The effect of letter writing activity in science class on the success of students in the 5th grade light diffusion / physical events unit and determination of student opinions about letter writing activity

This study was conducted to identify the effects of writing letters to the teacher on student' academic achievement and opinions about the lesson in secondary school fifth grade science lesson in the unit "light diffusion / physical events". The sample for the study was composed of 36 students studying in the 5/A and 5/B classes of a state secondary school in 2017 2018 educational year. The experimental group was 5/B and the control group was 5/A, which was decided through drawing. Before the treatment was started, a pre-test was given to the two classes in order to see if there was a meaningful difference in achievement between the classes and it was found that there was not any meaningful difference between classes 5/A and 5/B. During the study, the students in the experimental group were made to write letters to their teacher all throughout the unit on the light diffusion / physical events in the science lesson at the end of each topic in the second semester of 2017-2018 educational year and they were asked to write what they learnt in the related unit in those letters. The letters, checked by the teacher, were repeated upon the teacher's request at the end of each topic in order to contribute to the continuation of the activity. In the study, a test designed for the unit on the light diffusion / physical events in fifth grade was administered to both the experimental group and the control group as the pre-test and the post-test. To obtain the students' views about the study, a survey form by another researcher was adapted to be used in this study. The analyses and the qualitative data were obtained by using IBM SPSS v22. In the analysis of the findings, Mann Whitney U test was used for the proficiency test and for achievement test in science, to identify the differences between the averages of the students, independent samples t-test was used. The survey form used to identify the students' opinions on the letter writing activity was analyzed by using descriptive content analysis, a qualitative analysis method, by creating themes. The findings obtained at the end of the study show that letter writing activity, which enables students to revise the topics by getting them to write what they have learned and which contributes to students' permanent learning, improves students' academic achievement. Also, according to the results of the survey administered at the end of the treatment, it was observed that letter writing activity affected the opinions of the students in the experimental group in a positive way.