Teaching in Biological Sciences At Primary Schools in Serbia - An Application of the Hands on Method

Abstract

The project Hands on has being implemented in Serbia since 2001 in order to uplift and revitalize teaching of the natural sciences in Primary Schools and enhance a personal engagement by the pupils in different topics. In 2003, the Serbian Ministry of Education decided to put forward an optional course Hands on - Discovering the World, for children from 6 to 8 years old. Resources related to the biology have been occurred through seven modules, as follows: Plants, Food and digestion, Five senses, Growing and aging, Ecosystems, Environment. Knowing that topics in systematic biology are usually considered difficult and demanding, here we present the new, interesting, simple and creative way to teach systematics and classification since the early age, based on the Hands on method. New module refers to the classification of living beings, when teachers encourage their pupils to observe similar attributes, arrange the hierarchy of nested groups and classify animals discovering the evolutionary relationships of taxa.