Our school is located in Litomysl, the east of Bohemia, the Czech Republic. We are a public primary school with 400 pupils, made up of 18 forms. The pupils start school at the age of 6 and finish it at the age of 15 or 16. We have focused on developing essential skills for a number of years before the Global Accelerator programme. We had displayed the posters about skills in each classroom as well as in the corridor to be seen by parents when they enter the school. The posters help teachers and pupils be aware of skills during the lessons, as well as at break times, so they can discuss and reflect on them.
At the start of the programme, we held several trainings for our teachers to introduce the Skills Builder approach and Universal Framework. The teachers gained basic information about the programme and some advice on using the framework to support teaching in the classroom. Resources from Schola Empirica were also introduced to the teachers, as they were in Czech and contextualised for our learners. Teachers and pupils were getting motivated as the activities offered were found simple to deliver, interesting for learners and useful in building essential skills. We decided to work with skills regularly every week in a special time – each class teacher with their class prior to the main lessons. As we focused on the methodology for the year, pupils are much more aware of what the skills are and how they use them day to day. Our teachers also feel much more confident teaching the skills.
We would like to continue developing the skills, as they are very important for our pupils´ future. We would like to focus on taking the records of pupils´ skills development and make the essential skills a natural part of their learning and our teaching.