Examples of classroom assignments
- We explored that Finland as a country is so long, that it takes one night to get from Helsinki to Lapland. We studied Finland as an area by having an online visit (by train) to couple of Finnish towns (official and traveling websites) as groups of 2-3. There the assignment was to search some information of the cities by answering couple of questions and then finding out together with the group some essential information. Then all the information was put on a map of Finland and presented to the whole class.
- We gave all of the students Finnish names that are close to their real ones, and then practiced introducing ourselves in Finnish.
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| Picture from Kari Palsila's book. |
- One lesson was about seasons and nature in especially in Northern Finland. Students listened and saw pictures from a book called "Santa's Calendar Year" by Kari Palsila. They learned season-words in Finnish and painted a picture of their favorite season in Finland.
- We studied Finnish-American history by watching some parts of documents handling that subject. After that the student's planned some plays that were about the work the Finnish immigrants did when arriving to the US, for example lumberjacking and farming.
- Animals and Finnish folk tales were studied by planning and performing a radio play (a play using only voice) to the whole class based on a Finnish animal fables. We discussed some features of animal fables and then everyone had to write their own fable located in Finland and having Finnish animals in it. They also drew a picture of a animal that is in their story. Fables can be seen on the 3r grader's blog's Storybook. The stories were first written on paper and then typed to computer.
- One lesson we spent watching the Finnish children's movie Heinähattu & Vilttitossu. Students assignments were to find similarities and differences between the lives of the children in the movie and their owns.
- Two lessons were spent doing the videos, details of the project are on a blogpost you can find on the front page.
- One lesson we watched a video that the student's of Meltaus school had done and got to know a typical school day of a Finnish 3rd grader by studying their school timetables.
- Couple of lessons we spent outside learning Finnish games, for example "Polttopallo", "Konkka" and "Nurkkis". We also had a boot throwing competition
- We also had one Finnish music lesson, where we first listened and watched couple of Finnish music videos and then sang in Finnish (and then in English, following our free translation) the song "Kolme cowboyta"
Materials
We tried to learn Finnish language every day, mostly basic things as "hellos" and "goodbyes", "thank you" and so on. We tried not to have the learning of the language too serious and for example bodyparts were learned by having some exercise through this video every now and then:
Föbelin palikat - Jumppalaulu!
This video led us to the train theme:
Ella ja Aleksi - Yöjuna Rovaniemelle
This video made the student's really excited about Finland's capital:
Visit Finland - Helsinki
Web-site for Finnish learning games:
Digital Dialects - Finnish
This song we tried singing at the Finnish music lesson while Eeva played the quitar:
J. Karjalainen - Kolme Cowboyta
(It's an excellent example how the American culture is effecting Finnish music!)
Some books:
Bowie, Ian: Fun Finland (2011)
Bowie, Ian: Meet the Finns! (2011)
Palsila, Kari: Santa's calendar year (2006)
Bowie's books are good sources for ideas! The South Range has both of the books as we brought them there as gifts, but they might be helpful also in Finland when planning the teaching.
This picture we made for us to print and to make the traditional "flag band" ! Feel free to use it.
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Other Links
Elävä arkisto - Amerikan Jenny (2009)
Elävä arkisto - Haapalan pojat (2006)
Wikipedia - Amerikan suomalaiset
