The role of gaming technologies in the formation of environmental culture of schoolchildren

Analysis of the content of school natural science disciplines shows that at each stage of education, students acquire a certain number of concepts about the environment, human activity in it, the need to protect individual components of nature and natural complexes. It seems that in the process of studying at school, the volume and content of knowledge about the environment and the problems of its protection are quite sufficient. However, in modern conditions of rapid development of the man-made environment, the growth of its negative impact on nature, the requirements for the quality of students’ knowledge have changed, associated with the need to give knowledge an applied nature, ensuring the implementation of skills to maintain the best state of the environment and prevent adverse phenomena in everyday life. That is why the problem of forming the environmental culture of schoolchildren remains quite acute. The solution to this problem involves improving the methods, forms, technologies of the educational process, equipping it with the latest effective teaching aids and implementing the local history principle. One of the most effective areas of developing environmental culture is the use of gaming technologies in the educational process, with the help of which, with minimal time and effort of the teacher, it is possible to form multivariate visual and verbal information, model real situations reflecting the state of the environment with various influences of human activity on it. The article substantiates the role of gaming technologies in developing environmental culture of schoolchildren, provides examples of typical business games developed by the authors based on the local history principle, ensuring the formation of cognitive interest in the native land, pride in their people and their lands.