echt jetzt?

The Haus der kleinen Forscher Foundation and the Lesen Foundation are offering primary school teachers the opportunity to foster their student’s reading and STEM skills with the help of the new children’s magazine “echt jetzt?”. The joint pilot project is made possible by the Dieter Schwarz Foundation.

The free magazine is intended for teachers and their third and fourth grade students throughout Germany. It can be used in German and general studies lessons and contains both easy and difficult texts to account for different abilities among students in the class. A total of 1,000 schools with up to two classes are participating in this two-year initiative. At the start of the 2020–2021 school year, the schools will receive the first of four issues. The following issues will be distributed in the end of each term and at the start of the school year. The aim of this pilot project is to get children equally excited about reading as well as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) through stories and experiments.

Each of the four “echt jetzt?” issues will focus on one topic. For example, the first issue is all about the weather: third and fourth graders learn why it rains, whether frogs can really predict the weather, and why there are no seasons on the equator. The content is based on primary school general studies curricula. In addition to the magazine, teachers will get supplementary digital materials on an online platform to help them integrate the magazine into their lessons in a way that makes sense. Online training for each of the four issues rounds off the educational program.

The magazine will be evaluated during the two-year period: Does it work to get children interested in reading and STEM topics? How and to what extent do the teachers use it in their lessons? The program initiators will discuss the answers to these and other questions in a final conference with practical application and research experts.

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