From School Path to Global Citizen's Highway III

European Day of Languages has been celebrated on the 26^th of September for over ten years and it has been organised by the Council of Europe and the European Union. The underlying idea of the day is to promote multilingualism and rapport in intercultural communication. In 2022 and 2023 at Tulliportti and Rantakylä UEF Teacher Training Schools, we have celebrated European Day of Languages by organising language and culture related workshops. In fall 2022 and 2023 our student teachers  planned and implemented multilingual and multisensory workshops for pupils.

Nora Ikäheimo, Hanna-Mari Koistinen

Rantakylä Teacher Training School

At Rantakylä Teacher Training School Student Teachers of English, Swedish and German organised four workshops for 3^rd, 5^th and 6^th graders. Pupils listened to extracts of  languages and identified them, connected phrases in different languages to corresponding flags and learnt to write their names in Greek. The activities were planned so that they were enjoyable. The pupils seemed to enjoy writing their name in Greek the most. For our higher comprehensive school pupils, we made a language-themed Kahoot, which they played on their foreign language lessons.

We also had an activity pass for pupils. By doing a certain amount of activities a pupil could take part in a raffle.

Sari Parkkinen and Katarina Liljeqvist

Tulliportti Teacher Training school

This fall at Tulliportti higher comprehensive school European Day of Languages included recess activities. During two recesses, our student teachers planned and implemented workshops in which pupils connected pictures of sights to corresponding flags, did tongue twisters in different languages, tried to guess the origins of loan words and could design a logo for an official European Day of Languages t-shirt. The workshops attracted a great amount of pupils and we had a happy atmosphere during the recesses!

Our school’s 6th graders’ phenomenon classes had an additional teacher, English teacher Hanna-Mari, in the first academic period this year. The theme of the phenomenon classes was how to do good at our school and Hanna-Mari’s job was to bring out the home languages and cultures of our school. One of the aims of the lessons was to plan and implement workshops for our parents’ association NoWa’s event. At the workshops, 6th graders planned and taught pupils and their families by dancing, having quizzes, arts arts and crafts in the home languages of our school. Here, at Tulliportti UEF Teacher Training school, our home languages are:

Hungarian

Italian

German

Estonian

Greek

Thai

Chinese

Urdu

Czech

Ukranian

English

Spanish

Dutch

Russian

Arabian

Polish

The phenomenon classes will continue in the 3rd period! Then the theme will be peace education.

I’m Can Buldu, a master’s degree student from the ELEIC program of the UEF. I was employed as a project worker and an assistant teacher in the Rantakylän normaalikoulu during January and February of 2024. It was a great opportunity to experience and be part of Finnish education during this period, and here’s a recounting of my time as part of the project.

When I first arrived at the school, I met the English teachers I would assist in the coming weeks, and I was warmly greeted by the staff. I planned a lesson that focused on the introduction of my country Turkey, and myself. In the lessons where I used this plan, I was with the lovely students who were enthusiastic to learn about me and my culture, and to express their own throughout activities such as creating a fun true/false quiz about their country.

Over the next weeks, in addition to helping revise their recent English lessons, I also initiated a “chess break” event at the school. During the lunch break, I hosted a corner prepared with chess boards and an instruction board supplied by the UEF’s Joensuu Chess Club. The students were welcomed to play chess with each other or against me, and I was pleased to teach the basics of the game to the students who were interested to learn.

Furthermore, I was part of an educational program for peace education. Me and my fellow friend from the ELEIC program participated in an educational session about peace education, then collaborated to create a lesson that would teach the students about the iceberg theory of culture and present an opportunity to explore different cultures while representing their own.

Throughout the whole period, I was greeted with support and hospitality from the school teachers and staff. I will remember and reflect on my great experience in Rantakylän normaalikoulu. I hope that everyone involved had a great time!

Can Buldu

Hello all! My name is Kristina, and I am thrilled to be a part of the “From School Path to Global Citizen’s Highway III” project. I am from the USA where I worked as an ice-skating instructor for eight years and a primary school classroom teacher for three years. I am now living in Finland where I study Early Education for Intercultural Communication at UEF and work as a part-time English teacher.

In the project, I have worked with different subject and content teachers at Rantakylä and Tulliportti teacher training schools. So far, I have taught art, music, ice skating and math in grades 1-6, and peace education lessons in grades 6-8.  I have also worked with my fellow project participants to plan cultural pop-up events and active breaks for all grade levels. Some examples of the pop-ups include learning Iranian and American dances, learning and singing “Dona Nobis Pacem”, and crafting three-dimensional holiday cards.

In this project, I have enjoyed learning more about the Finnish educational system and teacher experiences. I have also learned more Finnish along the way! I have enjoyed collaborating with the different teachers, assistant teachers, and teacher students, and I look forward to continuing my work with this project for the next two months.

Kristina Rexford

Turning bashfulness into boldness – engouraging communication.

Assistant teacher Kristina has taught short study sessions of arts and music to my second graders. Collaboration and planning the sessions have been easy and proficient. Our aim has been to choose easy and concrete vocabulary and themes that are approachable to a beginner to succeed in. Together with Kristina, the pupils learnt by playsongs. As the pupils made their own collages, they needed to use colour, quantity, shape and size words in English to ask for supplies and materials. It has been wonderful to see how each and every pupil has gained confidence, tried and succeeded.

Kristina’s skilful verbal and non-verbal communication with young learners and repetition as well as the help of our student teachers have played a fundamental role in the success of the study sessions. Krtistina has achieved to create a warm relationship with the pupils. We will continue our collaboration in PE and a spring-themed eTwinning project. Boldness and success in communication with Kristina seems to inspire language learning and the using the language as well. I am very happy about this opportunity,

Päivi Vesala, 2. luokan opettaja, Tulliportin normaalikoulu

(Translated by Hanna-Mari Koistinen)

In the project “From school path to global citizen’s highway III,” the goal was to create multicultural encounters outside regular lessons . The aim was to increase multilingual and multicultural activities in our schools. We wanted to reach as many students as possible and to integrate the activities into the school day. Therefore, we decided to offer break-time activities that involve students at both units of the UEF Teacher Training Schools, located in Rantakylä and Länsikatu. First, we focused the activities on third- and fourth-grade students.

We networked with students from the UEF course “Introduction to Finnish School Life” to find multilingual individuals to lead the break-time activities. We organized an introductory session for them as part of the course, where we explained the aims of the activities and the pedagogical framework of the project. As a result, 35 students from different countries signed up. We invited them to pair up and lead 30-minute Active Break activities in the schools. We instructed the students to use facial expressions, gestures, movement, and modeling during the sessions.

The break-time activity leaders created and impelemented different kinds of universal activities, such as clapping games, dancing, crafting, games, and singing familiar melodies in different languages. To our delight, we noticed that the students eagerly participated in the activities. Based on our observations, we believe that the positive experiences students gained through multilingual interaction contributed to strengthening their sense of self-efficacy.

The Active Break sessions were held on Wednesdays in Rantakylä and Thursdays in Länsikatu, during November and December. During this time, 12 students led the break activities. Each session had 10–20 participating students. Participation in the break activities was voluntary and served as an alternative to the regular outdoor break. At Länsikatu, two sixth-grade students helped the younger pupils. The English teachers from both schools were responsible for organizing the activities. They mentored the student pairs, informed teachers and students about the sessions, and coordinated activities at both schools.

Based on the positive experiences gained, the Active Break sessions will continue in the spring semester of 2024.

Hilkka Koivistoinen and Sari Parkkinen

Rantakylä School

The Winter Festival Pop-up Day, themed around winter, was held at Rantakylä School on December 4, 2023. A total of 170 5th, 6th, 8th, and 9th graders participated in the activities throughout the day.

International students from the UEF ELEIC master’s program and Finnish language students (English, Swedish, German) completing their basic teaching practice together organized five different activity stations. The international students and teaching practice trainees networked with each other and planned and implemented the activities in groups of three students. Each group included both international students and teaching practice students.

The activity stations were related to winter and holiday vocabulary, traditions, and customs from different countries:

• Winter-related words in Chinese: At this station, students had to repeat, read, and write Chinese words, such as snow, winter, reindeer, gift, and Christmas tree.
• Christmas carols in different languages: In this activity, students listened to samples of Christmas carols in different languages and tried to identify the languages and countries.
• Crafting Christmas cards: At this station, students crafted Christmas cards and wrote Christmas and New Year’s greetings in various languages.
• Bangla words and fan crafting: Students tried writing words in Bangla, the language spoken in Bangladesh, and crafted paper fans.
• Chinese New Year: The last station focused on the celebration of Chinese New Year. Students crafted lucky decorations from red paper.

The execution of the pop-up day was successful, with smooth transitions between the stations and engaging activities. Thanks to everyone who participated in the organization!

Katarina Liljeqvist and Sari Parkkinen

Tulliportti School, Grades 7-9 and 1-6

The Winter Pop-up event for Tulliportti School’s higher comprehensive pupils was held on Friday, December 1, in the form of various recess workshops. For the lower comprehensive school, the workshops began on Monday, December 4. Students were busy in the workshops during lessons and recess. Enthusiastic sixth graders also helped to give event passes and assisted in setting up, cleaning, and running the workshops. At the lower comprehensive school, after collecting stamps from two workshops, students had a chance to participate in a raffle for book and candy prizes.

The workshops were planned and executed by workshop teachers hired from the UEF ELEIC students and language teaching practice students as part of their basic teaching practice. In the workshops, students had the opportunity to make origami, learn about the origins of Christmas carols, and practice winter vocabulary in Chinese. Laughter and joyful chatter echoed throughout the day in both the lower and higher comprehensive schools!

Nora Ikäheimo and Hanna-Mari Koistinen

ELEIC students Can and Kristina visited different subject classes and organized recess activities for basic eduction pupils at Tulliportti School. Can is from Turkey and Kristina from the United States. Both have completed the required teaching practice as part of their studies at the UEF Teacher Training School. This way, they had already become familiar with the daily life of Finnish schools. They were able to enrich the students’ school day and support their Finnish teaching colleagues. Team teaching with Can and Kristina offered teachers a natural opportunity to develop their professional skills in a more international context. Can and Kristina were asked to utilize their strengths in their work: Can played chess with the higher comprehensive pupils and taught English lessons, while Kristina, with her background as a figure skater, shared her expertise in PE classes and taught phenomenon-based and visual arts lessons to younger students in English. Additionally, throughout the spring, both of them will contribute various activities related to peace education.

Hilkka Koivistoinen and Sari Parkkinen

Tulliportti School

At Tulliportti Higher Comprerensive School, Europe Day event was celebrated on Monday, May 6th from 12:30 PM to 1:00 PM in the school yard, and at the lower comprehensive school on Wednesday, May 8th from 9:15 AM to 9:45 AM. The program featured activity stations organized by student teachers specializing in language instruction and project worker Kristina Rexford. One of the activity stations offered tastings of European sausages and cheeses. Once the students filled their stamp cards, they were given a sample from the tasting station.

Active breaks continued in Fall 2024

The Active Breaks continued actively in the fall semester of 2024 at the Rantakylä and Länsikatu units of UEF Teacher Training School.

At Rantakylä, ELEIC students, Japanese Mizuki Someya and Sri Lankan Yoshitha Vidanagamage, organized guided break sessions for six weeks for three different age groups: 3^rd to 4^th graders, 5^th to 6^th graders, and 7^th to 9^th  graders. The 3^rd and 4^th graders had their session on Mondays during the long 30-minute lunch break, while the 5^th to 9^th  graders’ sessions took place on Wednesdays.

During the 2023–24 academic year, Active Breaks were organized for 3^rd to 4th graders, and this time we succeeded in expanding the activities 5^th to 9^th graders.

In the first two weeks, the theme was Japanese characters. Mizuki and Yoshitha (who is a German and Japanese teacher by previous training) talked about Japanese characters, and the students practiced writing kanji characters. Finally, Mizuki showed everyone how to write their names in kanji.

In the next two weeks, the theme was Sri Lankan lotus flower crafts. The lotus flower symbolizes purity and innocence, as it grows in mud and dirt, but the result is a beautiful, pure flower. Yoshitha prepared the flower models, and together with Mizuki, they guided the students in their crafting.

In the last two weeks, the theme was Japanese dance and song. Mizuki taught us the Bon Odori dance, and we sang “Jingle Bells” in Japanese.

The Active Break activity is popular among students, with an average of about 10 participants per session, and as many as 20 3^rd grade students came to practice Japanese dance!

Sari Parkkinen

At Tulliportti School, peace education for sixth graders was integrated into phenomenon-based learning with the theme “Me and My World.” During the phenomenon lessons, students rotated through four different stations throughout the week. One of these stations focused on peace education, while others included topics such as environmental studies and Finnish language.

Hanna-Mari began laying the foundation for peace education for 6th graders in Finnish at the start of the third period, and our assistant teacher Kristina Rexford smoothly continued the lessons in English starting from halfway through the term. During the lessons, students reflected on their sense of self, their relationship with others, their values, the concept of culture (both surface and deep culture), similarities and differences between cultures, solidarity, and intercultural communication. We listened to a human rights rap, played a human rights-themed Blooket game, and engaged in discussions using cards. In the peace education lessons for the sixth graders, we achieved a relaxed, active, and conversational atmosphere where students felt comfortable asking questions, challenging ideas, and making suggestions.      

Together with 17 student teachers, we organized an evening school at the end of November 2024 for third-grade students, with workshops focused on peace education. About 60 students participated in the evening, along with their family members. A total of just over 200 people attended the event.

During the evening, students, along with their families, visited different stations. In the workshops, they had the opportunity to bake, craft, visit an art exhibition created by students, view posters made by students, play traditional games from different countries, play music, exercise, and contribute to a community art project that was displayed near the classroom.

Pictures can be found via the link.

Rauhankasvatusta ja kansainvälisyyttä iltakoulussa