Hiking is a popular sport for which Slovenia offers excellent natural conditions. It is one of the activities suitable for all age groups and in recent years more and more people with disabilities have actively participated in it. Hiking can be much more than just a leisure activity or main component of an activity day, such as a hiking sports day. Teachers can also use the content of hiking to meet the goals of other areas of the special education programme that include people with intellectual disabilities. This can be achieved through pre-planned cross-curricular integration, respecting all the teaching principles of the special education programme and using a variety of didactic methods and approaches that individualise the objectives and consider abilities of each individual.
In the master's thesis we wanted to find out what goals of the Specific education programme can be achieved through the content of hiking. For this purpose, five activities were carried out to achieve the goals in the different areas. The activity of hiking was used to achieve the goals of General Education or General Knowledge, Developement of Independence or Developement and Maintainance of Independence and Movement and Physical Education or Sport and Recreation. The sample included five preparatory activities with the contents of hiking, involving ten students of IV., V. and VI. grade of Specific education programme.
We concluded that selected goals in these areas could be met with the content of hiking. In reviewing the curriculum of the specific education programme, we found that the content of hiking can meet several of the objectives in the selected domains. It is important to remember that the teacher must make a judicious selection of the domains and, more importantly, the goals he or she wishes to achieve with the content of hiking activities. Therefore he must know the objectives of each area and clearly define what he wants to achieve through a particular activity. By including hiking in the daily lessons, we can achieve the objectives of other areas not only those related to physical activity and sports. This provides students with new experiences, makes meaningful connections between knowledge in different areas and helps them apply the knowledge they learn in their daily lives.
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