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Developing Students’ Spatial Visualisation Ability

Dwi Afrini Risma, Ratu Ilma Indra Putri, & Yusuf Hartono

International Education Studies; Vol.6, No. 9; 2013; ISSN 1913-9020; E-ISSN 1913-903
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education

The research written by Dwi Afrini Risma aims at studying on how the building block activity supports the development of students’ spatial visualisation. In addition, the researcher was also interested to explore how students visualise and interpret the building blocks and teacher’s roles in developing the way students interpret and visualise the building blocks.
This research was done under design research methodology, conducted at grade 3 SDN 117 Palembang by involving 39 students whose ages ranging from 9 to 10 years and a teacher as research subject. The learning activities in this study were generally designed to help students develop their spatial visualisation ability. There were five instructional activities designed by researcher in this study.
However, in journal (International Education Studies; Vol.6, No. 9; 2013, published by Canadian Center of Science and Education) researcher merely presented one of those activities which conducted in a second cycle of an explanatory teaching experiment. In such activity, called building block activity, students worked on spatial visualisation task by exploring building blocks. Students were provided with wooden cubes and worksheet. Then, they should construct the cubes to be some buildings which were appropriated with the instruction given in the worksheet.  The purpose of this activity is to enable the students to make connection between different views of the building blocks and to identify the side views (front view, back view, and right view) and the top view of the building blocks.
The researcher conducted this activity in two meetings (2x35 minutes).  The students worked in small groups, consisting 3-4 students in each group, to solve three problems. The first given problem as follows:
                                  
In the first meeting, the researcher started the learning by introducing the context and problem that should be solved by the students. In the first problem, students were asked to construct a building blocks from small blocks as shown in worksheet (as the following figure) and then drew its side views and top view. In the second problem, students have to construct their own building blocks consisting 5 wooden cubes and then drew its side and top views. Whilst the third problem was presented in the second meeting conducted ten days later. In this problem, students should work individually to construct their own building blocks from four blocks and then drew its side and top views. 
After conducting the instructional activities, the researcher observed that the way students visualized and interpreted the building blocks were increased. The researcher, therefore, concluded that spatial visualisation activities such as visualize the building blocks support the development of students’ spatial ability.

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