These lessons continue the same theme the 15th and 16th lessons for 2020 started.
3. lesson (45 min)
Grouping
New knowledge acquisition Method used: Build-up group (45 min)
The students process the new information and draw conclusions from new knowledge.
Students form groups of four and they compare what they know about the topic as well as what kind of information they have acquired. Together, the students draw conclusions: how plastic affects the ocean life, and how to reduce plastic pollution. Students also look at their original posters and reflect on what they have learned. Students create a PowerPoint presentation on the information learned throughout the project.
4. lesson (45 min)
Practising / Activating students Method used: Other method (35 min)
Students deliver PowerPoint presentations to the whole class to share outcomes of their work.
Presentations
Reflection Method used: Exit slips (10 min)
Students answer the question on slips of paper: “What would be the one thing you would encourage people to begin doing to alleviate the plastic waste problem?” When everyone is ready, they read their slips aloud in turn.
You can find this lesson plan and more detailed method descriptions in LessonApp. Feel free to join our LessonApp community and download LessonApp here.
Reference Järvinen-Taubert, Johanna & Chukhlantseva, Elena 2020. Phenomenon-based Learning in Finnish Education. Unpublished manuscript.
Phenomenon-based learning is a part of Finland’s latest national core curricula for education of all levels from early childhood to upper secondary education (K-12), including basic education. The goal of phenomenon-based learning is for students to explore various real-life phenomena from different perspectives. Phenomenon-based learning is particularly well suited to the teaching of environmental and natural sciences, although it can be applied to all other subjects as well.
Phenomenon-based learning is based on student inquiry, collaboration and problem solving. During phenomenon-based learning process, students learn core contents of different topics, and also 21st century skills like teamwork, communication, critical thinking, problem solving, and digital literacy. Phenomenon-based learning empowers students to take ownership of their learning through active participation, diversification of learning objectives, working approaches and ways of assessment.
I have used LessonApp Premium to design these biology lessons for 11–14 years old students. The topic of my lessons is Plastic waste in the oceans. During these lessons, students will understand how plastic affects the ocean life, and how everyone can take a number of everyday steps to reduce plastic pollution. I have applied an inquiry-based learning method as a basis to plan these phenomenon-based learning lessons.
Plastic waste
1. lesson (45 min)
Orientation / Pre-existing knowledge Method used: Watch a video (10 min)
The goal is to orientate students to the topic. Orientation helps students to understand what is the topic of the lesson and prepares their minds for receiving and processing new information. Orientation also raises interest and motivation towards the topic.
Students watch a video about plastic waste and how it ends up in the oceans, and after a video they’ll have an open discussion to share their thoughts.
The teacher finds out what the students already know about the topic and what kind of opinions, explanations or theories they have.
The discussion continues with a pair. In pair discussion, partners help each other learn by discussing, revising and testing one another. Students also make a poster summarizing their thoughts.
Practising / Activating students Method used: Gallery walk (15 min)
The teacher helps students to process actively the subject matter by using teaching method (gallery walk) that requires learners’ input.
Students put up their posters on the walls. Students circulate around the classroom with their pair, look at the posters (at least three of them) and discuss about the topic with their pair.
2. lesson (45 min)
Practising / Activating students Method used: Pair discussion (10 min)
The teacher helps the students evaluate their knowledge critically.
Students stand in front of their own poster and reflect on what they know about the theme, what they don’t know yet and what should they find out.
Searching information
New knowledge acquisition Method used: Search information (20 min)
The teacher guides the students on where and how to find essential information.
Students in pairs search for new information on the internet. They try to find answers to the questions of the previous step: what they don’t know about the topic and what they should find out about it.
New knowledge acquisition Method used: Pair discussion (15 min)
New information or new problems can be identified after the deepening of knowledge.
Students in pairs reflect on new knowledge: what they learned more about the topic, how their knowledge developed, and what new questions they came up with. Students write for themselves short notes of these reflections.
You can find this lesson plan and more detailed method descriptions in LessonApp. Feel free to join our LessonApp community and download LessonApp here.
Two more lessons coming soon to continue this theme!
Reference Järvinen-Taubert, Johanna & Chukhlantseva, Elena 2020. Phenomenon-based Learning in Finnish Education. Unpublished manuscript.
Author: Gracie Meng-Pitkänen, worked as a Chinese teacher in Finland and China
I have practiced distance teaching for several months with my small group of students since the Covid-19 pandemic started in Finland this spring. Overall, the outcome is very positive. Thanks to LessonApp which provides distance teaching methods on time at critical turning point of moving from classroom teaching to remote teaching. The lesson below is built with help of distance teaching methods included in LessonApp.
1. Warm-up (5 mins): 3 things (distance teaching)
The teacher asks one of the students to begin the warm-up by saying “Three things…” and ending the sentence with a question such as “Three things you like about the summer?”. The student who posed the question points to another student who then answers the question with three things, e.g. “Ice cream, the sun, spending time with my friends”. The student who answered the question makes up a new question of three things and points to another student who will answer it. You can play as long as everyone gets their turn to ask and answer.
Ask the students to say 3 things related to rivers. The words they maybe come up include the words they know, e.g. ‘long’, ‘big’, ‘clean’. If not, then give them hints by showing pictures.
Begin with telling the students the lesson’s theme. Ask them to write down a question on the piece of paper that they would like to have the answer to during the lesson. Students should be given a few minutes time to write down the question on their slips. After they have finished writing, tell them to put the slips aside for the remaining lesson: the slips will be revisited at the end of the lesson. Use the end of the lesson to review the slips. Tell the students to look at their slips to see whether their questions have been answered. If not, now is the opportunity to ask the teacher directly. If there is not enough time to answer all the questions, the students can send the questions to the teacher by email. The teacher can respond to the email or answer during the next lesson.
Tell the students that the theme of this lesson is about two famous rivers in China. Each student writes down one question on a paper related to the rivers. This is to activate shortly how to make sentences with the words they know regarding rivers, e.g. ‘ is the river long?’
3. New knowledge acquisition (15 minutes): Search information (distance teaching)
The teacher guides the students on where and how to find essential information.
Guide the students to search for the information on Internet about the most famous rivers in China and find the key information:
During the exercise, students are asked to individually write down their own thoughts and knowledge about the topic at hand.
Activation/practicing: After studying the topic for a while or listening to the teacher’s presentation, for example, ask your students to write down what they have learned so far, what was new information to them, what they do not yet understand thoroughly, what they would like to learn next etc.
Reflection: Ask your students to write down what they have learned about the topic, what was new to them, was something left unclear, how did their views or knowledge of the topic change during the lesson and so on. It is extremely useful to do this exercise both before and after studying the topic so that the students can see how their thoughts have changed.
Write down the names of the rivers and 3-5 key words based on what is found on Internet. Open the textbook and read about the rivers. Compare the words in the book and found by themselves. At the end, each student checks if his or her question written down in the beginning of the lesson has got an answer or not. New words/phrases they are supposed to learn from the book: name, mother, love, ancient, middle of.
Author: María Carrasco Orozco (M.Ed) Working as a preschool teacher in Tiny Hands English Kindergarten
This lesson is designed to improve students’ confidence when speaking in a new language, as well as to grow their vocabulary.
It is intended for children from 6 years old to the end of primary education (but with modifications it can be used with adults as well) and it all depends on their language capabilities at the moment. I have done this lesson with my students in class, but now I bring an online version that can be carried out during distance learning and works as well.
General learning objectives
Practice and grow vocabulary
Review grammar structures
Get confident using the language
Foster creativity
Materials
The original material is called story cubes, but for the sake of the distance learning we will have to use an online resource. The teacher can create their own online dice with specific vocabulary or this type of resources can be used instead, with fixed vocabulary: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/158896002/
*Tip: If the learners are old enough, you can create a project around it and ask them to create their own story cubes online resource, using the platform Scratch.
Grouping and Warm Up:
Method: Three Things
The whole group can take part in this activity together. It is thought of as a warm up to activate learners’ vocabulary.
It consists of asking students to think of three things related to a topic. The question could be: Tell three things that you love about summer, three Christmas things, three red objects, three fruits that come from a tree, etc.
If the learners are advanced enough you can group them and ask them to think of the questions by themselves and ask them to each other.
Groups: Three or four per group
You can use the affordances of the software that you’re using to reach your students or in the case of a lack of grouping options you could have the whole class participate, although it might be more challenging for the learners to keep their attention.
Story Time!:
Onced decided the groups it is time to play.
Image 1: This is how the software looks after pressing Go!
Version 1: For beginners.
One student shares their screen and clicks on “Go!” to roll the dice.
That person has to start to tell a story using one of the images from the dice. Ex. Once upon a time there was a monkey. His name was Joey and he lived in the rainforest. The next person of the group will have to continue the story using another image from the dice, ex. One day, Joey saw a print of the ground that was new to him, it didn’t resemble any other animal footprint. Then the next member of the group will continue and so forth until they have used all the images and the story is finished.
Version 2: For more advanced learners.
This time every student will have to tell the whole story by themselves, screens can be shared to show the images to all the rest. This is a more complex way since the learner has to come up with a whole story by themselves.
*Tip: It might be a good idea to work beforehand on connectors, such as then, after that, however, because, finally, etc.
Author: Gracie Meng-Pitkänen, worked as a Chinese teacher in Finland and China
I have used the building blocks and methods presented in LessonApp in the following lesson planning. The methods in the app are very versatile which offer a lot of options to choose. My class is consisted of children with different ages but with similar level of Chinese language skills. They attended Chinese lessons outside their normal school time. Having interesting and engaging lessons in relaxing atmosphere is very crucial. I found that the methods in LessonApp used commonly by Finnish teachers are very student-centred and therefore appealing for students. Finnish teachers’ pedagogical skills are often mentioned in the Finnish education successful stories. Many educators from other countries, like me, should learn from.
Learning objectives:
Learn to pronounce and recognise new characters
Make phases and sentences with new characters
Communicate freely with new characters and phases in real life situation
Group size: 7 Length of class: 45 minutes
1. Warm-up (2 mins)
Method: Relaxation A brief, relaxing, and simple way to start the lesson with a tranquil atmosphere. It helps children to concentrate and relax.
The children close eyes. Play Chinese relaxing music to them. Children touch themselves lightly with their favourite soft toys.
Method: Read Reading a chapter from the textbook or other written material is a good way to get familiar to new knowledge.
Tell the students to read a short paragraph which is part of the article we are going to learn, and the new characters (with Pingyin) can be spotted when reading.
3. New knowledge acquisition (15 minutes)
Method: Drama Drama is an appealing way to make children interested in the lesson’s topic and activate them to learn.
The part was carried out in the following steps: 1) watch a recorded play based on the article a few times 2) play and pause before the new characters/phases/sentences, then students can try to continue the play 3) students try to act the whole play in different roles with my help
4. Practicing (15 minutes)
Method: Collaborative grid Collaborative grid is a cooperative method that improves students’ communication and interaction skills.
All students write down the new characters and phases on the cards. One student puts the cards in certain order on the grid and explains how he/she has arranged them, and the others try to copy the order by listening to the instructions. Students can challenge themselves by explaining the cards in different ways.
5. Reflections (3 minutes)
Method: Buzz groups The method is used for reflecting upon what has been learned.
Ask students question related to the article we learned. Students discuss among themselves. After a while, students share their thoughts or ask me if they have further questions.
Many teachers have had to carry out their teaching remotely due to the global pandemic. This has been a huge challenge for the teachers around the world as they have had to change their way of teaching to be done remotely.
However, many teachers have not been trained to provide distance teaching and they may lack ideas and knowledge on how to plan and implement effective and motivating teaching remotely. Therefore, we created a new feature to LessonApp about distance teaching. Now LessonApp Premium has a section with key pedagogical principles of distance teaching, an example of a pedagogically smart lesson structure for distance teaching, and also several distance teaching lesson plans to browse and apply.
Distance teaching requires different type of pedagogical solutions than classroom instruction. Although the teacher can still “teach” in a traditional sense, the role and tasks of a teacher are rather different in distance teaching than in classroom instruction. Teacher’s tasks in remote teaching include more planning and guiding and less direct teaching. Teacher needs to gather relevant material (online links, quizzes, videos etc.), formulate meaningful assignments that can be done remotely, guide interaction and evaluate different assignments.
In remote teaching there is endless amount of possibilities: different learning environments, platforms, tools, applications, software, digital material, videos, multimedia presentations etc. By trying out different tools and applications it is easier to find those solutions that are suitable for teacher and as well as students.
Art class exercise: Mandala
In distance teaching teacher should focus on quality over quantity! Too many assignments can be harmful especially for students with learning difficulties, as well as to those, who are very diligent and demand a lot from themselves. The key question is: “How do I plan a remote learning experiences so, that it is suitable for learners’ skill level and competence, it does not stress out students, and it also forms a meaningful learning experience?”
Distance studying is demanding for most of the learners. Studying remotely, mostly alone and possibly from your own home, requires time management skills, self-directedness, self-regulation, responsibility and advanced studying skills. These can be challenging even for adults, let alone children. Support from parents (if possible) and teacher is crucial.
The transition to distance teaching is a learning situation for everybody. Often teachers and students are thrown to distance teaching abruptly and there is no time to proper planning. In the beginning, it takes more time and energy to learn the new ways of studying and get familiar with new technical solutions, so learning the new contents can be tough. It is essential to give time to the process and retain a growth mindset: appreciate effort, try to constantly learn (also from mistakes) and look positively into future.
Distance teaching is a challenge, but it can also be an opportunity for teachers to develop their own professional skills as well as get a new tool in their own professional toolkit.
Team LessonApp is ready to help teachers by sharing pedagogical knowledge and tips! More detailed information how to promote learning and produce better learning results in distance teaching can be found in LessonApp.
With Bingo method, students walk around searching for things. The method motivates children to study in an active and fun way.
The teacher creates a bingo sheet and sends it to each student. The bingo sheet can be a 5×5 grid, for example.
Each grid box has a word or an image. The student’s task is to find the agreed number of words or images: things like a tree or a vehicle or a traffic sign etc.
It would be good if at least some of the things the students are looking for are outside. Bingo method is a good outdoor exercise.
If a student finds 5 things in a row on the grid, he gets a bingo. To get a bingo, the things in the grid can be positioned in a row vertically, horizontally, or from corner to corner.
Bingo method is one of the distance teaching methods in LessonApp. It can be foundin the building block of Practicing / activating students.
Check out Bingo method and over a hundred other methods with detailed method descriptions in LessonApp: https://lessonapp.fi/download/
This blog post is part of Maltese radio interview with Johanna Järvinen-Taubert in May 2020, 3/3. Radio interview was arranged by Dr Kenneth Vella, headmaster of the St Joseph Mater Boni Consilii school in Paola, Malta.
LessonApp is a Finnish mobile tool for teachers to plan more inspiring and efficient lessons for their students. LessonApp is based on modern Finnish pedagogy and it provides a huge amount of new, practical ideas to develop one’s teaching.
LessonApp has now users in 123 different countries. We have been fortunate to receive positive feedback and good ideas from our users to develop LessonApp to be even more useful for teachers.
Now that schools have been locked down in so many countries and teachers need to get familiar with distance teaching in a very tight timeframe and with very little support, we are producing more tools and pedagogical aids for distance teaching as well. Within a couple of weeks, LessonApp will have a comprehensive introduction to distance teaching in practice, plenty of useful methods for distance teaching and several ready-made lesson plans for distance teaching, too.
LessonApp is dedicated to help teachers and ease their workload. By helping and supporting teachers, we wish to support students as well. By helping teachers to plan and carry out even better teaching easily, we hope to support the students to get quality education, which is our ultimate goal. LessonApp is eager to receive feedback and ideas from users to better help and support teachers in their work, also during these challenging times.
With LessonApp we are also busy preparing several language versions of LessonApp. In coming months LessonApp will be translated to Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Romanian and Burmese. We are excited that already during this year more teachers will be able to use LessonApp and benefit of it in their own mother tongue. LessonApp team is sending their warmest greetings to all teachers around the world! Your work is invaluably important, also in these challenging times!
This blog post is part of Maltese radio interview with Johanna Järvinen-Taubert in May 2020, 2/3. Radio interview was arranged by Dr Kenneth Vella, headmaster of the St Joseph Mater Boni Consilii school in Paola, Malta.
First of all, the school ensured that pupils receive equipment and supplies from school so that they could participate in distance learning. Schools could lend equipment, especially if a child did not have a computer, a laptop or other mobile device at home. Some municipalities also arranged free school lunches for pupils participating in distance teaching.
The most commonly used digital platforms and applications in Finland are Wilma, which is widely used Finnish digital platform and web service, Microsoft Teams, Google classroom and Moodle. Also, Finnish publishers provide a lot of digital exercises and material online.
Teachers were really innovative when planning assignments for students in distance teaching. They used creatively home as a learning environment. Here are a couple of examples:
For instance, my twelve-year-old daughter along with her classmates was asked in environmental science lesson to check all the hinges at their home and if needed to tighten them or grease them.
In subject called Crafts the second graders (8-9 years old) were asked to check all the fire detectors at home, do the vacuum cleaner maintenance, check, what kind of tools they can find in their house and for what they are used for.
In home economics subject 7th grade students (13-14 years old boys and girls) were given assignments to bake for Easter and tidy up the contents of kitchen storage cabinets. All parents loved this assignment 😊!
In chemistry the 8th graders did science experiments with red cabbage, baking soda and different cleaning liquids at home.
Also, projects related to upcycling useless home items into new products have been another way to practice academic and practical skills at home. For instance, my 12-year old daughter was asked to design a robot out of recycled materials she could find at her own home.
All these assignments show, that Finnish education puts a lot of value on learning skills needed in life.
Parents have an obligation to ensure that their child participates in distance learning arranged by the school. In general the most concerning issue for students and parents was the amount of assignments teachers were giving to students. It seemed that some teachers had given too many exercises to students and the students had been overwhelmed by them. Usually, open communication between parents and teachers helped in this kind of situations.
What has been remarkable to witness, is the readiness that most of the pupils and students had for distance studying. It is amazing, how tech-savvy and self-directed they are, how capable they were handling different applications and channels, and how responsible they were in their studying in general. The emphasis on self-directedness and multimedia literacy in Finnish schools was really paying off now.
Of course, this was not the case with all children. What worried people most in Finland, is how students with different needs for support were coping with this current situation. Not everyone was capable of self-directed guiding of their studies and many students would have needed different types of support. Not everyone had parents all the time at home to help them, either. We were really striving to find workable solutions for these students also in these times, but the situation raised concerns.
The general attitude in Finland is, that this situation we had will change the teaching methods and habits also after the pandemic. Many teachers and students noticed the advantages that digital aids can bring to teaching and these solutions will most certainly be used much more in the future, too.
This blog post is part of Maltese radio interview with Johanna Järvinen-Taubert in May 2020, 1/3. Radio interview was arranged by Dr Kenneth Vella, headmaster of the St Joseph Mater Boni Consilii school in Paola, Malta.
The Covid-19 pandemic has hit Finland as it has hit all the other countries. There was a lockdown in the whole country, as there were restrictions for public gatherings. People were instructed to work remotely from home, if possible. Also, all schools were closed since mid-March till mid-May.
So, from normal daily work in Finnish schools and classrooms, the whole education system was changed to distance teaching literally during one day. As in many other countries, this has never happened in Finland before.
Teachers had practically only one day to prepare for distance teaching in Finland. Distance teaching has been used mostly in higher and adult education before this pandemic in Finland. So, changing the contact teaching to distance teaching mode was new to almost all teachers in basic and upper secondary education.
However, there has been a strong push to use more digital devices, applications and digital materials in regular, face-to-face teaching in Finland for several years already. Our current curriculum emphasizes the use of digital material and devices in all subjects strongly. So many of the teachers had some experience of the digital applications also before this. Of course, teachers had very different competences with e-learning and digital aids: some of them had only a little experience with devices and applications, whereas some of them had a lot of experience and very advanced skills with them.
But this current situation forced all the teachers to adapt and learn new skills in a very short time. Considering this, the change happened surprisingly smoothly. Teachers, principals, students and parents have all been amazed, how well distance teaching and studying has worked. To our point of view, a generally strong professional and pedagogical expertise of Finnish teachers has helped a lot in this transition.
