Teacher and student opinions on writing activities in science courses

The aim of this study is to examine the opinions of students and elementary teachers regarding writing activities carried out in the third and fourth grade primary school science course and to reveal the role of these activities in the science teaching process. The qualitative research approach was based on the research and the phenomenological design was preferred. This study was conducted with 21 elementary teachers working in the Şanlıurfa province of Turkey in the 2022-2023 academic year; in addition, interviews were conducted with 24 students of these teachers and the accessible notebooks and books of the students were examined. The interview form and notebook-book review form created by the researcher were used as data collection tools. The data were presented by descriptive analysis, deductive coding, and codes were listed from the data and themes were obtained from the codes. Themes and codes were created for the obtained data and tables were obtained. Then, the created themes were associated with each other and the data was interpreted. As a result of the study, it was seen that the elementary teachers who participated in the study mostly included traditional writing activities such as summary, note-taking etc. in science lessons, and did not include sufficiently contemporary writing activities such as concept maps, experiment reports, projects, posters etc. It was observed that the purpose of using writing activities was focused on basic level gains such as summary, repetition, lecture notes, students remembering, and reinforcing the information they learned, and they were not used in a way that would contribute to students' higher-level thinking skills. The writing activities used by the students were limited to classical writing activities, parallel to what the teachers said. The writing activities used in notebooks and books were used in the form of summary, note-taking, writing what was said, etc.; and their purpose was limited to cognitive purposes such as repetition, remembering, and comprehension. Writing activities used in science should be diversified and applications that develop higher-level thinking skills should be included. Activities such as experiments, projects, posters, letters and brochures should be increased, and these activities in books should be implemented. Notebooks should be used not only as a note-taking tool but also as a means of structuring information. Keywords: Science, Writing activities, Elementary teachers, Students' views