A research on the effect of orienteering practices on first grade students attitudes towards life sciences course and their enjoyment levels

The purpose of this research is to combine the objectives of the newly known and popular orienteering sport with the primary school 1st grade Life Science course outcomes,to teach the course, and to examine the students' attitudes towards the course and their entertainment levels. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design without a control group was used in the research. There are 19 first grade students in the study group of the research. The research was conducted in a public primary school in Sinanpaşa district of Afyonkarahisar province in the second semester of the 2022-2023 academic year. After the first grade Life Science course outcomes were determined, activities were planned to achieve the Life Science course outcomes. Teaching was carried out with activities created according to the planned calendar. In the study, the 15-item Attitude Scale towards the Life Science Lesson and the 10-item Scale for Determining the Level of Fun in the Life Science Lesson were used as data collection tools as pre-test and post-test. After the application, six students were interviewed. Semi-structured interview technique was used. The pretest and posttest mean scores of the scales were examined to determine whether the activities carried out within the scope of the research had an impact on the students' attitudes and enjoyment levels. The significance level of the differences between the pre-test and postest scores of the Attitude Scale Towards the Life Science Lesson and the Scale for Determining the Level of Fun in the Life Science Lesson was determining by the "Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test", one of the non-parametric tests. According to the Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test applied in the research, the pre-test and post-test scores were determined. A statistically significant difference was found since the differences between the test scores were less than 0.05 (p<0.05). It was determined that the applied activities were effective on the students'attitudes towards the life sciences course and their enjoyment levels.