Children’s Future Academy

Working Group:Low Achievers in ScienceCountry:PolandLanguages:PolishAge of students (target group/s):6-12Links, resources:http://www.akademia.mazovia.pl/ The main goal of this project is to equalize educational opportunities for primary school students by extending the educational offer of schools with additional extra-curricular activities aimed at key competencies development. This project is also intending to counteract violence and aggression phenomena, providing the necessary pedagogical and psychological support to children with difficulties in learning, developing their skills and disseminate the idea of education by sport. The project was carried out in a form of extra free-of-charge activities, attended by students enrolled in the project.Strong points and opportunities:• Each school could decide on its own about thematic scope of lessons (i.e. using innovative ICT tools or science education content); • Lessons’ programmess were created by teachers (each of them could implement such a lesson content which seemed to be the most important for their students); • Project showed students, how they can spend their free time in interesting way; • Increase of students' interest in science education; • Growth of research skills among students (students recognize world by their own experience) • Students learned the principles of cooperation in the group;Limitations:• Too much hours to be spent in the project (20 hours per month) – lessons were conducted above the normal school program so it was additional burden for students; • Too little time to carry out all activities when teaching;Added value with regards to the 3 topics of the MASS project:• Development of an innovative technology among students (computer, camera, websites); • Ability of doing various science experience, experiments, using research methodology and learning by exploring; • Practical use of knowledge from science education;Any prerequisites needed:• Measurement equipment (depends on the chosen thematic scope); • Computer with access to the Internet; • Microscope;