Overcoming learning difficulties of 6th-grade students in mathematics class with nathematical games designed with Scratch program

Teaching methods and techniques should be improved so that education activities can keep up with technological advancements and if necessary, technology should be integrated in a way contributing to the education. Realising and sustaining this integration is only possible when the societies reach a level to fulfill their current requirements in education. Therefore, technology usage within the course activities is gaining importance day by day and has led to a digital dimension. Along with its practices within the educational field and having reached an accessible level, the technology took place in the primary school curriculum for the first time in 2005. Among the abilities that the primary school students taking Mathematics Teaching Program should improve, ability of "using computer softwares effectively" exists. Among abilities in the Mathematics Teaching Program renewed in 2018, the digital efficiency was stressed and the students are expected to have ability of using information communication technologies. Mathematics is one of the top courses that many students are afraid of and have difficulties. Thus, teaching environments that will provide the students to learn mathematics by loving rather than being afraid of it are required in the mathematics courses. Mathematical softwares can be used to create such environments. The softwares are computer programs providing the subject to be taught to approach as computer aided. It can be said that these softwares should be considered especially in the field of mathematics. That's because, the learning softwares supporting mathematics learning rather than being additional materials are complementing elements of the system in the mathematics learning. The Scratch which is a program becoming prevalent in the first 12 year education process and most preferred in today's programming education is used while introducing the programming in many universities including Harvard University. The Scratch is a graphical programming tool for students to organize various media tools such as image, voice and music together, to design their own animations and computer games or to write interactive stories and to share them. The games designed in the Scratch are both entertaining for the students and also include mathematical elements and thought abilities. If the students use the Scratch by themselves and create similar games, they can improve their mathematical and accounting thought abilities. In this scope, it is aimed to eliminate the difficulties that the 6th grade students have in the mathematics course with the mathematical games designed by means of the Scratch. A pilot study was carried out with 6 students of the 6th grade in order to provide experience to the study, to examine the Scratch game design abilities of the students and to create the process plan. The students were provided 6 week coding education and they were enabled to prepare a mathematical game by using the Scratch programming tool along with the active participation of the students. The study group consisted of 20 people including 12 female and 8 male students who are the 6th grade in a private secondary school in Bartın in the spring semester of 2017-2018 academic period. The criteria sampling method which is one of purposeful sampling methods was used to determine the students. In this context, it is taken into consideration that the students are taking Scratch programming training for at least 8 hours. The activity research method based on qualitative approach was used in the study. The six-step design model developed by Werbach and Hunter (2012) was taken into account during the gamification process. Two different forms which were Preliminary Form - 1 (PF-1) and Preliminary Form - 2 (PF-2) were prepared as the data collection tool in order to determine learning difficulties of the students. PF-1 and PF-2 were applied twice, before and after the application. Moreover, the observation form developed by Kalelioğlu and Gülbahar (2014) was used for the Scratch program using qualification. A semi-structured interview form was used to determine the students' views on the learning environment they designed with the Scratch programming tool. The descriptive analysis which is one of the qualitative analysis methods was used in the data analysis. The result of the study revealed that examining the opinions of the students on the learning environment based on the mathematical game designing process in the Scratch program in detail, most of the students had positive opinions. While some students stated that they increased positive attitudes towards the course after the game designing activity, some of them said that they started to love the course as a result of understanding it and increasing their success. It was offered that the learning difficulties that most students experiences in the mathematics course are solved by using mathematical games designed with the Scratch programming tool. In particular, it was determined that the students understood the four operations' priorities after the application, that they could perform the operations related to exponential expressions correctly, develop mathematical problem solving skills and learn the concept of variable and the prime factors.