Search

Practical exercises should form an essential component of high-quality first aid courses. However, incorporating them into school curricula often encounters several challenges. Among the most prevalent issues are the insufficient availability of resources, primarily resuscitation mannequins, and the relatively large class sizes. These factors can result in limited space for effective hands-on exercises for every student within a single class session. To address this, one potential solution involves dividing the students into smaller groups. In this approach, the teacher can focus individually on guiding practical exercises for one group, while the remaining students engage in alternate activities, such as completing independent worksheets. The groups can subsequently rotate, ensuring that all students receive dedicated attention during the lesson. Consequently, the objective of our research was to develop a collection of educational tasks designed to be compiled into worksheets, facilitating independent work among students. We devised a total of nine distinct task types, presented in four different variations (yielding a total of 36 tasks), and organized them into four comprehensive worksheets. Subsequently, we evaluated the practicality of these worksheets through a trial involving 86 elementary school pupils. The assessment questionnaire indicated that the tasks were highly practical, comprehensible, suitably challenging, and relatively enjoyable, according to the feedback from the students. The paper contains more detailed information about the evaluation process, as well as a link to download all of the prepared worksheets, including the author’s solutions and methodological recommendations for teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change is an important and topical issue that the public, and especially the younger generation, should be well acquainted with. However, relatively little attention is paid to this issue in the currently valid biology textbooks and in the Framework Educational Programme (FEP) for Czech grammar schools. It is not beneficial to pass on knowledge about this issue to students only in the form of bare facts that would have to be memorized. On the contrary, it is desirable that pupils themselves actively acquire information on the issue, think about it critically and understand it. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to follow up on the article "Water and Plant Stress" published in issue number 4/2019 of this journal in order to elaborate the given topic in a didactic manner, in the form of nineteen active learning tasks intended primarily for pupils at upper secondary schools. Pupils have to draw upon information from introductory texts, graphs, tables or pictures to solve them correctly and critically think about them and to some extent can apply previously acquired knowledge and experience. Such acquired knowledge can then be applied more convincingly not only at school but also outside of it. The author's solutions are attached to the tasks. The proposed tasks were selected from a set of 30 tasks elaborated on the given topic, which were tentatively tested during pedagogical practice at a grammar school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper summarizes theoretical background, practical notes and design of two experiments on plant phototropism to be conducted at high schools. Theoretical introduction describes different types of plant tropisms, e.g. gravitropism, heliotropism and phototropism, and different types of nastic movements not directionally oriented. Phototropism is a type of plant growth reaction oriented towards or against the direction of the source of irradiation, called positive phototropism or negative phototropism, respectively. The Experiment 1 is aimed at the effect of the different irradiation wavelength on the growth of plant shoot of Lepidium sativum. It is demonstrated there that blue light and, thus, blue photoreceptors are determining stem positive phototropic reaction. The use of LED light source to induce irradiation of a narrow wavelength is recommended. The Experiment 2 then demonstrates negative phototropism of plant roots. An important part constitutes the experience gained during the design, accomplishment and verification process for the presented experimentation. Both experiments were designed in cost-effective way for application of scientific approaches and protocols at high schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chlupáč's Museum of Earth History is a unique academic museum focusing on the development of the planet Earth from the perspective of both living and inanimate nature, which is primarily intended for teaching university students. However, its clarity, and, in a sense, its compactness, allows it to be used to educate students at lower levels of education, especially if accompanied by explanatory commentary. The museum was created on the basis of original geological-paleontological collections amassed at the Faculty of Science of Charles University, after World War II, from several Prague universities. The collections were inaccessible to the public until the turn of the millennium, when it was decided to renovate and rebuild the museum and open it to the public for at least a limited amount of time. The museum's (own) exhibition is a comprehensive set of fossil materials, illustrative models, and information posters describing the evolution of the Earth from its origins to the present day. It is supplemented by examples of some paleoecological relationships in selected periods and unique visual reconstructions. Since its official opening, the museum has been used by numerous schools (especially secondary schools) to supplement or replace geological science teaching. Currently, students on school excursions are key visitors to the museum. In addition to lectures organized by the museum, students can also complete worksheets, which make the material easier to interpret and memorize. In the future, the museum could certainly be used more intensively to complement the teaching of geology, which is a very neglected area at secondary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]