NATURAL SCIENCE EDUCATION IN A COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOL

5-16

Authors: Jūratė Armonienė

Growing concerns about the health of young people and physical activity can be observed recently. Indeed, children do not exercise enough, they tend to play computer games and watch television instead of playing outside. None of the state authority assumes responsibility for the establishment of proper conditions for students’ physical activity; too little attention is paid to the quality of physical education classes. Not all Lithuanian schools pay enough attention to the issues of health education. In some schools, students’ health is fostered only by the individual teachers initiative (Proškuvienė, 2004). What are the causes of such a situation? A health education process in schools would be conducted more efficiently if it was supported by more willingness and active participation of all the staff and students’ parents. Physical activity is one of the factors influencing people’s health. Movement is the body’s natural biological need, and ordinary human activity is hardly possible without it. Physical activity can be understood in quite a broad sense. It includes various exercises, participation in competitions, household work, leisure activity that requires physical effort, as well as physical work. In order to implement the students’ healthy lifestyle education and addiction prevention programs a teacher survey on healthy living issues and on the use of tobacco, alcohol and other psychoactive substances were conducted in the Vilnius Jons Basanavicius Gymnasium. The public health official (PHO) carried out the students’ state of health analysis in accordance with the provided medical evidence. The aim of the survey was to determine the teachers’ attitude to the students’ health education and to evaluate the students’ and teachers’ initiatives which promote physical activity and prevention of addictions. The prevailing method used in the survey was a questionnaire for the teachers which consisted of 10 open-ended questions. 62 questionnaires were handed out, and soon 42 of them were filled in. Thus, 67.74 percent of the teachers shared their knowledge of a healthy lifestyle. The results of the questionnaire survey conducted at Vilnius Jonas Basanavicius Gymnasium show that only 50 percent of the teachers believe that they play an important role in protecting and enhancing the students’ health. The majority of the teachers thinks that their knowledge about health is only satisfactory. According to the teachers’ subjective assessment, they mainly face the lack of knowledge about the issues of psychotropic substance abuse, sexual education, first aid matters, mental health and coping with stress. About 35.5 percent of the gymnasium teachers do not use the Universal Health Education Program or other health programs such as the preparation for the family life program, the smoking prevention program, the program of changes, and the program of self-confidence. There are many teachers who believe that the most important thing is to teach their particular subject, regardless of the anatomical and psychological characteristics of the students’ health and their real abilities; thus, indiscriminately increasing mental stress and leaving no time for physical activity and recreation. 2015/2016 year students’ health studies have shown that the most common health problems are optic (313 cases), bone and muscle (234 cases), circulatory and respiratory diseases (187 and 105 cases), an increase of disorders of the endocrine system has been noticed (65 cases), and nervous system disorders (26 cases) have also been quite common if compared to the statistics for the years 2014/2015. In order to adapt the students’ healthy lifestyle education and addiction prevention programs at our gymnasium we conducted a survey on tobacco, alcohol and other psychoactive substance use prevalence. The survey that was conducted with the help of the IQES system analysed the answers of 348 gymnasium students from the 1st-3rd form (51 percent of these respondents were boys and 49 percent were girls). All in all, 37 percent of these students were from the 1st form, 39 percent from the 2nd form, and 24 percent from the 3rd form. The survey found out that the most common bad habits observed in our gymnasium are smoking, as 317 respondents (91 percent) indicated; and alcohol consumption – that was admitted by 22 respondents (6 percent). 10 percent of the students named desire to relax as the main reason for smoking; 10 percent admitted being encouraged by their friends; 8 percent pointed out that this was a habit; while 3 percent started smoking out of curiosity. In order to reduce the spread of harmful habits, various prevention events, promotions, meetings and competitions are organized at our gymnasium. Besides, since this school year, the public health official (PHO) organizes the classes based on the issues of psychoactive substance prevention. A lot of events take place in February, since the campaign "February is a healthy month – 2016" is traditionally carried out at that time of the year. Programs of health promotion, physical activity and addiction prevention applied in schools will help shape students' psychological - social competence, their life and health skills; encourage healthy living and safe choices.

24-30

Authors: Rūta Jacevičienė, Nijolė Zlatkauskienė, Irena Vežbickienė

Changing community and environment, encourage people to gain new competencies, accumulate their current and new skills. The broad methods‘ range provides an opportunity for the educator to reveal own competencies and make the learning process more engaging. There is a lot of attention paid to close relationship development between child and environment at our institution. Since 2010 environment protection has become the priority area. Six years ago we have started various discussions on the ecology subject, promoted various activities, that later turned into a project. Annual events and activities gaining strong community attention and support. Therefore, we are creatively moving forward, discovering new ideas, that we implement through the projects either recreational or cognitive events. We‘ve noticed, that creative project method helps to involve children with various needs and also adapts education content to the child‘s abilities. We pay a lot of attention to creativity expression in our environmental events. Creativity relates to curiosity, because through touching, sensing, taking and creating child is looking for a solution, new means of decision. We, educators, led by our nature and predilection, are seeking for those methods of work, which helps best to achieve our targets and aims. It is important to find reasonable methods, which would help to disclose individual learners‘ personality and release their creative powers. Each activity, that we introduce to children is known and usual, however, it‘s been introduced unconventionally, through the different approach and creativity. Children, along with their little friends, discovered new environment perception paths, shared their knowledge, insights and were learning from each other at the same time. Experiments, trials and discoveries encourage children to calm down, concentrate and experience the mystery and positive sensations. Each experiment is awarding child with pride and self-confidence, because knowledge is not enforced to the child, but discovered her/himself.

40-47

Authors: Gintarė Jurgaitienė, Silvija Kazakevičienė

In November, 2014 Deputy Head Teacher for Primary Education Gintarė Jurgaitienė visited Newcastle upon Tyne, where she observed Erasmus + KA1 project activities at various schools. Now she is successfully putting the British school experience in outdoor learning and forest schools into practise at Vilnius Balsiai Progymnasium. The 2015-2016 school year project „A Forest School“ at Vilnius Balsiai Progymnasium is being carried out by four pilot classes. Once a week integrated outdoor lessons in accordance with integrated learning themes and by a separately arranged timetable are organised for the students in grades 1-4. Project "A Forest School" objectives:  to provide all students with the opportunity to explore and analyse the living and non-living natural phenomena in natural conditions and to integrate this gained experience into other subjects learning;  to enrich students' artistic and linguistic expression;  to create the conditions where students could observe and explore in nature;  to strengthen the immune system and to enjoy the fresh air. The project „A Forest School“ at Vilnius Balsiai Progymnasium - is a great idea to conduct integrated lessons in the outdoor environments. This project encourages the students' willingness to travel, to know, to discover, to develop their practical activity skills. By carrying out different activities students have the opportunity to develop their current experience and acquire new experiences. Such activities are interesting and attractive to students and stimulate them to look for innovations, to explore, to know, to discover, to make decisions, to experiment, to observe, to communicate and cooperate with each other, to narrate, to talk, to solve problems, students gain new experiences and take responsibility for natural objects in their immediate environment.

52-58

Authors: Giedre Kvietkauskiene, Zose Askiniene

School is becoming a constantly developing institution where the newest teaching methods and various technologies are used. The student is learning to learn. The teacher is a partner and an assistant in the education process. Integration of subjects is the factor that determines the success in individualisation of educational content. The teacher chooses the appropriate teaching methods, techniques and gives the source of information according to students’ different needs, skill levels and motivation. During the lesson the student has to understand, which means thinking. This type of activity is encouraged by asking questions and projects. Development of natural sciences involves broadening the content of education. It is necessary to encourage students’ independent work and facilitate integration.

70-74

Authors: Violeta Lukočienė

In today’s society pupil’s ability to apply knowledge in practice and to acquire knowledge from practice is very important. Therefore, it is essential that in education process pupils would be active participants of creation of the education process, i.e. would solve important problems, would search the answers to the questions of their concern. Project activities are one of the most effective methods combining experience and practice. Project activities as practical-empirical activities are widely applied in the education process of Šilutė Martynas Jankus basic school. One of the most popular project activities implemented in the natural science sphere – activities related to the Earth Day. Every year one week is dedicated to natural science project activities, selecting a particular topic each year. This year the selected topic – flowers. Since the variety of flowers are very wide, primary school pupils of different age groups have been investigating, exploring various flowers. The first year pupils investigated houseplants, the second year pupils – flower garden flowers, the third year – meadow flowers, the fourth year – forest flowers. All project activities implemented by primary school pupils covered 3 activity spheres: analytical sphere (pupils collected information, observed, questioned), creative sphere (created tasks, made various things of secondary materials), and practical-empirical sphere (planted, grew and tasted).

85-89

Authors: Laima Railienė

Kėdainiai ‘Rytas’ progymnasium has a tradition to organize republic students’ and teachers’ conference ‘Nature and We’ since 2000. The students of Republic general education schools, the students of non-formal education institutions, environmental research centres, the club members of environmental research centres present their research, long-term and short-term project works on environmental science and environment protection issues. During the 17 year-lasting conference ‘Nature and We’ organized period, it was observed that the students choose their study objects such natural areas which are not analysed and not investigated by adults. In the seventeen conferences (2000-2016) have been read: • 19 plenary reports; • The reports have been read by 767 students; • 806 teachers and 1294 students took part in the sections of conferences; • The conferences were attended by teachers and students from 32 cities and towns of general education and non-formal education schools.

97-105

Authors: Danguole Saviciene

In this report, I would like to share the example of good work practice - idea of research in teaching primary school students “Healthy lifestyle” subject. This subject is included in world cognition classes from first to fourth grade and includes several parts. One of them - “Healthy diet”. In order to interest my students in “Healthy diet” subject and teach the benefits of protein for growing organism, I suggested to conduct a research on insectivorous plant. My goal was to make pupils learn about the benefits of protein for growing organism by using practical method (with playful elements) which is appealing for the students. The purpose of the research was to investigate which products can be digested by Dionaea muscipula. While in the process of the research to water the plant with distilled or rain water, document the events. Raised hypothesis: the Dionaea muscipula will digest only food which contains mostly protein. The result of the research: cottage cheese was digested for 3 days, fresh chicken - 10d., cheese 5d., boiled egg white - 9d., fresh fish - 6d., fresh beef - 3d., boiled beef ball - 9d., greek nut was not digested, the same is for white bread. The conclusion of the research: chicken was the longest to digest (10 days), the shortest digestion time was for fresh beef and cottage cheese (3 days). No digestion occurred with white bread and greek nut. Raised hypothesis was confirmed: the delicate Dionaea muscipula digested human food, which contained the protein. At the end of the research, together with students, we created education film - “Dionaea muscipula feeding ration investigation”, which not only interested the students of other classes, but also summarized and solidified the subject of “Healthy diet”.

116-120

Authors: Ramunė Vėželytė

Pre-primary school education in natural sciences running in the real and virtual world is applying to pre-primary children and to individual education. Children could be educated with groups at school or outside school premises. Children of contemporary generation Z grow up in the era of digital technology. These children are interested and involved in several activities and change them often. The goal of the teacher is to prepare the projects of natural sciences that let children use digital technology. The latter helps to liven educational process and children could be more interested in the activity. Pre-primary school children create, explore, enjoy, solve problems, think critically, search for information, work together as a team while dealing with investigative, creative and educational work. While sharing the ideas and experience with others, children involve their parents and community of the kindergarten in the activities. Trips, excursions, virtual journeys help the children to express themselves, cooperate, gain self-esteem and rely on others, help to be responsible, strengthen reciprocal relations between nature, child, teacher and society.

129-139

Authors: Sergei V. Teleshov, Elena V. Teleshova

The motivation of students is a very complex problem. This article may help to solve some of the problems for teaching students. Chemical experiment is a very powerful tool for motivation in the hands of the teachers in Chemistry. The personal history of chemists in combination with the history of discovery of different chemical reactions and instruments can attract the interest of students making a valuable contribution to the knowledge about cultural heritage of their country and the entire chemical community. An interesting fact is that a traditional conference for teaching in Chemistry take place in Portugal (the University of Lisbon) where the specialists gather together to perform experiments of the chemist Alexander Borodin and play music written by Alexander Borodin. They know that it is the same person! Who knows, perhaps equipped with the entire arsenal of teaching tools we grow at least one student from our pupils. Let's immerse them into the world of Chemistry for our common good.