Mensa Czech Republic: Activities for gifted children
Mensa is a non-profit organization open to people who score at the 98th percentile or higher on a standardized and supervised IQ test. It has over 130.000 members in a hundred countries worldwide. Mensa CR, the Czech national organization, provides intellectual stimulation through hobby groups, local and nationwide meetings, lectures, excursions, and particularly through a friendly environment to its more than 4000 members, as well as to the public. Mensa CR supports the development of gifted children throughout the entire Czech Republic, runs the Mensa NTC for kindergartens project, co-operates with schools, organizes Gifted Children’s Clubs, and even a Logical Olympiad contest. Mensa CR also runs the Mensa Grammar School in Prague. The entire range of Mensa CR activities aimed at gifted children can be found on the website http://deti.mensa.cz (the website has been only partially translated to English).
What is Mensa?
Mensa is an international society that was founded in 1946 in Oxford. It is a non-profit apolitical association of people with above average intelligence, irrespective of their race or religion. Its aims are the use of intelligence for the benefit of mankind, as well as creating a stimulating environment for its members. Membership is open to anyone who has reached the age of 14, and whose score in the intelligence test approved by the international Mensa supervisory psychologist ranks among the top 2% (meaning an IQ of 130 on the scale used in the Czech Republic). No other conditions for becoming a member apply (apart from the obligation to pay annual membership fees).
URL: http://www.mensa.cz (the website is currently only available in the Czech language)
Children’s Mensa
Children’s Mensa is a platform for children of the age of 5–14 years, allowing them access to Mensa events, intranet, magazine, and generally sharing the benefits available to adult members. Children’s Mensa supports the identification and development of gifted children, helps schools oriented in such a way, and in general, directs Mensa’s activities for children and youths.
URL: http://deti.mensa.cz/index-en.php?pg=home--childrens-mensa
Mensa for kindergartens – NTC Learning System
Since 2009, Mensa has been implementing a project called Mensa NTC Learning System in the Czech Republic, a project of development of intellectual abilities of pre-school children, which was developed by a team of specialists, predominantly members of Mensa Serbia, headed by Dr. Ranko Rajović.
This system supports the development of a child’s brain by using exercises which have been scientifically proven to increase the effectiveness of using the brain in childhood. The research and studies denoted, among other things, the fact that a child’s brain establishes 75% of all neuron synapses by the age of 7, and as much as 50% by the age of 5 years. This reason seems to be significant enough to increase our focus on the pre-school age, the effectiveness of learning, and the use of children’s memory. If our formal primary and secondary education can only influence the utilization of the remaining 25% of brain capacity potential, the development of children under 6 years of age is certainly of the utmost importance.
URL: http://deti.mensa.cz/index-en.php?pg=ntc-learning
Schools co-operating with Mensa
Mensa helps in linking schools systematically supporting the identification and development of talent and giftedness. These schools work actively with gifted children (no matter if it is within the framework of official tuition, or of extra-curricular activities) and focus on the development of children’s logical thinking, while at the same time aiming on improving the staff’s expertise.
These schools also participate in Mensa activities (Games days, Logical Olympiad, etc.) and disseminate the knowledge of Mensa CR activities among students, their parents, and teachers.
Mensa CR provides methodical and informational support, mediates experience exchange, and organizes the regular annual Mensa for Schools conference.
URL: http://deti.mensa.cz/index-en.php?pg=cooperating-schools
Gifted Children’s Clubs
Mensa CR is building a nationwide network of Gifted Children’s Clubs, aiming predominantly at children attending primary and early secondary education. The objective of this is to identify very talented children at an early age, and to provide them with the means for improved development and broadening their horizons. The clubs co-operate with cities and primary schools providing suitable premises. Co-operation with parents is an important part of the clubs’ operation, as the parents’ participation can significantly increase the scope of the particular club’s activities, which typically include field trips, lectures, intellect developing activities, specialized projects, and logical/board games. The frequency of the meetings is usually fortnightly.
At present, there are 23 Gifted Children’s Clubs throughout the Czech Republic, although the distribution is somewhat uneven (the greatest concentration of these clubs is in Moravia, particularly in the Moravian-Silesian Region). Should an active interest arise from teachers or parents, Mensa is keen to support the establishment of more clubs.
URL: http://deti.mensa.cz/index-en.php?pg=gifted-children-clubs
Mensa Grammar School
The Mensa Grammar School (MGS) was founded in 1993 by Katerina Havlickova, and up until 2010, its name was Eight-Year Grammar School Buďánka. It is the only institution of secondary education in the Czech Republic solely devoted to educating gifted students. At the same time, it is the only Mensa-established grammar school worldwide.
The school offers optimal conditions for the development of gifted students: a family environment at school, friendly teachers devoted to their specializations, classes of similarly gifted peers, room for creativity, and also for meeting specific individual needs. The school aims at the development of student’s knowledge, as well as the complex personality of the student.
The school offers its students above-standard care, with an individual pedagogical and psychological approach. Students are supported in finding pleasure in knowledge acquisition, creativity, improving their social skills, teamwork skills, and self-knowledge. Students are allowed to pursue their particular interests through elective subjects and critical essays from as early as the first year. Some subjects (maths, foreign languages) are taught in mixed groups, created in view of individual students’ levels of advancement, to ensure that every student works in a group whose pace in the particular subject suits his abilities the best. Some subjects are being lectured directly at the departments of universities by university lecturers (e.g. physics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University in Prague). Students can (either directly, or through their representatives in the Students’ Committee) influence the school’s decisions. Mensa Grammar School keeps succeeding in developing its students into educated, creative, and individually thinking personalities.
The principal condition of acceptance to the MGS is succeeding in the Mensa entry test (IQ above 130); Mensa membership is not compulsory.
MGS provides a general secondary education to intellectually outstanding children. The teaching methods are tailor-suited to the students’ peculiarities and handicaps, one of the key principles of the school is respecting the individual needs and requirements of every student. During the entire period of study, students are encouraged in profiling and in influencing the pace of tuition in individual subjects.
URL: http://www.mensagymnazium.cz (the website is currently only available in the Czech language)
Summer camps
Every summer, Mensa organizes summer camps for gifted children and youths, both overnight summer camps for one to two weeks, and suburban camps. The programme and topics are usually diverse: meetings of gifted children, fun tests, ciphers, quizzes, puzzles, cryptography, functional literacy, analysis of authors’ works, creative writing and improvement of written style, authors’ competitions, rhetoric, activities focused on the development of debating skills, lectures, discussions, theatrical performances, role-playing, IT (programming and playing games), comic book painting, ANIME and thematic films projection, Dungeons & Dragons and other role-playing games developing strategic thinking, tactics and rhetoric abilities, board games (scrabble, chess, abalone, and other well-known or lesser known logical games for the development of various types of intelligence), outdoor games, and continuous team and individual competitions for attractive prizes.
URL: http://deti.mensa.cz/index-en.php?pg=home--summer-camps
Logical Olympiad
The Logical Olympiad is a competition in solving logical tasks, aimed at children and youths from all over the Czech Republic. It complements the range of activities for youths and children by organizing a competition where school-acquired knowledge (unlike the independent logical thinking) plays no role, with the aim to spark interest in this area for children. The tasks are founded on general principles, and no acquired knowledge is needed for their solution – just common sense, logical thinking, and quick and correct judgement are enough. Thanks to this approach, even pupils who are not successful in traditional schools, or originate from unfavourable social or cultural environments, can rank very high. Success in this competition can then positively influence their motivation and integration. One of the greatest benefits of this competition is the possibility of revealing hidden talents.
The principal intent of this competition lies in focusing the attention of children and expert public on specific talents, such as the ability of logical and independent thinking. It fittingly complements the spectrum of activities for children of school age with an activity targeting an area which is still in search of its niche in our current educational system. Many schools are nowadays working towards an active approach to education, and to the development of independent thinking in children. Our goal is to help them recognize these individual talents, and to promote their development.
In 2015, a total of 58,000 students from 2909 schools from the entire Czech Republic took part in the competition.
All participants have to register on the official website of the Logical Olympiad, as they need their unique username and password to fill in the online test of the preliminary round. Registration can also be arranged by the school, and the school’s profile then allows the school to see an overview of the registered students, their results, and also serve for communication with the competition organizers.
There are three rounds of the contest. As we strive to make the contest accessible to as many participants as possible, the first preliminary round can be completed on-line. The competitors can take the test wherever it suits them – at school, at home, in a library, etc. Regional rounds are then organized in all 14 regions of the Czech Republic, and participants must attend in person. The top 200 contestants from all over the Czech Republic advance to the national finals, which is an all-day, festive event.
URL: http://www.logickaolympiada.cz (the website is currently only available in the Czech language)
Website deti.mensa.cz
In November 2012, Mensa CZ launched a new website, focused on its activities for gifted children. The website http://deti.mensa.cz contains the following sections: Gifted Children’s Clubs, NTC Learning for kindergartens, Games Clubs, and Schools co-operating with Mensa, as well as topical articles, an Event calendar, photo gallery, and discussion. Any Mensa co-operating subject can acquire editorial access, publish information on itself, as well as expert articles about gifted children, create photo galleries, and even publish notices on events. The website is preferentially intended for parents of (not only) gifted children, nationwide facilitating their search for activities suitable for their children. Parents can register on the website, and subscribe to receive topical newsletters, as well as browse through photographs and documents accessible to a limited user group (e.g., parents of children from one Children’s Club or school). Last, but not least, the website can serve as inspiration for newly founded Gifted Children’s Clubs; some long-standing clubs have a kind of on-line chronicle showing a history of events organized by the club, meetings, etc., often including the minutes of the individual meetings, and even photographs.
URL: http://deti.mensa.cz
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1.12.2015