Effect of spatial thinking skills of students orienteering application in social studies

The changes in technology and science have also changed the curriculum; It has been necessary to use new methods and techniques to gain knowledge, skills and values. The use of new methods and techniques that provide student-centered, active learning instead of traditional methods has become necessary for the social studies course as in other courses. Orienteering activities that can be applied in lessons as a game type are one of these techniques. Orienteering activities are a technique that will enable students to have fun while playing games and to learn by doing. In this study, it is aimed to investigate the effect of orienteering practices on students' spatial thinking skills in primary school 4th grade social studies course. The study group of the study consists of a total of 104 students, 51 students in the experimental group and 53 students in the control group, who are attending the 4th grade in a primary school in Kastamonu province Merkez district in the 2019-2020 academic year. Lessons were taught with activities based on orienteering practices in the experimental group, and curriculum-based instruction was conducted in the control group. In the research, quasi-experimental model with pretest-posttest control group, one of the quantitative research methods, was used. The "Spatial Thinking Skill Test" developed by the researcher was used as the data collection tool. As a result of the research, it was concluded that orienteering practices were effective in gaining students' spatial thinking skills. Since orienteering is an activity that enables learning by doing in social studies lesson, multi-directional thinking and transferring skills to daily life, it is recommended to use it as a new teaching technique in social studies lesson teaching.