School philosophy

At Magic Hill we prepare students for their future. Our teaching focuses on a comprehensive development of each individual student in our school. The principal aim of our philosophy is the student’s development of skills, acquisition of knowledge and mature opinion formation.

By using 21st Century Learning skills, we view education as a baseline for future development and continuous learning of an individual as well as a requirement for success in the modern fast-paced world. Students should not simply obtain knowledge coming from past experiences; they should also learn to react and adapt to new situations, apply their knowledge to these situations and develop their personal skills.

In our school we focus on the 4C Soft Skills principle: Communication, Cooperation, Critical Thinking, and Creativity. Furthermore, we have extended this principal with two more C’s – Citizenship and Character.

Using these skills, we have developed our own system in regards our student-teacher relationships. We strive to alter the perception of the teacher and education as a whole by putting an emphasis on various forms of work and projects as we aim to connect the class with the real world by discussing current topics and modern issues including sustainability and one´s responsibility for the future.

We apply modern educational techniques such as the application of critical thinking via Projec Based Learning (PBL). We also teach maths using the method of professor Hejný, writing using the Comenia Script method and reading using the genetical methods.

Generally, classes during the Czech primary level of elementary school have a maximum of 15 students, whereas the classes in the higher level have a maximum of 24 students.

We primarily give our students formative reports, as we believe that the most important method of constructive feedback is by discourse. Moreover, we wish to lead our students to self-evaluate and set their own goals. We have our own system for providing feedback to the students which focuses on the individual goals set out by the student while tracing their progress.

At Magic Hill, we believe that the acquisition of knowledge should not be based on memorizing information. Instead, we cover various topics under one general theme per month that should be attractive to the students’ real life. During the month, projects specific to the theme will be taught and these in turn should enable the student to understand more complex issues through association and critical thinking skills.

Another important aspect of our school philosophy are school-wide projects which support cooperation among different grades while accomplishing common goals. We lead our students towards claiming responsibility for their school life: we have a school parliament, ECO team, and we cooperate with several different charities. We are also partners with the organization of patients with cystic fibrosis (Klub nemocných cystickou fibrózou) and members of the healthier school food project (Skutečně zdravá škola). At Magic Hill we believe that the students should be motivated and inspired in life. This is why we have discussions about current issues and invite experts and special guests to come and give lectures at our school.