FORMATION OF GEOGRAPHICAL COMPETENCES OF STUDENTS WITH HELP OF CRYPTOGRAMS

Abstract

The article reflects the results of the development of cognitive games for the formation, consolidation, and verification of students’ knowledge of the thematic sections of school geography courses and the study of the effectiveness of their use in the educational process of general secondary education institutions. The authors independently developed and tested in the educational process such geographical games-exercises as cryptograms (encrypted secret writing that is revealed by matching the letters of the words-answers to the proposed questions and the numbers that are encrypted in the task with the subsequent recording of the corresponding letters in the graphic cells). The content of these puzzles corresponds to the curriculum material of the thematic section «South America» of the 7th grade of geography school course. The developed cryptograms reflect geographical objects and phenomena, take into account the relevance of the horological and chronological paradigm; have cognitive developmental educational controlling reproductive diagnostic functions; can be used in individual, pair, group and whole-class educational activities. The results of the survey of the students and teachers involved in the pedagogical experiment the results of the control tests allow us to assert that the proposed didactic games diversify the learning process make it interesting and relaxed deepen the knowledge of geography; it is appropriate to use them in the lesson in group work or as homework after studying each thematic section. In the future, we consider the need to develop algorithms for evaluating each such game-exercise and creating cryptograms with fewer questions to reduce the time it takes for students to complete them in class as important tasks for improving the methods of using cryptograms in general secondary education institutions. Intellectual games of this kind can be relevant for educational classes in other school courses of geography (or other subjects).