Osnovna sola Bogojina – Slovenia
In Osnovna sola Bogojina there are 181 students from six to fourteen years of age. Students, in nine years of attending elementary school, learne these school subjects: the mother tongue (Slovene), mathematics, environmental and social sciences, art, P.E., music, cookery, natural science and technology; German, history, science and engineering; engineering and technology, ethics and national education; chemistry, biology and physics (8th, 9th grade). Students can also choose between mandatory and non-mandatory subjects. One of them is English. There is one social worker and twenty-two teachers in our school supervised by the headmaster, Sabina Juhart.
There are several reasons for joining the project. First, headmaster promotes positive experiences and they had a positive exchange experience from approx. eight years ago. She also promotes the use of innovative methods in teaching and positive learning environment. Our school’s research showed that in our school traditional methods are still mostly used and children are less motivated to learn, so it is time to bring some fresh ideas to our school environment. This is also the best way to learn about other cultures, to learn how to work in a group, how to adapt to the environment and other people and of course to use the language in real situations. For many this might be the only experience to travel. Not to forget the teachers. We also learn the most when we are put in the real life situations.
Why we are interested it the STEM method as the base for our project? We believe it really is time to make learning closer to the students and this can only be achieved with the use of innovative methods. STEM is an approach and method that includes many other important methods, as project based learning, outdoor learning, learning with movement and experience. Teachers and students will exchange good practices and we would transfer our knowledge to local environment (other grades and teachers in our school, nearby schools also interested in this method).
People taking part in the project: Marijana Baraba (coordinator), Sabina Juhart (headmaster), Nataša Vrtarič (teacher of science, biology and chemistry), Dušan Nemec (teacher of CS, physics and T&T); the whole school actually. We plan to involve as much teachers, pupils and local community so everyone gets to see the importance of this experience. In case something happens the substitute person will be decided by the headmaster. Our school has experiences with: outside learning and we have an outdoor classroom that we are prepare to include in project LTT activities; with planning the activities for the project exchanging students and teachers and with hosting them as it already took part in an exchange program some years ago. The coordinator works in several schools and is the co-coordinator of a project that takes part in one of the schools now. She organized the activities for exchange students and teachers that visited Slovenia in September(2019). All these experience will be used in conducting this project.
