Cross-curricular link are important part of teaching in schools, but it is less often done than we would like due to lack of time, knowledge and ideas. Research also show that teachers often have misconceptions about what cross-curricular links are. With the help of cross-curricular links we want to develop pupils' integrative thinking that they will use not only during their schooling, but also in later life. In order to make meaningful cross-curricular links in the classroom, they need to be carefully planned in advance. When planning, we first need to ask ourselves what we want to achieve by using cross-curricular links in our classroom, what are the goals of the different subjects that pupils need to achieve, and then plan meaningful activities that will motivate the pupils to do their work. The master thesis defines cross-curricular links, presents different models of cross-curricular integration, discusses the planning and implementation of these links, and outlines the advantages and disadvantages of cross-curricular integration. As the focus is on the first educational period, the characteristics of children in this period are also presented in the theoretical part of the thesis. In the last part of the theoretical part of the thesis there are also presented cross-curricular links between mathematics and other subjects in the first educational period.
The empirical part is based on a quantitative survey, the main purpose of which is to investigate the frequency of implementation of cross-curricular links in mathematics, the ways in which cross-curricular links in mathematics are planned and implemented, and the competence and motivation of teachers to implement cross-curricular links in mathematics. Finally, we were also interested in which subjects and which mathematics content teachers make links with each subject in the first educational period. The survey involved 127 teachers of the first educational period of primary school. The results of the questionnaire showed that the vast majority of teachers often make cross-curricular links with mathematics in their teaching. We found that there are no differences in the frequency of cross-curricular links between teachers with different length of service. Teachers most often plan cross-curricular links in mathematics in weekly and daily preparation, paying most attention to the activities themselves, before focusing their attention on learning goals, content, tools, etc. Their planning is most often based on the curriculum. The results of the questionnaire showed that teachers most often use cross-curricular links when practising the material and avoid using them in the process of assessment and evaluation. The most frequent subject with which teachers make cross-curricular links to mathematics in the first educational period is science, and the least frequent subject with which they make cross-curricular links to mathematics is the foreign language English, which may be due to the fact that the foreign language English is most often taught by a different teacher at the primary level. Among the reasons why they implement cross-curricular links with mathematics, most teachers indicated that they want to promote learning for everyday life through this way of teaching and, as a result, they themselves arise from life situations that involve cross-curricular links.
The findings are expected to give teachers insight into the current state of the implementation of cross-curricular links and to stimulate further use and training in this area. Teachers themselves can draw on the respondents' activities for cross-curricular links in mathematics to get ideas for introducing these links into their own classrooms and, as a consequence, to raise the quality of their teaching and, ultimately, to deepen and deepen their pupils' knowledge of mathematics.
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