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

Offer choices
While the experiment of Independent Learning Week was successful (in the
sense that all of my students completed their work), it had one major flaw: my
Helsinki fifth graders lacked choices. I could argue that my students had lots of
freedom during Independent Learning Week because they could choose when to
complete any given assignment during those fifteen classroom hours. But I don’t
think that argument would have satisfied many of my fifth graders.
Sitting in a circle on the floor, after completing Independent Learning Week,
I heard their feedback loud and clear. Many of my students felt that too much
work was assigned, especially in math. Not only that, but some of them also
complained that the week’s tasks felt irrelevant and boring.
Their feedback was valuable, but I admit that it wasn’t nice to hear. I wanted
to focus on the positive side (everyone eventually finished the mountain of
work!). But what seemed most important to dwell on—to many of my Helsinki
fifth graders, at least—was the major flaw they perceived in the Independent
Learning Week: a lack of good choices.
I found myself agreeing with their critique. By assigning everyone the same
boatload of tasks, Independent Learning Week had failed to account for their
individual learning strengths and interests. For that reason, my students weren’t
offered good choices. They were simply following my orders, aligned with the
curriculum.
After that experience, I felt reluctant to try Independent Learning Week
again. I knew it wasn’t a catastrophe—my students had worked autonomously
and found success—but I sensed that doing it again (and doing it better) would

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require a significant shift. If I was going to offer them good choices, I’d need to
do a better job of connecting their interests to the curriculum (something I
discuss later). In hindsight, most assignments of the Independent Learning Week
were rigid and intentionally manageable for both teachers and students, like the
task of completing math problems from a workbook. There was little room for
students to exercise choice while working.
During my meeting with a small group of Finnish kindergarten educators at
Niirala Preschool in Kuopio, Finland, they suggested that their primary job, as
teachers, is to make the connection between student interests and the curriculum.
They explained that, in order to facilitate this convergence, they need to identify
the interests of their students first, so observing children and discussing their
interests is always a priority in their classrooms. One of these Finnish educators
remarked that if a child showed interest in Angry Birds, a teacher could leverage
this fascination in the classroom. Initially, it seemed like a stretch of the
imagination, but I decided to bite my tongue. At the end of the meeting I asked
her about this idea of connecting a child’s interest in Angry Birds to the
curriculum. I wanted concrete examples. Gleefully, these three kindergarten
educators suggested different possibilities: categorizing, counting, naming, story
building, role-playing . . . they could have continued to rattle off different
curriculum-related exercises, but I playfully shouted, Enough!
Those Finnish kindergarten educators had made it seem incredibly simple:
get to know your students’ passions, make curricular connections, and then offer
interesting choices to them. Although they instruct five-, six-, and seven-year-
old children, I think this approach is wise for teachers at all age levels. We need
to know the curricula well, as teachers, but we need to know the interests of our
students, too, if we’re committed to offering meaningful, interesting work in our
classrooms. Too often in my teaching, I think I’ve neglected to identify the
interests of all of my students—and that’s the first step.
One simple way of connecting student interests with the curriculum, I’ve
discovered, is providing tasks that are more open-ended. For example, instead of
assigning the same book for everyone to report on, I allowed my Helsinki
students to choose their own books of interest and present their learning through
a poster, a slideshow, or a website. They’d still need to demonstrate their
understanding of literary elements (the curriculum), but they would maintain
significant flexibility as they worked.
During my second year of teaching in Finland, my principal and I tried
something new in history class. (It’s common in Finland for principals to have a
couple hours of teaching each week, by the way.) We invited the students—then
sixth graders—to generate “juicy questions” in light of our current Finnish

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history unit. For inspiration, we encouraged them to flip through their readings
and their notes. My students knew, from a previous study, that a juicy question
differs from any old question, because it’s a query that requires solid research
and sound reasoning. Typically, it begins with why or how. Once students had
developed a list of juicy questions—such as, why did it take so long for bronze
to arrive in Finland?—my principal and I gave them the green light to circulate
around the classroom and share their questions with one another. Their task was
to find classmates who shared an interest in investigating a particular juicy
question.
As these small groups formed, my principal and I met with each group to
look at its juicy question, just to see if any tweaking was needed. Once small
groups received our approval, they began researching their questions for the
purpose of creating a large concept map with their findings. Later, they
presented these posters. This history project wasn’t fancy, but I think it
represented a decent connection between student interests and the curriculum,
and our students seemed to enjoy it.
Providing our students with interesting curricular activities (as suggested by
the Finnish early childhood educators) or open-ended assignments with built-in
choices (like the Finnish history project) is a good step for promoting student
autonomy in the classroom. But those strategies—in my opinion—don’t
compare with one simple, powerful gesture: planning with students.