Finnish team Anu Kahri and Kati Sormunen told about projects made in Finland. Teachers from China were very interested in projects and they asked many questions about them. Questions concerned planning, evaluation, content, skills needed and Finnish educational context. Chinese teachers are very willing to change their teaching style but they also seemed to be a little bit afraid of new roles of teacher as learners’ guide. The key message from Finnish teachers’ is: there is no progress without mistakes!
On this year’s conference participating teachers were supposed to give demos of their project based learning units. Every group worked with pupils in their unique way. Finnish team began with drama exercises to “break ice” and getting to know pupils. First pupils were quite shy but later on they began to work eagerly in Finnish way. Everyone enjoyed! Pupils from the fifth grade (11 years) were from Beijing Cuiwei Primary School.
Pupils and teachers are the same everywhere! We have the same goal: understanding between cultures and learning 21st Century skills.
The theme bridge was learned in many ways. Building different types of shapes and constructions with peas and sticks was an enthusiastic experience to both pupils and teachers.
The third international GEC Conference was held in Beijing, China from the 6th July to 10th of July 2015. GEC members from all over the world came to feel the atmosphere of global educational community.
The second from the right Head of Innokas Network Tiina Korhonen from University of Helsinki and her team: Innokas Coordinators Minna Kukkonen from City of Espoo and Kati Sormunen from University of Helsinki, teachers Anu Kahri from Jalavapuisto School (Espoo), Paavo Oksanen, Koulumestari School (Espoo) and Raini Sipilä, SYK (Helsinki).
Educators from Australia, Canada, China, Finland and the United States.
I’m an American teacher who spent four months in Finland visiting schools, including many in the Innokas Network. The Metsokangas School in Oulu, which educates 800 students in grades 1 through 9, is similar to my own school in that it is facing an increase in enrollment. Metosokangas started with one building, expanded to two, and is now building a third. I spent two days touring the facilities, observing classes, and talking with the vice headmaster about the creative expansion plans.
I spoke to a few classes about school and life in the US, and then the students practiced their English by asking me questions they had prepared in advance. My favorite was whether I had visited Springfield, home of the Simpsons. Students start studying English in 3rd grade, and I was impressed by how well the 4th graders could speak. They put me to shame when comparing my Finnish to their English!
The photos above show two classes that share one large room, something that is done by quite a number of classes in the school. Teachers are given the freedom to choose how to organize their classes, and some choose to combine groups from the same grade level, while others have separate classes. Partly this choice is decided by logistics; not all rooms can be combined into a larger space. And some teachers prefer to work alone with a smaller group. The fact that teachers are given the freedom to teach the way that works for them and their students is evidence of the trust given to Finnish teachers.
Students in the combined groups sometimes have lessons as one large class with two teachers (and possibly also an assistant), and at other times the classes split into two. This is an efficient way of working, especially when students are being given direct instruction or a project is being explained. Students can then do individual or group work while both teachers circulate. I suppose it wouldn’t work so well in a lesson that required students to be answering questions, as each student would have fewer chances to participate.
I also saw a combined group of second graders that included a mainstream class and a special education class of students with significant needs. This is the second year that the same students and teachers are together. While I visited, students were studying money and the class was divided into two groups. On one side of the room, the large group was working with decimals. On the other side, a small group was taught by a special education teacher and an assistant; they were learning about different coins, and students were practicing going up the the cash register and buying stuffed animals in a store. Some of the special education students have math lessons with the larger group, while others are always in the small group.
Practicing identifying and counting coins
Independent work with decimals in the context of prices
Using the answer key to check completed work
I love how the teachers were able to find ways to have students work on learning similar material but in differentiated ways. Early in the year, students cut out their profiles and decorated them with descriptors of their personalities and hobbies (see below). For most of the students, the goal was to practice using English words. But the assignment was different for the student in the top row, second from the right. He is still working on learning vocabulary in Finnish, so his profile was decorated with Finnish words and accompanying pictures.
When I asked how the arrangement of joining classes came about, the teachers said they though it would be a good idea that would benefit all of the students, so they decided to try it. I love how teachers here are given so much freedom to implement new methods.
The combined-class model is being incorporated into the design of a new building that is being constructed adjacent to the two buildings on the campus. The building will house 400 third and fourth grade students. Rather than constructing smaller individual classrooms, the school will contain very large rooms that accommodate 70-80 students and four teachers. The space will contain one quadrant with a hard floor, useful for art class and science experiments that may be messy. The rest will have sound-absorbing carpet and will have an area for gathering all of the students on soft furniture and collapsible stadium-type seating. The center will have a reading area with privacy provided by movable half-height walls.
I’ve noticed many creative uses of space in Finnish schools. The hallways are not simply spaces through which students move from class to class that sit vacant when classes are in session. They are usually filled with tables and chairs, beanbag chairs, and computer workstations. This makes it easy for students working together on a group project to find a space of their own or for a student to read or work independently without distractions.
You can see more of the Metsokangas school and a product of the students’ hard work in this music video they created. The tune is catchy and will stick in your head for ages!
The students from Oulu, Finland, and the students from Janesville, US, have written letters to each other during this Spring. Because of the long distance and delivery time, students signed into Edmodo and continued chatting there.
For Finnish students being penpals with students from US it have been very exciting experience. They think that they will learn a lot of about America, different culture and people while chatting with their penpals on Edmodo and by using other Social Media Apps. Also Finnish students will learn English skills and they will understand why they study English – not only for school, but also for communicating. For us as teachers, it was nice to hear one student saying that maybe when she is old enough, she will fly to Janesville to meet her penpal. We teachers hope that she will make her dreams come true someday.
As a communicating tool Edmodo has been a great choice. It’s easy to use for students and also we teachers see all what students are writing to each other. After summer holiday students will continue collaborating with their penpals on Edmodo and also they will send each other paper letters and some small gifts. A few of them decided to send to their penpals euro coins, because they got dollars from them this Spring.
One of the best products of my trip to Helsinki, Finland, for a meeting with Innokas and the Global Education Foundations, was meeting and collaborating with two educators from a Finnish school north of Helsinki. We planned and put a plan in place to set up penpals between our classrooms and use a. We wanted our initial letters to be handwritten so that the students felt they were more personal and got the feeling of receiving something in the mail from another country. From there, they could then continue corresponding via email or post (whichever they preferred). We also planned to share projects that we were doing in class to help give our students a real global audience to which they could share their learning. To do this, we set up a blog called Bridging Communities (this ties in with the Building Bridges theme from the Global Education Foundation). There was such a benefit to meeting and working with these two in person. A bond was created that made it feel more comfortable when we communicated by email afterwards.
Last week our first letters arrived and the students were ecstatic to receive them. For the most part we were able to pair them one to one, boy to boy and girl to girl, with a couple sharing a pen pal or receiving two. The students read their letters and immediately were sharing with each other and asking some questions of me, such as what team is Oulun Kärpät (a Finnish ice hockey team), what is floorball, and what is a pedal car. The letters lead to lots of discussions about similarities and differences from Finland to the USA.
When most of the discussion had died down, the kids asked if they could begin writing their penpals back. My response was of course. They began writing and you could have heard a pin drop until they began sharing what they had written, asking for ideas of what to share with their penpal, and wondering if it was okay to say Americanized things in the letters like football or tv show names.
I’m so excited to continue this collaboration into future school years and grow by connecting with more schools in other countries. The engagement level for our students has increased for wanting to create projects to share, have time for writing, and we are building relationships that could span a lifetime.
Nicole, Jefferson & Roosevelt Elementary schools, Janesville, USA
I am an American science teacher spending four months in Finland on a Fulbright grant. I’ve been visiting many Innokas schools and was asked to share some posts from my own blog.
This winter I ventured north from Helsinki to visit Innokas schools in Rovaniemi and Oulu. Upon arriving at the Metsokangas School in Oulu, the first thing I noticed were the skis. It looked like I might be at a cross country ski center in Vermont. But then I saw the bikes. I’m 100 miles (160 km) south of the Arctic Circle, and kids are biking to school in February. Wow. It was quite a warm day, hovering right around freezing, but most bikes in the US at this time of year are stored in garages or basements, covered with a layer of dust, and in need of a tire pump. Most American elementary school students don’t even bike to school when it’s warm out. And the streets and sidewalks in Oulu were were sheets of ice flanked by huge snow piles.
I am an American science teacher spending four months in Finland on a Fulbright grant. I’ve been visiting many Innokas schools and was asked to share some posts from my own blog.
Despite studying Finnish for over a year, I had never learned the word piiri, which translates to “circuit” or “circle.” During my trip to Lapland to visit the Ylikylä School in Rovaniemi, I became familiar with both translations.
Arriving during the weekend, and armed with a rental car wearing studded tires, I had the opportunity to be a tourist. On my way from the airport to town, I made the mandatory stop at Santa’s Village. I finally figured out that all the signs for napapiiri were not directing me to a town of that name, but rather to the Arctic Circle.
My original plans didn’t include dogsledding, thinking it to be the touristy Lapland equivalent of a Central Park carriage ride. But another Fulbrighter highly recommended it, so I decided to give it a try. I’m mighty glad that I went, especially as I had the sled to myself and got to drive for the whole 2 hours through snowy forest.
Arriving during the weekend, and armed with a rental car wearing studded tires, I had the opportunity to be a tourist. On my way from the airport to town, I made the mandatory stop at Santa’s Village. I finally figured out that all the signs for napapiiri were not directing me to a town of that name, but rather to the Arctic Circle.
Global Innokas Blog 