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ZŠ logopedická is a primary school situated in Hradec Králové in the Czech Republic. Our school provides learning environments to students with special educational needs, including communication, language, and speech. Currently, there are approximately 170 pupils aged 6 to 15 divided across 18 classes. Our main goal is to develop all essential skills and help our students attain general knowledge so that they can function as independently and confidently as possible in both their personal and business lives.
Overall impact
The Skills Builder programme has helped with our goal to help our students attain general knowledge so that they can function as independently and confidently as possible in both their personal and business lives.
Our students have improved how they use essential skills in their individual lessons and our teachers have developed their understanding of the Universal Framework and teaching essential skills.
Keep it simple
We continued to plan to focus on one of the eight skills each month. All our participating teachers continued to add activities for each skill to their professional portfolios. At the end of each month, the teachers meet to share activities that they have found most beneficial for students. Many of our teachers use resources from the translated Universal Framework to structure teaching activities. To further raise awareness about the programme, we have also installed notice boards in the school corridors with posters of individual soft skills and classrooms display the Skills Icons. This year teachers have focused on reinforcing and rewarding student behaviours with specific praise. This has helped students to understand how to progress in the essential skills.
Start early, keep going
Students aged 11 - 15 years participate in our essential skills programme.
Measure it
Once a month class teachers write a reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the essential skills program and use this to inform planning and the required step level for their students. Teachers then select activities that align with students’ needs and monitor student engagement and growth, this gives our teachers a clear picture of a student’s progress.
We assess the progress in developing individual skills on an ongoing basis, mainly through oral assessment. This also includes pupils' self-reflection, such as employing coloured emoticons, where the emphasis is on formative assessment. Teachers also work with skills icon posters, which they award to children after their successful mastering a certain level in a particular soft skill.
Focus tightly
As our school focuses on pupils with special educational needs, we focus on an individual approach for each pupil. As in other Czech primary schools, we initially differentiate our students based on age and place them in different grades. Further differentiation then depends on the experience of teachers with individual students and their learning needs. The framework has allowed us to target specific steps or building blocks to focus teaching with the individual learner. These lessons take place at least once per week.
Keep practising
This year we have introduced overviews of essential skills to different subject areas, to allow students and teachers to refer to them in other areas of the curriculum.
Bring it to life
This year students have had an opportunity to practise their essential skills at our Christmas and Easter craft markets. This has helped students to link essential skills to real world situations.
What's next
We are going to continue embedding the principles on the local level building on the support and understanding we have built by participating in the Global Accelerator programme.
