ZŠ Poznávání, s. r. o. is a private elementary school established in 2019. It will have its first graduates who will go on to study in high school in 2025-2026. The school belongs to the concept of so-called laboratory schools. These schools began to emerge in Europe in the second half of the 20th century and are in close contact (we cooperate with other laboratory schools across Europe). The main idea of laboratory schools is to link research and scientific activities with the school curriculum. We characterise ourselves as an innovative school, open to investigating and piloting evidence-based approaches. We work closely with experts from universities, industry, arts, science and non-profit organisations that focus on developing and/or localising modern educational approaches.
Cognitive approach to education, inquiry-based learning, and locally based learning belong among our important theoretical approaches that underpin our curriculum. We view education holistically, with the accent on students’ and teachers’ wellbeing as an integral part of the whole process.
Lifelong learning of both – students and teachers, which occurs not only in the school environment, but especially outside the school, is an important value for us. Therefore, we do not only emphasize the cooperation with experts, but also intensive contacts with partner schools abroad.
Skills Builder has become an integral part of our curriculum. We regularly integrate activities focused on essential skills development. Furthermore, we emphasize a particular essential skill every month and link it with a range of educational activities. Teachers choose a variety of learning activities or project topics that allow students to develop the skill naturally. Skills Builder is implemented in all classrooms in the school and in the after-school program.
Given the fact that we have been using Skills Builder systematically for the second year, it is easy to compare the level of students last year and this year. Whenever we focus on a new skill, classroom teachers use the Skills Builder methodology to conduct educational assessment and determine what step the majority of students in the class are at. The skills developed in Skills Builder also form the basis for providing regular monthly, quarterly and mid-term feedback (comprehensive formal assessment and school reports), which we use at school. This naturally leads to monitoring progress on an ongoing basis and to describing it concisely when communicating with students and their parents. Older students, in particular, also monitor their progress independently through reflection on the results of activities they regularly conduct. Children learn to give feedback to each other - progress in a range of essential skills is embedded in this feedback too.
Elementary school pupils of our school learn outside the school building, in the form of so-called expeditions several times per each month. These are organized in the form of workshops, field work, lectures, excursions, visits to cultural institutions, etc. On these occasions, pupils need to actively engage in interactions with instructors and lecturers, testing their knowledge and skills outside the usual school premises. On such occasions the students are regularly reminded how desirable it is to use the essential skills, and they practice them in this way.
At junior high school level, students have ninety-minute career guidance lessons once per month. It includes activities that highlight the importance of essential skills in various professions, in the labour market in general, and in building an individual career. We also use materials from the Skills Builder Hub for this purpose in our career guidance sessions.
We aim to keep developing a modern and innovative school appropriate for educating students in the 21st century. The development of essential skills is directly linked to such ambitions. We naturally build our curriculum on the principles of complex children development. We are aware that essential skills will become more important to our pupils' future employment than the various factual knowledge they acquire.
