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 student chose a couple of photos and printed them for their cards. Every student made two cards, so both of your groups will get a card from each of them. Although we were making handmade cards and most of the students wanted to write the texts by hand, the students wanted to use computers when they planned what to write. They have now learned to use web dictionaries and proofreading programs and seemingly find them useful. It was nice to notice that they are already a bit readier and more secure to write and check their texts than they were a month ago. There were hardly any questions about what to write and how to write it in English – they try to do that on their own first. Some students wrote a short message in Finnish too for you to find out. (:
We also read the Swedish Can I Help You -blog together. The students were delighted to hear from you and I guess that your blog was a great motivator to start to make cards for you all in Sweden and Latvia. It is great to notice how committed our students are to this project. They have and share their own ideas of what we could be doing, want to make the blog their own and are willing to put time and effort to make this project work. It is of course very motivating for us teachers to see that this all is important and valued by our students.
We hope that you will be receiving and enjoying the cards next week! We are also eagerly waiting for the Swedish and Latvian cards!
Can I Help You? - Teacher Blog 
Dear Katriina, We just had a meeting with our students who are ready to participate in the project. I showed them your photos and cards. As I don’t teach 9th graders this year I can meet them only after school. We decided that your cards would be very nice start for their friendship. they could choose a card and then write their reply. We can also write by hand and have nice pictures of our place. We won’t be able to do it on Friday because we are having Parents day at school, last Friday was I was on a school trip with my class, so these three weeks have been so busy. But we will manage it. I just wanted to ask if you are having any younger students too ( Except 9th graders)? So far we have no boys in the project. I have to talk to other kids. best regards, Gaida
Date: Sat, 22 Sep 2012 20:56:59 +0000 To: gaidah52@hotmail.com
Hi Gaida! We are working on this project on a course that has been available only for 9th graders and is part of their school timetable. So younger students aren’t able to join the lessons (they are having other lessons at the same time). I and Annika are teaching only 9th graders this year so I’m afraid that there will be only 9th graders with us in Finland.
I however think that it will not be a problem if you and/or Catrin are having younger students as well if you like. It’s great if you are having 9th graders on this project (our students being 9th graders) but maybe it’s fine to have both 9th graders and for example 8th graders working together, they are about the same age anyway? Or what do you think?
We loved to see you “working” on the postcards. We were doing the same – ON THE SAME DAY! :) – on Friday, but we could not finish writing ours. We will continue working on ours on this Friday. But, don’t worry, we did our lesson as well, we are going to post our big envelops today, to both of our partner schools.
We have written a long letter together and decided to put our photos and some questions in it, like: what is the favourite food in your country, when does the school day start, your favourite subjects (1st,2nd,3rd place) etc, and we are hoping to be able to collect all the answers in form of a table, showing similarities and differences among the countries. Our students are really excited about this “research”, they think that it is not only interessant but also important to know much more about each other. They think that we are so different! :) Let us show them how similar we are!
By the end of October I will take over my year 9 English class and maybe I will find some students who are willing to participate in our project and “guide” the younger ones.
And finally, Yes, the European Day of Languages is a good way to be aware of the diversity in Europe. We speak so many different languages, a few of this languages are spoken only by a small population, we are not talking about millions of people; so learning English could be a BRIDGE in the communication, that’s why it is so important to learn it, the practice it, the speak it better and better.
In this sense:
Have a nice day/Ha det bra/qué tengas un buen día/einen schönen Tag nochhauskaa päivän jatkoa/ir jauka diena/miłego dnia……. can you help us
with more??
Btw, this was an idea of our students: could we do a small “dictionary” using google docs? We could begin with some pictures on a ppt and share it with you; together we could write words and common expressions beneath them- such as Good Morning- like an ongoing part of our project. If we find a word which we think is worth putting into our “dictionary- we do it. What do you think?
I love this post and I love your replies! This project is going to be so much fun!!! You know what, I just came back from St. Petersburg last night and just yesterday I was looking at a book in a bookstore there that had the ABCs and a drawing to each letter and I thought to myself that this would be fun to do with Can I Help You: a digital picture book with photos for each letter (a apple, b butter and so on). First we’ll do our Porvoo pictures, and then we have an idea about making a ‘book of friends’ digitally as well, if you remember those booklets little girls have with questions for their friends to fill in, like ‘my name is…’ ‘my favorite food is…’ ‘my least favorite tv show is…’ and so on, and THEN we can do the picture book with ABCs. After commenting on everyone’s work, we just might have the year full by then. :) Working with you is such a joy! :) Thank you ladies!
Annika, I just partly agree with you! :) What we do is not work, it’s called FUN, really, with capital letters! :) it is great fun for both, for the kids and for us. I guess, during our journey together we will experience more and more upcoming ideas, also from our students. It is also interesting to see how similar our “teacher-brain” works.
We are going to do the same, first the Trelleborg pictures because we want to show you also virtually our town, then we would really appreciate if you could answer our questions which are in the envelop and also on the Swedish student site. We will take more pictures during the week, also about our Language Day which is tomorrow, do you have something similar in your schools?
I have one idea more, given the fact that it is raining again here… our kids have always problems with weather description, 4 pictures for the 4 seasons in each of our country with short description of the weather. Differences, similarities? So many things to talk about.
Ok, I will stop now, Good Night and keep up the brain- storming! :)