Abstract
Most of the population view physics as a hard school subject, deeply theoretical and connected with unpopular mathematics [1]. Children often hear this opinion from their parents and siblings long before their first contact with physics in school.
To capture children's interest and enhance their attitude towards sciences the educational program O magické bouři (About the magical storm) [2] was developed. The program serves as a tool for primary school teachers, that can be incorporated into natural science classes. It includes a fairy tale with the main character boy named Luky, who is the same age as the pupils, combined with science experiments.
This poster shall present the educational program and its development. The material consists of fairytale story, description of experiments for teachers and worksheets for pupils. The story is about boy Luky and his friend Mobi, who happens to be a magical creature. The boy doesn't have magical talent so he instead must solve problems with help of science. Whenever the boy should use magic or in his case physics the pupils do their own experiments.
Experiments are described in didactic sheets, which consist of instructions on how to perform the experiments.
Lastly, the program also includes worksheets for pupils which accompany every experiment.
The program is designed to last a whole month with one sixty-minute lesson per week. In each lesson teacher reads to the children part of the fairy tale story, then the pupils experiment and in the end teacher reads another small part of the story to get pupils to look forward to the next lesson.
Development of the educational program could be devided in five stages. The first stage of development of the educational program was getting feedback from educators on the previous program O podstatě magie (About the nature of magic) created as a part of the author's bachelor thesis [3]. The program O magické bouři (About the magical storm) was created based on this feedback.
The second stage of the research was choosing experiments to include in the program. The author created criteria, which selected experiments must fulfil such as difficulty, duration, material and availability etc. Experiments were also chosen according to the Czech curriculum framework. For every chosen experiment was created didactic sheet with materials for the teacher and work sheet for pupils.
The third stage was the preparation of a fairy tale story that would connect all selected experiments. The story must have been written in the language of children and also show that physics can be just as useful as magic or even more so. The story also includes themes that are important to children such as friendship.
The fourth stage of the research was the authors implementation of the created program in elementary school and getting feedback from the pupils, who were part of this realisation. The realisation was done with pupils in second grade, the youngest for the program possible.
The last stage of research was getting feedback from teachers who tried the program with their pupils. The opinions were collected by questionnaire, their responses were analysed and changes were made in the program.
As a result the educational program O magické bouři (About the magical storm) containing four experiments accompanied by didactic sheets for teachers and work sheets for pupils has been tested and optimized based on received feedback. The program presented in my contribution is finished and can be used by teachers in classrooms.
References
[1] Pavelková I, Škaloudová A. Postoje žáků k předmětům jako projev motivovanosti. Univerzita Karlova v Praze - Pedagogická fakulta, 2004.
[2] Doležalová J. Physics experiments incorporated into the story - didactic material for teachers. Prague, 2022. Master thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Department of Physics Education. Supervisor: Houfková J.
[3] Doležalová, J. The use of a story connected with physical experiments in teaching at elementary school. Prague, 2020. Bachelor thesis. Charles University, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Department of Physics Education. Supervisor: Houfková J.