Investigation of the effects of writing-to-learn activities on secondary school 7th grade students' conceptual understanding of mixtures

This study investigated the effect of two different writing-to-learn strategies (argumentative and summary writing) on students' conceptual understanding. In the study, the data transformation variant of the parallel convergent pattern of the mixed research method was used. In the study in which the experimental and control groups were used, there were 21 secondary school 7th grade students in the experimental group and 18 in the control group. The activities prepared on mixtures were applied to the control group with the existing teaching methods and to the experimental group with the Science Writing Heuristic approach. After unit teaching, students in all groups were asked to write a summary writing activity. Data collected using a two-tier diagnostic test, concept map and summary writing activities. Obtained data were analyzed using independent sample t-test. The results indicated that students in the experimental group had significantly better conceptual understanding and performed better on summary writing activities while compared with control group students. The students should be provided with opportunities to help them engage with writing activities that require students to convince the others about what the conceptual ideas mean within the topic and to inform the others about these concepts and how these are related with each other.