The effect of geometric-mechanic games based activities on the spatial skills of secondary school students

This research was conducted to determine the effects of geometric-mechanical games-based activities within the scope of Selective Intelligence Games Course on spatial skills of secondary school students. The working group constitutes 162, sixth, seventh and eighth grade students registered in a regional secondary school of Kocaeli Province in the academic year 2015-2016. Quasi-experimental design with pretest-posttest control group was used in the research. In research, there are 6 groups, 1 experiment and 1 control group at each grade. While experimental groups were given geometric-mechanical games based activities within the elective intelligence games lesson, no activity was performed on the control groups. The "Mental Rotation Test" -which was developed by Vandenberg and Kuse (1978) and rearranged by Peters et al. (1995) and adapted to Turkish by Yıldız (2009)- and "Paper Folding Test" -developed by Ekstrom et al. (1976) and adapted to Turkish by Delialioğlu (1996)- was used as data collection tools. As a result of the research it was concluded that whereas there was a statistically significant difference between Spatial Skill pre-test and post-test scores, there was no statistically significant difference between the post-test and retention test scores for the students at every grade in the 6th, 7th and 8th grade experimental groups. While there was no statistically significant difference between the post-test scores of the 6th, 7th and 8th grade students in the Mental Rotation Test of the students in terms of their grade levels, The Paper Folding Test resulted in a significant difference in post test scores in favor of grade 8 compared to grade levels. While no significant difference between the post-test scores of the Mental Rotation Test of the 6th grade experimental and control group students was found, it was concluded that there was a significant difference between the post-test scores of the Mental Rotation Test of the students in the experimental and control groups in favor of the experimental groups, in the 7th and 8th grade. While it was concluded that there was a significant difference between the post-test scores of the Paper Folding Test of the students in the experimental and control groups in favor of the experimental groups of the 6th grade, no significant difference was found between the post-test scores of the Paper Folding Test of the 7th and 8th grade experimental and control groups students. It was found that there was no statistically significant difference in gender variation among Spatial Skills post-test scores for students in the 6th, 7th and 8th grade experimental groups for each grade level. In the light of these results; it can be said that geometric-mechanical games based activities have developed and maintained spatial skills of secondary school students. Regarding with the level of classrooms, it can be said that 8th grade students developed their spatial visualization skills much more than 6th and 7th grade students. Also, it can be said that 7th and 8th grade students that had taken Intelligence Games Course enriched with activities based on geometric-mechanic games has developed mental rotation skill much more than the students who didn't take that course and 6th grade students who had take that course has developed spatial visualization skill much more than the ones who didn't take that course. At the same time, geometric-mechanical games based activities seem to influence the spatial skills of boys and girls at similar rate. Keywords: Spatial Skill, Geometric-Mechanical Games, Mental Rotation, Spatial Visualization