Finland 2017 Participant Robin Busk shares her and her deaf students experience collaborating with a Finnish teacher and her class.
"Our class objective was to share cultural differences and exchange language events from October 2017 to May 2018 for the CORE curriculum under World Knowledge. My contact was Noora Rautio at Veikkolan koulu, Kirkkonummi. Since both classes were learning English, my deaf students and her language students, it was fun exchanging via Google Drive events each month from our classrooms. They learned about Utah and we learned about Finland. We ended up with so many videos and photos each month, that out final video is just a summary of some of the events shared. My students talked about Halloween and Valentine's Day. Finnish students talked about their 100th anniversary Dec. 2017, Easter, and May Day. The long term project was so motivating for my students. It encouraged them to think outside the box. They wrote letters. We had so many letters we had to bind copies in a booklet to save them so we could share with parents. Last the students wrote a book titled, A is for America, as a final hard bound book to send to Finland as the end of the school year as a thank you. My students really enjoyed seeing students from another world. We used the month of December to celebrate Finland and learned all we could about their weather, economy, words, and music. We did reindeer races in the dark to simulate the sunlight at the arctic circle, we wrote a nonfiction reindeer research book, we recycled lunch room garbage, we labeled areas of our classroom with Finnish words, we tasted Finnish foods, and invited a Finnish special speaker to share customs. We had a great time."