Enquiry – based learning with hydrogels as an enrichment activity in teaching natural science and technology for year 5 primary school students

Not many education areas affect our life as much as Natural science and Technology: we are surrounded by natural and technical products and accessories which help us improve our quality of life. Inventions of new materials lead to introduction of new products and improvement of existing ones. Nowadays one of the intensively researched materials is hydrogel. Since it is used in many different products such as contact lenses and baby diapers, not many can imagine life without it. Its real future potential is shown in medical and pharmaceutical area – it could be used as regeneration or substitution of injured tissues. However the synthesis of new hydrogel forms enables many new possible ways of use. With that being said, the hydrogels are and will be in our everyday use, but not many people are aware of its existence. Especially pupils in primary school lack the possibilities to use the products containing hydrogels. Experiments with hydrogels with accurate instruction reading and knowledge of scientific-technical research techniques enable proper training in scientific experimenting for pupils. They can easily imagine their natural properties and hence understand the use of hydrogels in farming. In master thesis we wanted to explore whether the experiments with hydrogels are or are not suitable teaching content in enrichment activities for pupils, who are highly interested in Natural sciences and Technology. To find an answer to this question firstly the literature had to be studied. With information acquired from literature a collection of experiments, suitable for knowledge and manual competence of 10-year-old pupils, was made. These experiments were performed and documented and later presented to and with pupils. To acquire whole picture of explored area of interest interviews with pupils were made. In order to test the pre-existing knowledge of pupils these interviews took place before and after the presentation of experiments. The purpose of research was also to find out, how much knowledge pupils get during the presentation. A group of five pupils performed five pre-selected experiments and later they had to invent and perform one more experiment. With surveillance of pupils during experiments and interview analysis we concluded, that the hydrogels are interesting enough and suitable for experimenting, as the participating pupils presented positive feedback with hydrogel experiments and showed improvement in their knowledge of hydrogels, in their properties and possibilities of hydrogel use. The future possibilities of research would be in exploring of acceptance of hydrogels experiments in higher classes of primary school and their use in different natural sciences (Physics, Chemistry)