Literacy Primary Finland reading

now here's a puzzle why are these pupils likely to become the best readers in the world joh Haman is coaxing her class towards an answer johanna's class are writing books it's part of a twice yearly Workshop a climax to the class calendar to make reading and writing an appealing Topic at Stromberg school ailia vapo is a primary school teacher from London she's seen the oecd international piser assessment that puts finland's 16-year-olds top in literacy the UK excluded from the main report because of insufficient responses is probably within the top seven she's come to Stromberg School in Helsinki to try to discover where the foundations of their success are laid the school was built around the idea that children learn by doing here that doing happens in specially equipped workshops a away from the form classroom johanna's class is having their turn in the literacy Workshop what's actually going on here what are they doing she is making the name of the book for the cover she is she has written really long stories about six pages long so lot of improvement there and now she's waiting for that I can read all the stories as well Yan is teaching a form of mixed abilities their ages range from 7 to 10 there are pupils who have completed their books working next to those still writing he is writing one story about the different planet that there is this king who is very mean and I see he's using a his draft book yes yes that is the where we write the stories first okay in this book and then I read these books as well and make comments here and now they are writing the same stories on the computer now so they're printing them out but also there are children that have now come up with a great story so they can write it directly on the computer as well I was just going to ask that and how do you manage working with a what we would call A vertically grouped class um I consider it very very nice because in very early age they learn to respect one another and that they they don't maybe learn in the same speed as others when the other ones are faster they are actually really nicely helping each other out and they are supporting one another yeah okay how does this particular activity fit into the General curriculum okay this is very important uh for the uh literacy and the re reading skills really to both read and write many many kind of texts so we've been reading throughout the year information texts as well as stories and poems and jokes and this task is about creation expressing themselves which is really important in written terms as well as in spoken expression Johna has split her class some are writing in the workshop others are working upstairs in the library I'll go upstairs and see how they are doing it's very different to where I teach because we generally tend to have our literacy in the one classroom with the one teacher we've talked a lot about reading and writing what about telling stories in Autumn we everybody made their own um how do you call this hand puppets hand puppet yes they made the hand puppets and then we made uh drama with those and also we wrote stories about the hand puppets right excellent and so it really all comes together so it's not only one thing the telling stories is everyday thing at at school tomorrow is the last day of the workshop everyone's books will have to be finished at the end of the school day Johanna invites ailia to her classroom to discuss the day's teaching we started by making the circle because it's a good start every day we almost do that or we have some kind of start together I also noticed that you did the click click click and Rhythm which we do as well and it helps to calm the children down and it also brings a noise level down because I noticed that right at the very end of the sounds got very soft and it was really nice to listen to because you could actually hear the silence right at the very end okay that was really nice it was very nice to concentrate come to this moment because when they come to school they are really excited about everything what's going on also running in the hallways maybe I also saw that you had the children talking in small groups I know that they all want to say something they are really eager to talk so when forming them into small groups gives them more chance to speak and everybody can tell their own ideas own opinions and at the end when you had actually finished that particular activity where the children were talking did they actually feed back what they had said yes that's what they did when child from that group told what they had discussed the workshop was about making books ailia wanted to know when it started because in in Autumn time we went we did a magazine where everybody put a couple of stories of their own so now they could make really their own story books so they could put all the stories they wanted into one book and these stories that they made that there are some that have written this this one isn't finished yet but is going to be soon so there are poems then there are really long stories really long and for example this story it's about six pages long and written by a third grader and was all of that done in their draft book first before actually no for example this one this one was done straightly on the computer because because it just she just got an idea that now I have this great idea about Apple and pear and how they meet and and all all about that story and just great imagination these are really to express themselves they have had a chance to write about about their imagination about what they really want what what do they think about what what's their life at the moment and before we've done this of course this is a project so that you get the writing going Johanna split her class some writing some drawing posters others revising work done over the year okay there was the first project we were doing was downstairs and that was to complete the book When the Children got it ready some went upstairs so that's really natural that's really interesting because I actually didn't relate the two together when you did the work in the library what actually was going on because obviously the language I couldn't understand very much but okay this typical moment was that this girl here she had already completed her tasks or she had done the book they are searching opposites this were about books they can be thick what's the opposite of thick the books can be interesting and what's the opposite of interesting and so on but what really interests me is that children in Finland actually succeed far better in literacy than anywhere else in the world you know from what I saw this morning there wasn't many things that were actually different you know between the way we teach and the way you teach so what do you think could be the key factors what I can say about this that I don't think it's only the lessons which which count our school is for teach uh for the children's whole personality about the growth of whole personality it has so many things that are to do with that so that they can learn the best they can I think in Finland what works really well is the student Weare system and and all these and what I noticed in finland's results there are not many who are doing very badly there there are not as many of those slower Learners who need the special help the pza report confirms johanna's observation Finland has fewer students at the bottom end of the scale than other countries it could be that the Finnish system is able to care better for its pupils with lower abilities I'm still fascinated as to the influences that puts Finland where it is in the education States I think in Finland people um people appreciate education a lot and also it's in families they appreciate education right but from my perspective what would be the reasons for the good results is that the importance of literacy in Finland is is very very big it starts from time of Independence when you had your own language you had your own country and this is something that we want to maintain also as Finland is a small country we need to be open to the world and finish people start learning other languages at very early stage you have to know Finnish very well to be able to learn another language so it emphasizes the learning of Finnish that's one thing that could be quite important when we think about literacy in totally what we talked about earlier is very important the storytelling and playing which is really important in child's growth that's really important yeah sorry I'm I'm just laughing because I'm going to say well we do the same yes yes but obviously you're doing something that's a little bit more than what we're doing in order to achieve the results that you achieve here it's just the learning culture also here the interaction between children and the teacher is very important and I think also the student groups are pretty small and what's the average class size um I think the average would be about probably 25 but depends on school my my classroom has now 21 students ailia came to Finland looking for the secret of their success she's been told about the special place language has in the nation's life now she wants to take something tangible home the main thing I'm going to take back is this Workshop idea for literacy I'm quite used to doing big projects but not in the way that I saw this project done today I will mute the idea to my head teacher and see whether there's a possibility of a pilot or an experiment initially and I'm hoping that I can actually you know um get a project linked to this school going in my school

Channel: MsHanaku

Views: 80,444

Keywords: Literacy, Primary, Finland, reading

Id: Msf2NEmAKO0

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 15 2011