In March 2020, the declaration of the epidemic of the infectious disease covid-19 moved the educational process from the classroom to the online environment. As this was a completely new situation in Slovenia, most teachers encountered this type of teaching for the first time. This undoubtedly contributed to the fact that the crisis introduction of distance education was carried out with a considerable degree of improvisation. Teachers were particularly exposed to the challenges of distance education, as the teaching of biological content is based on experiential learning, in which pupils acquire a variety of practical and experiential skills. The aim of the master thesis was to find out what are the experiences and attitides of primary school pupils towards distance learning in the teaching of biological content. The data were obtained by surveying the pupils using an online questionnaire. The survey included 221 pupils in grades 6, 7, 8 and 9 from five primary schools in the Central Slovenia region. The results of the survey showed that distance learning in biology was mostly done by teachers combining videoconferencing with self-instruction. The most frequent activity that took place via videoconferencing was the explanation of the learning content. Less frequent activities were pair or group work and the use of video games, indicating that collaborative learning was a significant challenge for biology teachers in distance education. The activities and associated mental challenges were dominating by consolidating the material, answering questions and writing a summary of the content read and completing a learning sheet. This raises questions about the quality of the distance learning of biological content, particularly in terms of longer sleeping hours and independent work scheduling, which can be interpreted as a desire on the part of the pupils to participate more in the planning of the learning process. We found that the most common ways of obtaining grades were oral assessment via videoconference and assessment of a practical product, so biology teachers could place more emphasis on alternative ways of obtaining grades in the future. Nevertheless, the results showed that most pupils rate their learning in distance learning biology lessons in the same way as in face-to-face lessons. Among the pupils' attitudes towards distance education in biology, the most prominent were the beliefs that distance education in biology was more challenging than face-to-face instruction, and that assignments were interesting. For all of these, there were statistically significant differences between pupils in different classes and between pupils with different levels of achievement.
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