Our school is located in the town of Malšice in South Bohemia, not far from the district town of Tábor. We are a state school with approximately 260 pupils and 25 teachers. From this school year, we have introduced criterion-based assessment for our first-year pupils, and across the whole school, we are striving to implement formative assessment in lessons. We guide our pupils to be independent, collaborative, and to have mutual respect and responsibility. We often run projects that connect different classes, promote creativity, and help pupils develop practical skills.
That's why we were interested in the Skills Builder programme, which we actively joined for the 2024/2025 school year. Teachers, teaching assistants, and non-teaching staff from the school all voluntarily signed up.
We are only just starting with the programme, so throughout the school year, we've been holding regular monthly meetings for teachers involved in Skills Builder. Each month, we've been getting to know a new skill, which we then pass on to our pupils. During these meetings, we also get hands-on experience with various lessons and principles from the programme. This has enriched our teaching with new activities while also helping us to develop further. We use this approach when interacting with pupils and their parents, and also when dealing with daily situations at school.
Together with teachers and pupils, we've been regularly practising the individual skills and making sure we all use the same terminology. In classrooms, as well as in the school's shared spaces such as corridors, pupils always have posters with an overview of the skills in plain sight. Each month, we've focused on one specific skill; we started with listening. In May and June, it was time to revise and practise all the skills we had covered so far. Teachers integrated the individual skills into their lessons based on the current needs of their classes.
At the start, we were a little unsure about tracking progress, and it took us a while to find a consistent method. We couldn't agree on using notebooks, so we decided to treat our first year with Skills Builder as an introductory one, focused on reflection and finding a suitable approach. Our assigned mentor helped us with a solution, suggesting we track progress through ongoing criterion-based assessment based on the individual skill steps (for years 1 and 2). In other years, we're trying out a single class record sheet. In primary school, we talked about the skills together in a circle during form time. In secondary school, reflection always took place after a skill had been included in a specific lesson.
Given the ongoing revision of the Czech National Curriculum Framework, we plan to incorporate the principles of soft skill development into our new School Educational Programme. We would like to continue our teacher meetings, sharing experiences with each other, and regular reflection. Skills Builder encourages children to recognise their strengths, work on their own development, and not be afraid of challenges. Thanks to this approach, pupils gain not only important school habits but also skills they will use in their daily lives and future careers. At ZŠ a MŠ Malšice, we believe that education isn't just about knowledge, it's primarily about the ability to act, collaborate, and think. Skills Builder is an excellent tool for this.
