Workshop CAT

Workshop CAT (in Greek)

Teaching about sound (to 6-8-year olds)

by 

Marianna Kalaitzidaki,
Associate Professor, Dept Primary Education, University of Crete 

Nektarios Tsagliotis, 
Head of Laboratory of Primary Science, 9th Primary School of Rethymno

The goal of the European funded project PriSciNet (October 2011- August 2014) is to promote inquiry based science teaching in primary and preschool education in Europe. It is a network of academic institutions from 15 countries, one of them being the Department of Primary Education of The University of Crete, Greece. Initially, a framework of inquiry teaching and learning was developed and agreed upon among the partners, and then 45 science activities for children 3-11 years old were developed. At the end of the project these activities will be available in 15 languages, Greek included.

Teacher training in inquiry based teaching is critical for the dissemination and adoption of this approach throughout Europe. Teacher training is provided by PriSciNet through the organisation of international and national seminars by its partners. To this end, we organise this short hands-on training session in this conference, where, around 20 primary school teachers, in groups, will try out one of the PriSciNet activities for students of 6-8 years , the activity “Sounds: Participants will have the opportunity to share their experiences  with inquiry teaching. Participants will also have the opportunity to register with PriSciNet so that they participate in its future activities (award for excellence, for those who implement successfully inquiry teaching in their classrooms, and a final conference in Malta, in July 2014.

Activities from Physics and Astronomy for Pre-primary and Early Primary Education: Ideas, suggestions and classroom experiences

by

Maria Kallery,
Associate Professor, Department of Physics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

In this workshop, teachers will be presented with activities coming from physics and astronomy. These activities address mainly children of preschool and early primary grades and constitute examples, based on which, teachers can develop equivalent activities with topics coming from other fields of science. The presentation will touch upon issues such as activities’ learning objectives, the activities’ process, the science process skills used, as well as methodological suggestions and approaches to learning, and approaches for the final assessment of the children’s learning outcomes.  We will also present classroom experiences coming from lessons recorded by the six early-years-teachers who implemented the activities with 104 children. The presentation of the methodological part of the activities is expected to be interactive.  The teachers will be invited to express their opinions on the rational and approach to the design of the activities as well as on methodological issues that play an important role for the children’s response during the activities and during their final assessment.