Enriching the “Let’s Classify Organisms: Fungi” Topic with Life-Based Learning Activities

This study aims to investigate the effect of activities enriched with a life-based learning approach on academic achievement and learning processes in the 5th-grade Science lesson titled “Let’s Classify Living Organisms: Fungi.” A mixed-methods research approach combining quantitative and qualitative data was adopted in the study. The study was conducted with a total of 34 participants, comprising 17 students in the experimental group and 17 in the control group. Five different learning activities were implemented in the experimental group within the scope of the life-based learning approach. The purpose of these activities was to develop students’ experimental skills; read a newspaper article about a situation they might encounter in daily life; narrate events through stories; and grow a living organism from start to finish by cultivating mushrooms under their own responsibility. The goal was to enrich the learning environment by providing variety. In the control group, instruction continued in accordance with the existing curriculum. Since the data from the study did not follow a normal distribution, the Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the data. The results of the study revealed no statistically significant difference between the overall academic achievement test scores of the experimental and control group students (p > .05). However, differences in favor of the experimental group were observed on specific achievement-focused questions in the assessment tool. Qualitative findings revealed that the experimental group students demonstrated a more refined process compared to the traditional group in terms of relating knowledge to daily life, designing experiments, reporting, and problem-solving skills. The data obtained indicate that while life-based activities may not create a radical difference in overall achievement scores in the short term, they provide students with a more meaningful and lasting learning experience; they support cognitive processes and the journey of scientific discovery.