The subject environment education is designed to show the diversity and the interconnectedness of various factors, combines methods and content which help pupils to learn about the world around them. The teacher has an important role, because the teacher with the lesson planning predicts the use of different methods of work, while trying to increase the interest in students for further learning. One of the commonly used teaching methods is didactic game. A didactic game is a game with a specific learning goal where the content is organized in such a way to excite curiosity among students and motivate them to different activities. At the same time the didactic games are designed to raise the students’ relaxation and comfort.
A review of the literature on didactic games shows that didactic games are a suitable learning method for dealing with different topics in teaching of environment education in primary school. The mentioned fact has encouraged in the context of the Master's work to explore the use of the didactic board games with the topics light, weather and sound in the third grade of elementary school. We were interested in how and to what extend pupils will achieve the learning goals when dealing with selected topics (weather, light and sound) during the lesson with the prevailing method of didactic games. We were also interested in whether students will be more familiar with the rules of the game, because they will be latter repeatedly through all three topics and if the use of the same type of didactic board games effect on their interest for playing the game.
The study included one third grade of the selected urban school, 22 pupils. Before carrying out the lessons in the classroom, the students solved two instruments, the examination type paper-pencil, which enabled us to check the pupil’s knowledge on topics of light, weather and sound, and a questionnaire on the self-assessment level of interest in learning about the environment education and knowledge of rules of the games. Then, in the classroom, we conducted three lesson in duration of 90 minutes on topics weather, light and sound. We designed and made three didactic board games according to the Ceh classification of games, for each of them one didactic board game. In the study, three instruments were used to collect the information after carrying out the lessons on all three topics (weather, light and sound), namely the examination type paper-pencil on the above topics, the questionnaire on the self-assessment level of interest in learning about the environment education and the knowledge of rules of the game on the five-point scale Likert type, and the observation sheet, which the teacher had fulfilled during the lessons.
The obtained results indicate a positive influence of acquiring knowledge in the third grade of elementary school, when the method of didactic game prevailed in the classroom. The majority of pupils achieved the learning objectives with the prevailing method of didactic games in the classroom on topics weather, light and sound. The pupils were better able to understand the rules of the didactic board game, as they repeated through all three topics. The results of the research snow that pupils' interest in playing the same kind of didactic board game has decreased slightly. Nevertheless, due to the small size of the sample, the results of the study cannot be generalized to the basic group, but we can follow the guidelines for further research.
|
