Osnovna škola "Đuro Ester" Koprivnica

The mission of Primary School „Đuro Ester“ is to encourage the development of pupils’ potential, taking care of their individual competences. Our school’s activities are aimed at developing competences of our teachers and counsellors for working with gifted children. We are working on making and implementing individual programmes and implementing new methods and ways of working, monitoring and encouraging gifted pupils.   [Sidro]

In order to determine a pupil’s capabilities, we start the process of identifying gifted pupils in the third grade. Once they are identified, the pupils have the opportunity to participate in additional classes, groups for the gifted as extracurricular activities and various competitions in knowledge and skills. The strategy of working with gifted pupils is based on support in a specific area of giftedness, i.e. subjects, but also on the plan of personal growth and development through the improvement of communication and social skills and learning strategies. Pupils develop cognitive abilities and creativity, rich vocabulary, acquire a range of competencies through research, develop an analytical approach to problem solving, work on their focus and concentration, and generally develop positive personality attributes in their personal development.

The team for gifted pupils

The team for gifted pupils was formed in 2016 and consists of 15 members: early education teacher, teachers of Croatian, history, geography, mathematics, science, computer science and robotics as well as school counsellors, namely the school’s pedagogist, librarian and psychologist, who is also the team leader. The teachers have participated in various educations which were aimed at identifying gifted pupils, approaches, specific methods, and ways of working with the gifted, the making of a curriculum and examples of good practice. The team has visited the school for gifted pupils in Bratislava called „Škola pre Mimoriadne nadane deti a Gymnazium“ which specializes in education of gifted children.

The project-oriented classes are based on workshops and have been proven as the most optimal method of working with gifted pupils. By working on projects, the pupils were encouraged to observe, ask questions, research and implement activities related to the topic of the project, and thus expanded their knowledge beyond the boundaries set in the regular school system.

Groups of gifted children

After the identification procedure in the third grade, gifted pupils are put into a group of gifted children in the fourth grade. During the fourth grade, through extracurricular activities, students deepen and expand their knowledge related to the curricula of mathematics, Croatian language and nature and society. From fifth to eighth grade, they are divided into two groups. Their activities are planned to expand knowledge and connect with current and existentially important topics. Each school year, pupils choose one topic that is covered from different aspects and scientific fields. Topics previously covered were: poverty, diversity, research, the power of music. During the special conditions related to the Covid 19 pandemic from March 2020 to June 2021, the work with gifted pupils took place regularly online. In the school year 2021/2022 two groups were formed: SOCIAL AND STEM. According to specific abilities and areas of interest, students have chosen the group in which they want to participate, and the annual topic is focused on climate change.

Projects

Except the mentioned methods and types of activities with gifted pupils, our school, along with other two primary schools in the city of Koprivnica, participated in three projects for gifted pupils:

Project Knowledge as a gift was implemented from 01 July 2017 until 30 December 2018, and its goals were to develop competences of teachers and counsellors regarding working with gifted pupils, identifying the gifted pupils and the implementation of distinctive curricula in regular lessons.

RoboTech was a EU project „Cross border development of robotics in primary schools“ within the Interreg V-A Hungary-Croatia Co-operation Programme 2014-2020. The implementation period was from 01 June 2017 until 31 October 2018. The aim of the project was to increase the knowledge of robotics in schools through learning about new technologies and introducing robotics as an extra-curricular activity.

Project Knowledge Well, was implemented from 01 June 2020 until 31 January 2022, and was also a part of cross-border cooperation. The main goal was to establish five equipped and competent excellence centres in the partner cross-border area Hungary-Croatia. Our school is becoming an excellence centre for technical science, that is, mathematics and computer science.

Pupils involved in the mentioned activities participated in numerous competitions and have achieved great results.