Sunday, June 18, 2017
Teach Like Finland
“What makes Finland education one of the best in the world?” My curiosity lead me to read a “Finnish Lesson 2.0” by Pasi Sahlberg. The book discusses mostly about the scores, they are top etc, I was unable to extract the internals of their education system. This further lead me to read another book “Teach Like Finland” by Timothy Walker.
This book written by a teacher who moved from the US to Finland discusses 33 strategies that helps the Finnish students perform well in the PISA test. Though the following strategies make sense, looks to me, there will be more than these to it.
Let me summarize the strategies here.
Well being:
- Brain breaks
- Learn on the move
- Recharge after school
- Breathe fresh air
- Get into the wild
- Keep the peace, calm, no-rush
Belonging:
- Recruit a welfare team
- know each child
- play with your students
- celebrate their learning
- pursue a class dream
- banish the bullying
- buddy up
Autonomy:
- start with freedom
- leave margin
- offer choices
- plan with your students
- make it real
- demand responsibility
Mastery:
- Teach the essentials
- mine the textbook
- leverage the tech
- bring in the music
- coach more
- prove the learning
- discuss the grades
Mind-set:
- Seek flow
- have a thicker skin
- collaborate over coffee
- welcome the experts
- vacate on vacation
- don't forget joy
As you can see above they do not just focus on giving academic skill, they focus on developing the whole child. They follow a simple strategy. They are not crazy about using all the latest tech gadgets. They focus more on giving essential skill and less on tests, memorization, and rote learning. They do lots of hands-on-learning. They implement progressive education!
Conclusion
What all the strategies we can use in our Tamil schools? While I am quick to say “all”, we may not be able to implement some of them, and some may not give us an optimum result.
I can think of doing the following and gradually grow up.
- Give brain breaks; for a 90 minutes class, we can give 10 minutes after 40 minutes.
- Learn on the move; let the learning be based on activities.
- know each child
- play with your students
- celebrate their learning
- pursue a class dream
- buddy up
- offer choices
- plan with your students
- make it real
- demand responsibility
- Teach the essentials
- mine the textbook
- leverage the tech
- bring in the music
- coach more
- prove the learning
- don't forget joy
Promote joyful teaching and learning in the classroom!
நன்றி
லோகு
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