Abstract:

This study examined the effect of 5E learning model with and without animations on students’ achievement and attitudes in fourth grade Social Studies through quasi-experimental design. The participants were 49 fourth grade students from a primary school in Kocaeli, Turkey. The students came from three classrooms, two of which were experiment and the third was the control group. In the first experiment group, instruction was carried out in accordance with the 5E learning model for five weeks. In the second experiment group, in addition to the 5E model, animations were used; and in control group, program based instruction was implemented. As data collection tools, Social Studies achievement test, attitude scale and animation opinion scale were used. Analyses were conducted using nonparametric Kruskal Wallis and Wilcoxon test in SPSS 18. The results showed that in terms of Social Studies achievement, all three groups significantly improved from pre-test to post-test; however, there were not any significant differences among the three groups’ post-test scores. In terms of attitudes towards Social Studies, the two experiment groups showed significant improvement from pre-test to post-test; however, there was no significant difference between control group’s pre-test and post-test scores. Students in the 2. experiment group who took the animation opinion scale have expressed that animations are informative, encouraging and satisfying.

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