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

particular area of sustainable development as our final unit. I wish there had
been more time in the school year, because my students were buzzing with ideas
as we designed our study. Originally, we talked about the idea of purchasing
solar panels for classroom use. (One of my sixth graders, I remember, even
provided me with a price quote he had found online.)
In the end, we decided to do something quite modest. My class would invite
the teacher who was overseeing the school’s solar energy initiative to a
presentation in our classroom. My students would share their learning about
solar panels with this teacher, with the intent of teaching this “expert” something
new. We also allocated time to hear more about our school’s project from my
colleague. And as something fun, my students planned to design a Kahoot! quiz
(based on the content of their presentation) as a way to better engage their
audience, which would include several younger students accompanied by my
colleague.
Because it was the very end of the school year, I remember that we only had
a couple of weeks (only about four classroom hours) to prepare. But my ethics
students, in that short period of time, continued to prove to me the instructional
value of coplanning. During the preparation phase, I saw their level of
motivation increase, along with their level of interest and their commitment to
high-quality work. Presenting on solar panels wasn’t a graded project, but I saw
my small group of ten sixth graders working harder than I had ever seen them
work on graded group work.
The first thing we did as a class—after we decided on the basic components

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The first thing we did as a class—after we decided on the basic components
of that day—was briefly design an outline for the slideshow (based on my
students’ questions about solar panels). Once we had this basic framework, my
sixth graders started to research their questions in small groups, using their
smartphones. Our class computer was used primarily to prepare the slideshow,
an effort led by a couple of students. As they started the first draft of the
presentation, they displayed it on the screen at the front of our classroom, so that
everyone in the classroom could see their progress. I remember a couple of my
students, without my recommendation or direction, uploaded their slideshow
presentation to Google Drive and began sharing it with one another, as a way to
collaborate outside of school. It wasn’t homework, but they saw their
presentation as important enough to make it their homework. As you’d expect, I
felt pretty happy.
When the day of the presentation rolled around, my students were ready. As
they took turns sharing their learning in front of my colleague and her class, their
ownership was clear. They spoke articulately and passionately about solar
energy. And when my colleague told my students more about our school’s
project, it felt like a refreshing exchange of learning. The icing on the cake was
the fun, student-designed Kahoot! quiz after the presentation.
There are so many ways to do coplanning. What matters most is that teachers
carve out time before launching a unit or a project, to discuss the direction of the
learning with their students, and then draw upon that discussion to shape the unit
or project.
Throughout my teaching career, I’ve sometimes wielded a popular
instructional strategy called a KWL chart, developed by Donna Ogle in the
1980s, to kick off units of study, but I admit that I’ve often treated this exercise
more as an obligation than something that has the potential to significantly
impact learning during the unit. A teacher uses a KWL chart to write down
(typically on a piece of chart paper or poster board divided into three columns)
what students know already about a particular curriculum-related subject, what
they want to know about it, and then, once the unit kicks off, what students have
learned about that topic. (The KWL strategy can be used with stand-alone
lessons, too.) Here’s an example of how a KWL chart can appear:
Things I know about: _________________
Things I want to know about: _________________
Things I learned about: _________________
A KWL chart is a sensible way of building background knowledge and

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helping students see how they’ve grown in their knowledge, but the problem
I’ve had with KWL charts lies in the middle column. Often my students would
share earnestly what they want to know about a particular curriculum-related
subject, such as water or the life cycle of an animal, but ultimately these specific
areas of interest recorded on the KWL chart are not used to impact the direction
of the unit in any meaningful way. Perhaps the middle column is useful because
it gets kids excited to learn something new, but I think students benefit from
having more ownership in the planning process. As teachers who want to coplan,
we need to put more of an emphasis on the question, what do you want to know?
Years ago I attended a week-long institute on the subject of differentiated
instruction, led by Carol Ann Tomlinson at the University of Virginia, and I’ll
never forget what happened before it started. The evening before the kickoff, all
of the participants gathered in an auditorium, and we were divided into small
groups, facilitated by the university’s graduate students. Those facilitators
invited us to share our interests regarding differentiated instruction, and they
furiously wrote them down on pieces of chart paper in different corners of the
auditorium.
As I was returning to my hotel, I spotted Tomlinson outside of the
auditorium clutching those rolled-up sheets of chart paper, and I imagined that
she was on her way home, where she would spread out those pieces of paper on
her kitchen table and study our feedback that same evening. Despite having
taught this institute numerous times before, Tomlinson signaled that she wanted
to let us, the “students,” shape the learning of that entire week. That’s
coplanning, where students are given a voice, and then their feedback is used to
impact the direction of learning.