The effect of modeling activities on the development of fifth grade students' informal reasoning and arguments about landslide subject

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of modeling activities on the development of fifth grade students' informal reasoning and arguments about landslide subject. The study was conducted with 7 female 10 male, a total of 17 students studying at fifth grade at an urban public middle school in 2015-2016 school year in Rize. In this action research study, the data were collected through semi-structured interviews and modeling notebooks filled out by the students during the activities. The students' informal reasoning patterns were analyzed by using informal reasoning patterns rubric, argumentation qualities were analyzed by using argumentation quality rubric, and model qualities were anlyzed by using model quality rubrics. A conent analysis was conducted to determine the relationship between argumentation and modeling. Findings of the research indicated that the participants used intuitive, emotive and rationalistic reasoning patterns in the pre-interview and used emotive and rationalistic reasoning patterns in the post-interview, the participants' argumentation quality either remained the same or increased but they failed to create high quality arguments, the participants refered to the modeling activies in different components of their arguments, modeling qualities of the participants were in transforming category, the participants with improved modeing quality did not have high quality argumentation, however, while the activities with high quality modeling activities were referred in the arguments by the majority of the students but low quality modeling activities were not referred in the arguments. Based on the conclusions, several implications for teachers and researchers were provided.