Week 15 11/04/11 – 17/04/11

Looking back at my exams in January I found it difficult to get accustomed to a new culture and lifestyle (and temperature) whilst revising for my exams.  It was no problem to take the exams here, in fact because of the time difference I preferred it, I did not have to get up for an exam at 9.30 am but instead 11.30 am which was much easier to do after a gradual start to the day.  It was impossible to take everything I needed to revise for the exams but making revision notes and taking over PowerPoints worked fine.  The hardest part was getting all my assignments done and handed in in hard copy before the college closed for Christmas, yet this meant I had more time to create revision notes, prepare for leaving and have more of a Christmas holiday, which I liked.

This week ended my placement.  The school placement was in Turku International School which, I feel, helped develop my skills of teaching EAL students.  However there is not a lot of differentiation in Finnish schools which I don not really like as some pupils could be pushed and achieve more however this does not happen which is unfortunate.  However my favourite thing about the Finnish school systems is that teachers are just left to teach.  When I think of the schools back in the UK, teachers are always scrutinized and made to do a lot of paper work.  There needs to be a balance between teachers’ work life and personal life.  Especially on School Based Work which seems that there is a lot of work outside the classroom with a large amount of lesson plans, resources, units of work, etc. however there is much less work on the students behalf.  There is still a need for lesson plans and resources however the curriculum is the unit of work for the year.  However the work for other classes and the school placement is still quite a lot.

On a more cultural note, the spring has arrived.  After the longest winter season I have ever experienced (the snow arrived in November and is finally starting to go away), I have been treated to double figures in positive degrees Celsius.  However after the long dark winter everyone comes out to enjoy the weather and the town centre is very busy and crowded, but there is also a market now and a change to see things I never thought I would miss, like green grass and road markings.