Mathematical Language Used in the Teaching of Three Dimensional Objects: The Prism Example

This study aimed to determine how students internalize the
mathematical concepts taught in their mathematics class, what
kinds of differences there are between mathematical languages
of the students and the teachers in defining them, and what
mistakes the students make in expressing the concepts by using
mathematical language. The study was conducted with two
mathematics teachers and 35 sixth-grade students in two
elementary schools. The data were collected with a classroom
observation form and two open-ended knowledge tests. During
the data analysis, classroom observation forms were subjected
to descriptive analysis and students’ knowledge test results
were subjected to content analysis. The findings showed that in
spite of the differences between what teachers wanted to
explain and what students internalized in their minds, these
were they were in parallel to one another. However, the
students had many problems in expressing their opinions
mathematically. The main reasons of these problems derived
from students’ just focusing a part of definition in coding,
having insufficiencies in students’ definition skills-inability to
use mathematical terminology, using daily life examples like
definition and being aware of the exact correspondence of their
definitions