The 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 school years were marked by the COVID-19 epidemic. As a result of the epidemic, lessons in the school year 2019/2020 from March to May and in the school year 2020/21 from October to the end of January were transferred online. Thus, teachers were forced to take a completely different approach than they were used to. Teaching moved from classrooms to the web and desks were replaced by computers.
In this master’s thesis we focused on the motivation of talented pupils while teaching remotely. The theoretical part of the master's work consists of three sets. In the first set we presented the characteristics of mathematics lessons. In the second part we introduced talented students in maths class. Just as students with deficits in specific areas need special attention from the teacher, complementary instruction and tailored tasks to progress in substance, talented students need additional incentives, problem tasks, and additional instruction to fully develop their potential. In the last, third part, we focused on distance teaching. We touched on the use of ICT in education, briefly described the history of distance education, and we paid special attention to distance mathematics teaching.
In the empirical work we explored how the math lessons took place in the 4th and 5th classes during distance teaching and how teachers adapted math lessons for gifted pupils. The study consisted of two parts. In the first part we used a quantitative approach. The surveys examined the opinion of teachers and teachers on the effectiveness of distance teaching. We wanted to know whether remote lessons influenced the way teachers work with talented students in maths lessons. However, we wanted to check whether there are differences in teachers in grade 4 and 5 in terms of their competence to adapt to remote training for talented pupils in March 2020 and today, and whether there are differences in teachers in grade 4 and 5 in terms of their ability to adapt distance lessons for talented pupils in classrooms and at a distance. In the second part, we tried to obtain examples of good practice for teaching talented pupils at a distance through interviews.
The results showed that distance learning had an impact on the work of teachers with gifted pupils in maths lessons. The proportion of teachers adapting maths lessons for gifted pupils at a distance was lower than the proportion of teachers adapting to maths classes for gifted pupils in the classroom. In addition, there were differences between the ways of adaptation itself. Teachers mainly use supplementary lessons and peer support when adapting maths lessons in the classroom, but mostly they did not use these two methods of adaptation during distance learning. In analysing the questions from the interview, we received examples of good practice in how to adapt math lessons for gifted pupils at a distance. We have presented some of these.
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