Teaching Slovene to fourth graders with the help of creative movement

The aim of our master’s thesis is to find out whether the teaching of Slovenian linguistic and literary work intertwined with creative movement helps with improving the orthographic ability and enhancing the understanding of vocabulary and text with immigrant and local students. What we were interested is to determine if this kind of teaching helps with the more permanent memorization of learning content among all students, although we did focus on the results of immigrant students. We were interested in the presence of differences in the attitude of immigrant and local students in the aspect of teaching them with the help of creative movement or without it. Furthermore, finding out if class teachers at several Slovenian grammar schools actually use creative movement while teaching Slovenian, was one of our aims, and consequently, what the reasons are that make teachers use creative movement and include it in their classes. The theoretical part of this master’s thesis deals with the general characteristics of immigrant students, the ways of including them in the educational system and teaching them the Slovenian language, the characteristics of the movement and creative movement, including the latter in the lessons of Slovenian and lastly, what the advantages of doing that are. The empirical part presents the detailed analysis of the research. The research takes an in-depth look into teaching fourth year Slovene with creative movement. Two classes of fourth graders (N = 48) were included in the research itself. Out of these 48, 23 students were in the experimental group (teaching Slovenian with the help of creative movement) and 25 students in the control group (teaching Slovenian without the help of the creative movement). The results were collected by using different methodological instruments (current welfare scale, examination, survey questionnaire for teachers and watch list). We obtained the results of how the students felt after each Slovenian class (experimental and control group) by using the current welfare scale. We got the results of the at-the-moment, in-between and final welfare of the students with the help of the examination and the results of using creative movement in class at four different grammar schools in Slovenia by giving the teachers the survey questionnaire. The research data shows that creative movement, from the important statistical point of view, does not affect a better understanding of vocabulary and text, but it does have an effect on a better understanding of orthographic ability for the immigrants of the second generation. It is of equal statistical importance that it does not affect the long-lasting memorisation of learning content. We have also reached the conclusion that immigrant as well as local students from both groups feel excellent and that the majority of teachers use creative movement in their classes. With both the control and experimental groups of immigrant and local fourth year students sharing their experiences, we therefore conclude that creative movement does indeed help with the positive welfare of all students when teaching them Slovenian (literary and linguistic content) as well as having an impact on a better understanding of the orthographic ability. The latter applies only for the students of the second generation