Els nostres alumnes d’Erasmus+ a Finlàndia ja estan de tornada. En breu ens posaran els seus comentaris a la nostra Web.
The activities were, among a lot of them:
Tuesday 26th
In the afternoon, keeping with Finnish ideals of outdoor pursuits, students and teachers trekked up the 2km uphill trail to Saukkovaara hill which we were told meant Otter Slope. This was a local hub for winter sports and students hiked up through beautiful forest scenes and pure fresh air to the very top, where 2 hours were dedicated to sledging, snow shoeing and Nordic Skiing, interrupted by using the giant firepit area to cook traditional Finnish snacks of Sausages, Marshmallows and pancakes with Jam. For some of the students this was their first experience seeing such a large amount of snow, and they quickly acclimatised to participate in pulling sledge races and sliding down the long expanse of snow, making new friends.
Wednesday 27th February
The Finnish students and staff explained that the weather of 2 degrees was very unseasonal and as bits of snow began to melt the students set about their first experience of ice fishing. Students were shown how to drill a hole in the ice. This was about a metre high and made of metal – the ice looked to be around 40cms thick – in places where there were pockets of water in the middle of the ice. Two groups of students – from France and from Spain- managed to catch a fish which to the student’s surprise was quite small. They were able to cook it and ate it with some meatballs accompanied by salad and smashed potato.
After that we went to the sotkamo’s highway school and the sport academy.
After around an hour outside in the cold, students were introduced to some Finnish ball games in the warm gym. The Finnish game was called ‘spit and fire’ where students were split into two teams, some people were allocated to opposite sides of the gym and would throw balls at the enemy team. Once you were hit by the ball you were no longer in the game, but you could run into the other side to kill off enemy team members.
The English students tried to explain the PE favourite ‘dodgeball’ to other students with mixed success. In Romania, their game was similar to the Finnish too.
After eating a delicious lunch of meatballs, we were transported to Sokomo High School to learn more about their school system and especially their sports . The high school has been open for approximately 60 years and welcomes students from 70 different parts of Finland and even different countries. Their core values are in order:
- Wellbeing of the students
- Students come first
- Participation
- Having a safe and positive environment.
Like many Finnish schools, there is a small student body, although it did have a boarding section. With 350 students, we were impressed to learn that there were 75 different courses available to students who all follow a personalised curriculum, designed around the students and their strengths. The only academic requirement is that by age 18 students should have taken 4 compulsory subjects.
Thursday 28th February
After another healthy school lunch (this time chicken, rice and salad) we moved onto the first activity of the afternoon. Students and teachers had been asked to present information about their schools in terms of how active we are and consider what we could do to make the school day more active. Finland described the tests they do with 8th grade students – they are timed climbing the school stairs and they then calculate the amount of power using mass, height and gravitational pull divided by time. The English students and teachers described how they have a fitness studio and yoga on offer to all students outside of curriculum time, they looked at their school specific scholarship programmes and compared the number of hours a week BTC sports do with compulsory PE lessons. Evie and Kai came up with some thoughtful suggestions to make students more active eg, replace the 20 minute form period time with some exercise or cycling or encourage walking in the local area. The French teams presented information about the different sports on offer at their schools.
As snack time approached, all of the groups from different countries set about preparing healthy snacks from our countries.
Team Spain / Catalan
The Spanish team originate from a culinary section of their school, and lead by Carlos Porta, they set the bar incredibly high. Andrei and Irene made gazpacho soup from fresh ingredients: It included tomatoes, cucumber, pepper, onions, almonds, vinegar, parsley, olive oil and bread – elements of food at the heart of the Mediterranean diet.
Team England
Using only oats, walnuts and banana, Kai and Evie made healthy oatmeal cookies without using any sugars.
Team France
Using patés and specialities from different regions, the French teams created some sweet and savoury toasts on healthy breads – using a mixture of milk and jam combined as well as chestnuts and milk as a kind of sugary spread.
Team Romania
The students and staff created a variety of snacks eaten in Romania: Zacusca – tomatoes, onions, peppers and aubergine, untura, pate and spreadable cheese with avocado salad.
Team Finland
Our hosts created unleavened bread rolls – which was a variation of a sandwich, using ham with butter or cream cheese and some salads. They also made a berry stripe – using berries mashed into a liquid, combined with a vanilla sauce made with vanilla, curd, sugar and bran.
When all of the snacks were assembled, students and staff set about trying the different.
What the students said:
‘Its been great making new friends from around Europe – I’ve enjoyed trying new experiences and exploring lots of different cultures.
Snow sculpture competition
After a day of work we went to outdoors to participate in a fun contest: The best snow sculpture will get the price (at the end was a price for every participant). It was a lot of fun wieving all the students to try their best building their snow sculpture. They weren’t always the typical snow man, but a very elaborate constructions. It was really a snow team working¡.
In spite of the cold they did a good job.
Kindergarten visit
We have visited the kindergarten part of the school. It has been very nice to know how they treat the little ones, how interested they were about our group and how they like their school and teachers. How nice was to realize that we were really expected among them¡.
One interesting activity is pretending the students were teachers. So the kids were taught some words in different languages, Spanish, Catalan, French and Romanian, even Chinese!.
Today we Have been teaching kindergartens many Spanish chinos Franco and Romanian words
Then we went to lunch and after we went by bus to the kajaani university of aplica sciences.
Then we went by bus at an activity placer where we did different interactive sports and where Carlos had been named the shadow master.
After we went with some Finish and Romanian to eat something at an Italian restaurant.
At the end we went to Agen by bus to the bowling center were we had a great time and at 16:45 we went by bus to our family homes.
