The EFFECTIVENESS of STORY-BASED TEACHING METHOD in TEACHING of “ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS” in 5TH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES COURSE

The purpose of this study is to reveal the effect of story-based teaching on students' academic achievement and awareness levels in teaching the subjects of “Ancient Civilizations” in 5th grade social studies course. The study was carried out in experimental design from quantitative research models. ‘’the pretest-posttest experimental-control group which is a quasi-experimental’’ was used in order to reveal the difference between the success of the experimental group in which the story-based teaching method is applied and the control group in which the story-based teaching method is not applied. In order to support the results, phenomenology, one of the qualitative research models, was used and students' opinions were considered in the study. The study group consists of 66 students in 5/B (33 students) and 5/C (33 students) classes in a school in Battal Gazi district of Malatya. As data collection tools, achievement test of ancient civilizations prepared by researchers is used in the collection of quantitative data while the worksheets and student interviews of each civilization is used in the process of collecting qualitative data. In the application process, eight stories about “Ancient Civilizations” which is one of the topics of “Culture and Heritage” unit in the curriculum of the 5th grade are designed. According to the results, it was observed that the mean success of the experimental group in which the story-based teaching method is applied is higher than the control group in which the traditional teaching methods are applied. However, the qualitative findings show that students can gain awareness about the ancient civilizations and they can show empathy by understanding the differences between people of different culture