Teach Like Finland: 33 Simple Strategies for Joyful Classrooms pdfdrive com

particular books being discussed. I remember seeing, at least once, a student
lending her classmate the book she had just described in her presentation. My

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lending her classmate the book she had just described in her presentation. My
students were inspiring one another to learn more, which was something that
brought me a lot of joy.
Reserving time for my students to publicly present their learning gave their
work—reading their books carefully and writing insightful reports—greater
purpose. Many of my students saw their book talks as opportunities to
recommend their books to their classmates, or warn them in advance. Perhaps
my favorite part about book talks was that it seemed to bring our classroom
closer together as learners. My students were teaching and learning from one
another, and that element of celebrating their work seemed to strengthen their
sense of belonging.
Here are some other ideas for celebrating the learning:
• You can reserve a few minutes, at the end of a writing lesson, to have
several students read their pieces (such as stories or poems) to the class.
During my last year of teaching in Boston, I implemented this routine in our
writer’s workshop, and my first and second graders loved it—it brought
them closer together as learners and motivated them to produce higher-
quality drafts during class.
• Your classroom could host an evening for the school community, in which
they exhibit their work. While I’ve seen large exhibition nights at schools,
which tend to require many hours on behalf of students and teachers, I think
smaller-scale productions can work well, too. In her 2002 book Reading
With Meaning, American teacher Debbie Miller describes her first grade
classroom’s Coffeehouse Poetry Day:
The muted trumpet of Miles Davis plays on the CD player, floating
among the voices in the crowded classroom. Hot chocolate simmers in
the PTA’s relic of a coffeepot; a mountain of miniature marshmallows
fills a bowl nearby. Long rolls of deep blue paper decorated with . . .
crescent moons cover the windows and darken the room. Table lamps
and tiny white lights draped from the ceiling provide the only light.
Freshly scrubbed tables are rearranged into cozy groups of two.
Handmade flowers in tiny clay pots, poetry books, bowls of pretzels, and
small containers of words from magnetic poetry kits have replaced
crayons, markers, scissors, sticky notes, pencils, and glue.
Parents and children sit together, munching pretzels and sipping
steamy hot chocolate in mugs brought from home, reading poetry by the
likes of Eloise Greenfield, Maya Angelou, Aileen Fisher, Jane Yolen,
Valerie Worth, and Georgia Heard. But the poems receiving the most

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Valerie Worth, and Georgia Heard. But the poems receiving the most
enthusiastic reviews? They’re the ones written by the children
themselves, published and bound into books with enough copies for
everyone. (p. 74)
• To celebrate the learning of your students, you can set up a class blog.
While this initiative could work well for any age group, I think it’s
especially meaningful to older students, who have the possibility of sharing
ownership with the teacher.
In the simplest terms, a good celebration of learning is a pause to give thanks,
communally, for the good work of the children.