Glimpses of our school year in pictures!

Here's a link to a recent posting in our school blog, you don't need to know Finnish to check it out, since it's all about photos.

Click here to take a look at some moments from our school year 2015-2016!

Vanhankaupunginkoski in Helsinki (now that is a long word!). It's such a beautiful place to walk around!

Skating and skiing

A big part of our study programme covers learning about Finnish society, culture and the way of life. For this reason we have had several field trips, and there are still quite a few more to come before the term finishes at the beginning of June.

What we Finns are passionate about is winter sports. Everybody skis, skates and enjoys wintery sports of some sorts. The students were excited to have a go at skates and skis. Helsinki City offers excellent, I mean really excellent sport facilities to young people aged 17-29. The programme offers 49 different sports for free! My colleague and I were happy to take our students skating within this programme.  Off we went to an indoor ice rink! The city even provides two instructors to instruct the skaters, how great is that!

Another great field trip took place in the skiing tracks of Paloheinä in Helsinki. Unfortunately, it was the only cloudy day of that week, but nevertheless, it was simply fantastic! The students had their first experiences on cross country skiing and they loved it. Many local skiers approached them and wanted to learn more about them. What a great way to interact with the locals!

A study programme for immigrants aged 17–25 without school leaving certificate

A new term is about to start in our school! This week we’ll be interviewing and choosing new students to our study programme which is officially called instruction for preparing for basic education. Basically it is a one-year-programme for young adults aged between 17-25 who have recently arrived in Finland and who don’t have a school leaving certificate from their home countries. They don’t need to have previous knowledge of Finnish but they need to be literate (if they aren’t, we also have courses for illiterate adult immigrants). I think this is an excellent opportunity for a young adult to start a new chapter in his or her life in a new country by learning the language, getting to know how the new society works and exploring what options there are for the future. We also have a strong emphasis on developing each student’s learning skills and helping them to find their true potential as learners. 

This is, in brief, what their their school year is made of:

• Finnish studies: starting level 0, target level A1.3-A2.2
• preparatory courses in mathematics
• preparatory courses in natural sciences
• preparatory courses in social studies
• preparatory courses in English
• fine arts
• field trips
• ICT-skills 
• introduction to the Finnish school system with the focus on the students’ own interests and study plans

I’m running out of superlatives when thinking about the students who completed the programme last May. I’m also so very pleased that they all are now carrying on with their studies, which means they reached the language level required for entering the basic education for adults. This is fantastic news given the fact that most of them started the term last September with little or no knowledge of the Finnish language. I was happy to see their skills develop in so many ways during the school year.

Before starting to write about this up-coming term, here are a few highlights of the last weeks of May with my highly motivated students I had the privilege to work with for the entire school year. I wish them all the best and all the happiness in the world!

Getting a hands-on experience on how to prepare Finnish bun at Fazer. 

Learning about the biggest chocolate factory in Finland.

Ending the tour with our goodie bags.

Learning about underwater world in Sea Life.

The students practised theme-related vocabulary on Quizlet before the field trip.

Celebrating and saying farewells at the end of the school year.