World and environmental studies
World and Environmental Studies (WUK) was a three-hour school subject at the earlier orientation level . WUK lessons are still offered at individual schools in Bremen today.
Content
At WUK it was a synthesis of the topics of the beginning lessons of history and geography. Thus, for decades, WUK lessons have been the equivalent of introductory lessons for students in the 5th and 6th grades in the subjects of history and geography . Since the orientation level was abolished, the latter two subjects have already been taught in these grade levels.
Historical themes were the juveniles and the Old Stone Age , the Romans and the Germans and the civilization of Ancient Egypt .
Geographical topics included the orientation on earth with intensive atlas work , the topography of Germany , the North Sea coast with a special focus on the islands and Halligen , the desert and its inhabitants and finally the cold zones .
Didactic preparation and methodology of WUK teaching
Oral participation was particularly important for the WUK grade (60% of the overall grade). The WUK didactics stipulated that the teacher should observe the oral participation and the work behavior of each of his students over a longer period of time and then assign an overall grade. But there were also WUK teachers who only gave their oral grades for three or four individual hours per semester, which led to a considerable decrease in the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation of those students who did not actively participate in the lessons in those hours . To counteract these frustrations, many WUK teachers gave each student a symbolic rating such as “a plus”, “a squiggle” or “a minus” at the end of each lesson.
The WUK work was conceived in such a way that the pupils were confronted in the 5th and 6th grade with the need to extract information from a longer text in a targeted manner. Thus, the required methodological competence went beyond purely reproductive questions about the subject matter. It could even happen that the students had to apply their knowledge in individual transfer tasks and transfer it to new issues. As a rule, two class tests were written every semester because of the three-hour tuition.
As a rule, the class teachers gave WUK lessons at the orientation level at the time, while the subjects of biology and physics, for example, were only given by individual subject teachers at the OS. This fact also underpins the special position of this subject. The class teachers were particularly often present as WUK teachers, as the communicative approach was particularly important for this subject and was supported by excursions outside of the classroom, e.g. B. to the natural history museum or a day trip to the Wadden Sea National Park, the class community should be strengthened.
For decades it was in WUK lessons that students were confronted for the first time with independent, scientific propaedeutic work, which was done in particular through weekly planning and free work. In addition, the WUK lessons stood out from other subjects due to the high proportion of group lessons - for example, the students worked in groups to develop the living conditions of the desert inhabitants and then presented them on posters. In addition, it was often in the WUK subject that the students gave the first presentation in their school career.
Because many history and geography teachers at the grammar schools attached great importance to the subject WUK in relation to the introduction to historical and geographical issues, many of them asked the WUK grades of their new students at the beginning of the school year.
aims
Especially the excursus “We live with people from other cultures” is intended to strengthen the social skills and empathy of the students, especially for foreign classmates.
The topic of "traffic education" was also part of the WUK lessons; In individual hours, subjects from the specialist teaching, such as “safe bike” or “traffic rules like right-before-left” and “meaning of traffic signs” were specifically repeated.
In the WUK lessons, the students were confronted for the first time with the darkest chapter of German history, National Socialism, with the WUK teachers working in close collaboration with the German teachers, who included books such as “Ich bin ein Stern” and “Oleg and the besieged city” read. This early confrontation with the most terrible chapter in world history was a specific feature of WUK teaching, while today's curriculum for history teaching does not provide for the period of the Third Reich to be a theme in 6th grade history teaching. Today, however, the first confrontation with this epoch does not take place until the history lesson in grade 10, i.e. four years later. Reports from contemporary witnesses were particularly important in this WUK teaching unit, as the students can empathize with the painful fates of many people through personal encounters with people who experienced National Socialism and the Second World War themselves.
Compendia and experiential approach
As a textbook and compendium, “Mensch und Umwelt” from the Schroedel-Verlag was particularly widespread; The petrol-colored textbook is familiar to schoolchildren from the 1990s, but a new edition was published in 1999.
Many class teachers organized their class trips “WUK-centered”, for example by taking their students to a North Sea island. By confronting pupils with living spaces from the WUK book, those educators chose the experiential approach. Similar to a sports class trip, the teachers spoke of a "WUK class trip" on a class trip to the island of Spiekeroog, on which activities such as a mudflat hike, a visit to the foreland of the dike and a trip with a fishing cutter were on the program.
Curiosity
At the time, many pupils in the 5th and 6th grades were of the opinion that WUK could be studied and that their teacher had completed "a WUK degree", as the names of the related sciences of the WUK subject, i.e. the subjects of geography and history, were in generally were not yet familiar.
Individual evidence
- ↑ News. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 13, 2017 ; accessed on April 12, 2017 (de_CH). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Life in prehistoric times - Stone Age (PDF file)
- ↑ Sample lesson planning
- ↑ Concentration camp memorials (PDF file)
- ↑ Contemporary witness over the years under the Nazi dictatorship
- ^ Karlheinz Kolb, Harald Mertins, Susanne Rautmann: Mensch und Umwelt 99 . Schroedel-Verlag 1999, ISBN 978-3-507-36011-2
