Transnational meeting in Finland
The first project
meeting was held 6.-10.10. 2014 in Kesalahti, Finland. The meeting was a kick-off meeting for
our new project “Seek and Find Nature” funded by CIMO. Teachers from all of the
partner schools participated the meeting.
To promote use of
eTwinning, the week started by eTwinning course for teachers. eTwinning page for Seek and Find Nature was created in
Twinspace – it’s intended to take in active use.
On Tuesday, we
visited in Kitee upper secondary school and learned about Finnish school
system. We had also an official project meeting in Kitee. We discussed the aims
of the project, set targets and agreed on practical issues and the pedagogical
aims of the project.
We visited Koli
national park as an introduction to the theme of the meeting “Tree Story” on
Wednesday. On Thursdays, Finnish students started to create “Tree Story”, a
story about experiences of logs which were used in the walls of an old smoke
cabin located in the outdoor musem of Kesalahti. The smoke cabin was built
1725, and according to a dendrological dating the trees started to grow in the
15th century.
The basic aim is that
the students will write and illustrate stories about the experiences of the
logs since the trees started to grow (600 years ago). Before the writing
process, the students participate lessons of different school subjects (e.g.
biology, history,) supporting the learning and writing. In this way, we promote
the use interdisciplinary approach to teaching.
After visiting the outdoor museum with 4th and 7th graders, the students started to focus on the tree story. The students and teachers of the partner school followed biology and history lessons and they started to gather information for writing. Tree Story was given to the partner schools as home works – all of the partners schools arrange interdisciplinary teaching and write own tree story of their countries.
On Friday, we followed a tree story performance,
which all of the students from Kesalahti schools participated. Further, the
teachers followed lessons and a documentary movie about Saimaa seal, a species
which has become almost extinct.
The week ended after
visiting wood art exhibition “Wooden Soul” and having dinner there.
by Jouni Ahlhlom (Finland
teacher)
Video by Vicente Valero (Spanish teacher)