The school year is over and vacation so close

Dear friends, I think after our wonderful meetings in saulkrasti and Trelleborg we really have become friends.doesn’t matter if we haven’t had time to communicate lately but Time to time I rememberour funny stories like ” catrin, come down and say goodbye to your swans…!!! I hope that Annika you have received my letter. What … Continue reading →

Back home again

Dear friends! We are already at home, everything went well, our plane arrived 30 minutes earlier, so we had to wait for the parents at the train stationn. It is spring here in Trelleborg, it is warm and sunny, it was “strange” after a week in “winter” in Saulkrasti. It was quiet in the bus … Continue reading →

And the last school day arrived:(

This is our last working day here at our friends. I am sure that you agree with me, the time flew, we managed to do so many things. Our students have learned a lot, and I mean not only speaking English but about the differences between our countries. They say that we are different but … Continue reading →

First impressions in Saulkrasti

Well, after a very nice flight we arrived in Riga, in the middle of the winter. But the feeling of cold disappeared quickly because we were welcome so friendly and warm. Thank you Gaida for this first impression!🌹Then at school, your birthday cake! Happy birthday once more🌷. The kids were very shy, as expected, but … Continue reading →

Nine Days to Go!

Hello from the cold but sunny Finland! Yesterday we had a special theme day in our school. It was called the Day of Tolerance. We have a day for international cooperation every year and this year we decided to call it the Day of Tolerance. We had a representative from Unicef here to talk to the school and also a member … Continue reading →

Amazing Videos!

Thank you so much for posting the program Gaida! It was so wonderful to see that you had posted today! We will look at the program together with the students next week and talk about it. I think that our students are hoping to get together with their Latvian host and their Swedish friends and … Continue reading →

meeting in Saulkrasti/program

dear ladies, I published the program we managed to put together last week but I really NORDPLUS Project week in Saulkrasti (suggestions by Zvejniekciems team) (March 31 to April 6) March 31st(Sunday) Welcome at school,meeting families( ~t ime?) April 1st(Easter Monday) Meeting at School at 11.00 a.m. Presenting Latvian Easter traditions and activities. (we would … Continue reading →

Making Movies

Today we were making short movies using the Dvolver-site. The Dvolver-site is easy to use and the “movie making process” is very well guided. With Dvolver you can create short animations (2-6 lines lasting about a minute or so) and there are characters and scenes to choose, so all you really have to do is write the lines for the … Continue reading →

Numbers

Hello dear friends, Catrin says there might be a host for 10 Lithuanian students and they have 6 students willing to travel. I think it is a good idea to involve ninth graders, Catrin. Gaida says they have 15 students willing to travel. We have 13 willing to travel. Somehow we have to find a balance with these numbers. … Continue reading →

Updates

Hello my dear friends! So wonderful to see your students posting in the student blog! Our lessons are now on Thursdays and today we were working on the ABCbooks. Some of our students have sent your students invitations to add Latvian translations to their words. We still need email addresses to the Swedish students to … Continue reading →

Two important details!

1. We need to get email addresses for the Latvian and Swedish students in order to invite them into our ABC books and our blog. When you post with the teacher’s username, the students cannot comment individually on our posts. 2. You are allowed to use only your own photos! If you use a photo from … Continue reading →

Travel Arrangements

Dear Friends, We need to have a Skype meeting. Please let me know a suitable time. I will be around for example next Monday and Wednesday afternoon. We have the same time with Latvia, and Sweden is one hour behind us. Please write an email message to me with your time suggestions in Finnish time and … Continue reading →

List of Activities

Here is a list of activities to be done by ALL the students (Finnish, Latvian and Swedish) of Can I Help You Project: 1. Pick a word from a hat. Take a photo to illustrate your word and post it in your blog. Write something about your photo to accompany the image. 2. Pick a place in … Continue reading →

This year’s first lessons

Happy new year to Latvia and Sweden! We started school today in Porvoo and also had this year’s first lessons with our Can I Help You -group. Our local newspaper Vartti has a page for schools and wishes every school to send some photos and texts the students have taken and written. One of our … Continue reading →

Dear friends,

We are looking forward to a very nice and hopeful New year. with our students we were having very nice Xmas celebration, you can see the pictures in our homepage and of course talking about the next year plans. we start our new semester on January 7th. Acccidenatly, after a white xmas the snow is … Continue reading →

ABCbook

We have been working on our own dictionaries, or ABC books, for the last couple of weeks. Swedish and Latvian students will get email messages sometime in January inviting them to participate. Today we are working on Christmas Power Point Presentations to show to the school in our info screen in the lobby during the last … Continue reading →

hello our friends in Sweden.

We are back from our holidays. Have you received our postcards? We sent them a few weeks ago. this week is very special for us because we are going to celebrate the Independence day of our country on November 18 but last weekend on November 11 we remember our solders who fought for the independence … Continue reading →

Postcards from Latvija!

We received postcards from Latvia today! Our students are thrilled!!! We are in the computer room now posting articles about the cards. Thank you so much and happy weekend!

hello dear frie…

hello dear friends. We just created  our blog where we are going to  post our news and photos. We will continue tomorrow. The Internet is too slow today. Gaida

Brainstorming

Next week on Friday we will be on autumn break. So, we will be working on our project again on the Friday two weeks from now. Today we let our students take a break and watch a movie (Wall-E) and spent the double lesson brainstorming about the future activities with the students. 1. We would … Continue reading →

Friendship Book

We received the postcards from Sweden today. The big and fat envelope was waiting for me in my mailbox today when I came to work. It was perfect timing because our Can I Help You? -lesson is from 10-12 on Fridays. When we started our lesson we took some time to talk about the trip … Continue reading →

Age matters?- yes, it does. :)

As I have only year 7 students in English, I thought about including some of my year 8 (Spanish) students into this project group. I meet these kids at least 3 times weekly and they could be a great help for the younger ones. They are also more used to blogging. And, last but not … Continue reading →

How difficult it is to write a postcard…

I don’t know what you think but I am always amazed about the difficulties which may occur while trying to write a postcard or a letter with our students. I am now not only speaking about the language which can be challenging for our year 7 students, but am reflecting on the fact that many … Continue reading →

This is where we live!

Our students wrote posts about our home town in their blog today. I hope you will have a chance to look at them and comment. It was a lot of work for them but in the end they were so proud of their accomplishments. Next week we will be looking at the questions Catrin and her … Continue reading →

Postcards across the sea

Two large envelopes full of postcards are on their way to Latvia and Sweden! We spent this Friday’s double lesson making and writing postcards. Our students liked the idea of celebrating the European Day of Languages this way a lot, thanks for the idea Catrin! Last week we were taking photos around Porvoo and now each … Continue reading →

Out on the town

Since we will not get visitors this year, we decided to go out and photograph our town so that we could tell you about our town in our blog. Last week we tried to list all the important sights and assigned one for each group to photograph. This week we set off to do the … Continue reading →

Blogging – Day Three

This week for our double lesson with the Can I Help You Course we decided to take up a new topic. Katriina and I decided that we will take the kids to town next Friday to take pictures of our home town. We asked the students which  places they would like to show our Latvian … Continue reading →

Blogging – Day Two

  Today we continued working on our student blog. Students opened their posts for editing and added tags and categories in order to make the blog more organized and easy to read. We also added sharing, rating and ‘like’ features, as well as other widgets in the right margin. Some students wanted to write new … Continue reading →

Student Blog Started!

Last Friday we met with our students for the second time. One more girl joined the group, so we are now altogether 15 (13 students and 2 adults). Not all of them will be able to travel though, I’m sure. I had uploaded all the photos from last week into the media library in their … Continue reading →

In the Beginning

Greetings from Porvoo! This is us looking at your way and waving to you from across the sea. Just some small islands in between and a lot of salt water. We are now altogether 14 people. Katriina and I, four boys and eight girls. It is always possible that one or two students will join … Continue reading →

How to Make This Project Happen

Altogether eight schools contacted us about this project: one from Norway, one from Sweden, two from Estonia, and four from Latvia. Initially we thought that it would be difficult to find schools to work with and we were really surprised that we got so many messages. We are constantly looking for schools to work with, so … Continue reading →

Green light!!! YAY!

I have just received a phone call from our headmaster and he said we can proceed with the project and we are going to have a group of students and a double lesson every week for this project next year! So exciting!!! I have to talk to Katriina later today and I will write more … Continue reading →

WOW – What Oh Week!

This week did not turn out as expected, not by a long shot. The major reason for all the things that have happened – and not happened – is the annual influenza peak season that is occuring here at the moment and it has had its effect on our plans directly and indirectly. Let me … Continue reading →

Exciting Times

Six teachers from Latvia and one teacher from Sweden have written to us so far ready to start the project with us. It will be difficult to decide who to work with if we are given the green light to go ahead with the course next week. In the end our only wish for the … Continue reading →

More Ideas for the Upcoming Project

My colleague and I both have eight-graders this year and we would like to have them involved in a project next year, starting from August 2012 and ending in May 2013. We plan to apply for Nordplus Junior funding in order to cover traveling for the students and teachers from three countries, e.g. Finland – … Continue reading →

Getting Started

We are two teachers working in Pääskytie school which is a junior high school situated in the south coast of Finland, about 50 km from Helsinki. We would like to start a project with our students involving students from two other schools abroad. We are currently looking for cooperating teachers from Norway and Estonia/Latvia and … Continue reading →