I am an American teacher spending four months in Finland on a Fulbright grant, and I recently had the opportunity to spend a week at the Koulumestari School. I observed several different classes, but I spent the most time with one sixth grade class. I have my own blog to keep track of my observations as I visit schools throughout Finland, and I was asked to write a guest post for the Innokas blog.

My first impression of the school was that the atmosphere was less stressful and more relaxed than a typical American school. This was evident when seeing students remove their shoes upon entering the building. Not only are the floors clean enough for sitting, but wearing socks or slippers while learning must make students feel more comfortable and as if they are at home.

A typical day for the 6th graders at Koulumestari starts at 8:15 with some greetings said by the class in unison, both in Finnish and English, followed by a run-down of the day’s schedule. Then they have two 45-minute classes, followed by a 30-minute break during which they go outside to run around and expend extra energy. Students then return for two more 45-minute lessons. Next is a 20-minute lunch and another 30-minute recess outside. The afternoon schedule varies, with classes usually ending at 2:00 (3:00 on Tuesday).

Continue reading →

We are a primary school in Espoo city in Finland in Europe. Our students are in the sixth grade. So they are about 12 -13 years old this year. We have 24 kids in our class. Some of them have learning difficulties. That’s why we have two teachers working all the time with them. One class teacher and one teacher of special education. The teachers are planning and evaluating together. We have also a part-time school assistant working in our class. Sometimes our students are studying all together and sometimes they are studying in smaller groups. We have started a China-project in our school with our sixth grade students. We are studying Asia’s geography and religions and the history of China in February (before our one weeks winter holiday starts:). We are doing a big poster of China all together. In arts the kids are painting dragons and fireworks and they are also drawing Chinese letters http://kiinanluokka.net/kirjoitusmerkit/ We have a very special animal – called the Saimaa ringed seal – in Finland. There are only 310 ones in the world. And they are living in the lake called Saimaa in the eastern part of Finland. http://www.sll.fi/mita-me-teemme/lajit/saimaannorppa/ringed-seal

They have also a very rare animal – called the Giant Panda – in China.

Both of these animals are endangered. We are going to study protection on these two different kind of animals. Our big big plan is to organize a charity Event to save the Saimaa ringed seal during this spring season. We are also starting the cooperation with our partner school in USA. Our target is to encourage our students to use English language. We encourage them to talk and write with a foreign language with American kids. Our students have been studying English at school three and a half years. Follow our blog https://kmsaimaannorppa.wordpress.com/

Greetings from Koulumestari school class 6NK

We are going to make animations about the panda. First we used the ipads to see what a panda looks like. Then we made small pandas from silk clay. They came out very nicely! The animation will tell different facts about the pandas. We looked for these facts from the internet. Our teacher had searched for links and put them on qr-codes which we opened with the qr-code reader. Then we wrote about the pandas to our new panda notebooks. We got to decorate them ourselves.

3K, Jalavapuisto school, Espoo, Finland

Global Educational Community (GEC) teachers from Finland met in January 2015. The goal of the meeting was to get to know each other, plan becoming projects with schools around the world and get familiar with revised Finnish curriculum and especially international and global aims in it.To be active in GEC really fulfills many aims of Finnish new curriculum- in both the home internationality and the global internationality. It is really a pleasure to network with other people and countries around the world to share and take responsibility for the common world together.

Finnish teachers started to plan becoming projects about either Pandas or Flying objects during this meeting.Finnish teachers were also given partnership schools and teachers from USA, Australia and moreover, we are waiting for ones in China. Getting familiar with partner schools and their culture at schools and in countries will begin in contacting each other by emails and Skype-meetings. Some teachers might meet each other in GEC conference in Finland in March. The second possibility to meet face to face and present some best practices in co-projects is in the conference held in Beijing in July this year.

I wish you positive experiences in global networking by a photo of smiling Finnish teachers making a statue by drama about GEC, how many pandas you can find there?

Minna Kukkonen, Innokas-coordinator from Finland

I got an opportunity to participate in the summit organized by the Sutton Trust and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in November 2014. The goal of the summit was to learn from one another how to create and sustain high quality teaching feedback and professional learning systems. The event was interesting and I learned a lot even though most of the examples are hard to implement into Finnish education system. Many educators were interested in our team-teaching model. We discussed what kinds of structures and resources are needed. Hopefully we were able to convince as many as possible.

The best part of the summit was meeting the educators from all over the world. The most memorable discussion I had with Australian principal Ray Trotter. His Wooranna Parks Primary School resembled a lot our Koulumestari School from Finland. They teach in teams, some pupils tutor others and they use a lot of ICT and robotics in their lessons. Mr Trotter introduced me Dr. David Thornburg’s ‘holodeck’ classroom, an environment that supports project-based learning. At Wooranna Parks Primary School they use videos like Enigma Portal in their projects. I have used similar kinds of videos in my lessons and with teacher-training courses as motivators. I think that this method develops problem-solving skills in many ways.

Innokas-coordinator Kati

In 2014 we started the research collaboration with the FabLab@School. The research’s focus is to identify students’ skills to cope in everyday situations that require technology. FabLab@schools have started the research in the United States (1000 pupils) and now Finnish and Danish students are participating also.

The FabLab@School is a worldwide growing network of educational digital fabrications labs, especially designed for schools and children. It has been created by Prof. Paulo Blikstein at Stanford for middle and high school students (https://tltl.stanford.edu/project/fablabschool). The work that the FabLab@School does resembles a lot what Innokas Network is doing in Finland with elementary and middle school students.

Kati and Tiina from Innokas Network

In September 2014 we participated in the Chinese moon festival in Finland. It was organized by the City of Espoo with its key partners. During the evening we got to know more about the collaboration between Espoo and Shanghai. We also had an opportunity to share our experiences from Bridges Conference in Chongqing, China.

Tiina, Minna and Kati from Innokas Network

Innokas Network and the Innovative School Model was introduced in Minneapolis in Cradle to Career Conference at the University of Minnesota (University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management). The conference was part of FinnFest 2014 event. Tiina Korhonen, the Head of Innokas Network and Innokas Coordinator Minna Kukkonen’s presentation aroused thoughts of questions like ‘What is learning in 2020’ and ‘How does an Innovative School look like’. To answer these questions The Innovative School model was introduced through many practical examples.

There were many presentations about the Finnish school system. The Minister of Education and Culture, Krista Kiuru was present through a video greetings and moreover, we had presentations from the Ministry of Education and Culture International Relations Director Jaana Palojärvi, Professor Pasi Sahlberg and Rovio CMO Peter Vesterbacka. The joy of learning, the increasing of motivation and equal learning opportunities were the topics for speeches and discussions. The conference opened the USA – Finnish cooperation opportunities and, above all, shared experiences and ideas of reciprocity of good practices. It was interesting to hear about local schools and the education system both in Finland and in the United States. Lifelong learning, inspiration in learning and learning in 21^st century touched us all, individually and collectively!

It was a pleasure to meet many wonderful persons and share many enthusiastic ideas. Networking is great!

Innokas-coordinator Minna from Finland

My colleagues and I had an opportunity to participate in Bridges-project last spring. The project was organized by international Network called Global Educational Community (GEC). Particopants comes  from China, United States, Singapore, Australia and Finland. The network’s main goal is to develop learning, teaching and leading at the school level. In each of the participating countries teachers and pupils carried out a bridge themed project during the spring 2014. The process was documented and shared regularly online (http://www.ibridgelearn.net/show.php?id=70). We introduced our project in GEC/Bridges conference in July 2014 in Chongqing, China.

The first part of the conference focused on knowledge sharing. We saw many interesting projects that Chinese pupils and classes from other countries had done. We Finns had presentations of team-teaching, project based learning (PBL) and mobile learning. We listened great keynote speeches and participated in project based learning workshops.

At the second part of the journey we travelled to Chengdu where we visited Panda reservation and got a possibility to care pandas. We cleaned their cages, fed them and baked panda-bread for them. We also planned Panda-project which GEC schools will start during 2015 .

Innokas-coordinator Kati from Finland

Silverton Primary School students and teachers are taking part within the Global Innokas Network project, looking at how to best implement Robotics into the curriculum. There has also been a excursion planned to show the students how robotics is used in the real world. Please find our Robotics news from our website: http://www.silverrobots.net/

Regards
Ben Eilenberg, Vanessa Jefferson and the students, Silverton Primary School, Australia