mathematics lesson learning areas, levels and sub components. The research is designed by a case study. Participants which were determined with the typical case sampling method consisted of 15 third grade students who took part in the study online for 7 weeks. The data of the research were collected during spring term of 2020-2021 school years. The data of the research; written documents provided from students during practices; researcher observation notes; video recordings of the practises and the data obtained from the videos taken by students as performance tasks, they are analysed using descriptive analysis. Analysing the mathematical real life connection skills of students according to learning areas and in terms of content, vocabulary and visual contexts of children's' literature it is noticed that students frequently make connections in the learning area of numbers and operations, and that they struggle to connect real life with the learning area of data analysis. Analyzing students according to mathematical real life connection skills indicates that they frequently make explicit connections, and that they are incapable of connecting the factors which include deeper embedded mathematical meanings. It is observed that the examples that they gave from their real lives were mostly from their close environments and that they were insufficient in explaining how and for what they use mathematics in their lives. Finally we concluded that children's' literature provided suitable various contexts for connecting mathematics with the real life. It is noted that seven children's literary works include the contexts of social life, life in nature, domestic life and healthy life and that these contexts can be connected with the learning areas of mathematics lesson.