INTEGRATED SCIENCE EDUCATION IN PRIMARY SCHOOL

Abstract

Nowadays teachers always seek for new ways and methods to raise a creative, motivated individual, who is always willing to learn new things. That brings teachers to an ongoing issue – lack of student motivation. Traditional teaching methods became ineffective with the new generation. To them, all the lessons look the same, boring, and plain, and that’s why teachers have to find new methods, activities, tools to motivate the students to be active, to indulge in the activities and keep their focus throughout all of the lesson. One of the ways to motivate the students is integrated education. The main axis of integration could be science education. A variety of school subjects can be integrated with science education, such as Lithuanian language, mathematics, English, etc. This analysis provides some examples of how, by integrating the Lithuanian language and science lessons, students could be taught to write descriptions, to spell prefixes and proper nouns, and verbal tenses. The integration of mathematics and science could serve to teach students the units of measurement and basics of statistics through research, experiments, and measuring activities. Integration of English provides students with an opportunity to learn the scientific concepts not only in Lithuanian, but also in English. In science education lessons, teachers strive to provide students with the basics of competencies, knowledge, and skills needed to get to know themselves and the world around them. By working with the content of several school subjects at the same time, students acquire a holistic approach, while lesson topics are explored in greater depth. Keywords: motivation, integrated education, science education, lessons.