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Teaching takes place across 29 classes with a total number of 678 pupils. The school curriculum requires pupils to take responsibility for their education. The main aim of our curriculum is the development of pupils’ skills in learning, problem solving, communication and presentation, civic and work-related competences. The curriculum also incorporates current topics of personal and social education, environmental education, media education and financial literacy. We teach Instrumental Enrichment from Year 4 to Year 9 with the aim to develop every child’s learning potential. This school year, we have focused even more on the development of key competencies. The Skills Builder methodology helped us to focus more on individual skills and their development. Thus, the development of listening and speaking skills were essential topics this school year.
Overall impact
Skills Builder methodology has brought a unified language to the team of teaching staff. It also helps to overcome the concept of learning as a mere acquisition of knowledge. Thanks to Skils Builder, it is now common in the school to think and plan in terms of training and development of individual skills.
Keep it simple
The main purpose of the teacher training sessions was to build on the different methods that teachers use in their teaching. We did not want “learning skills” to be seen as something extra, but rather we want to learn to see, reflect on and plan for the development of skills in the context of normal school activities.
Start early, keep going
Skills Builder methodology is used across all years. Regularly (4-5 times per year), teachers meet to get further inspiration on how to work with Skills Builder methodology. In these meetings, teachers practice skills and share effective implementation practices.
Measure it
Progress monitoring is not unified across the school. Teachers use a variety of methods e.g. recording in a spreadsheet, their own material where pupils write the individual steps of the skill they are focusing on. Reflection is often oral, based on the evaluation of the steps in specific activities.
Focus tightly
In regular teacher meetings, we focus on practicing one skill, which teachers then follow up in their subjects and reflect on progress with students.
Keep practising
There is an expectation that teachers use the Skills Builder Universal Framework in planning and teaching their lessons. Just over a third of teachers do this occasionally and the majority of other teachers do this either once a day or once a week.
Bring it to life
The school has a volunteer-based School Parliament, which trains skills in real-life conditions by organising events for other pupils. Skills training also takes place at Open Days and other school events for the public, where pupils act as public guides, guides in workshops for the public and moderators.
What's next
We plan to continue to meet up for professional development sessions - 6 meetings per year, each teacher choosing 4 of them according to their educational needs. The topics will be based on the needs of teachers and will include a wider range of methods. So it will not only be specific skill training and sharing of practice, but also observation training, reflection on individual open classes, mentoring conversations, etc. Another plan is to link the methodology with KiVa methodology.
