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Fostering Thinking, Creativity and Learner Participation in and outside the Classroom
Start date: Jul 1, 2014, End date: Jun 30, 2016 PROJECT  FINISHED 

Fostering Thinking, Creativity and Participation in and outside the Classroom. This project was initiated in Kirkonkylä School in response to the need to find new and innovative teaching methods in order to continue to offer the pupils an education which will meet the demands of life in the society of the future. This meant increased internationalisation and also a clear need to increase pupil active participation both in and outside the classroom. The project aimed to achieve its objectives by developing thinking skills in the classroom, making pupils more responsible for their own work and gradually making them more independent lifelong learners. We wanted to learn how to integrate thinking tools and strategies into the teaching of subject content, helping pupils to take more control over their own learning and be able to plan and evaluate themselves. At the same time they should learn to use very valuable tools, strategies and skills for the future, and problem solving should become a positive challenge. To achieve this long-term aim the school concentrated first on professional development and sent one teacher abroad to the TA (Thinking Approach) Group courses, Bringing Creativity and Thinking into the Educational Process, levels 1 and 2, being held in France and Italy respectively. The Special Needs Teacher, who works in cooperation with all the other teachers, and is also responsible for curriculum development in the school, attended these courses. The English teacher, who is already familiar with TA, attended the course, Storyline goes Language Teaching in Glasgow and, as it is a very motivating and active method, she has now used and intends to use it more as a vehicle and context for integrating TA into language teaching. In addition to this, two teachers, the English teacher and the headmistress, took part in a three-day job shadowing in Grafton Primary School in London, as this school uses the Let's Think method in many classes with different subjects, so we were able to observe the method and all the procedures involved in action. All three teachers brought new ideas and methods back to the school, gained experience of other countries and school systems and made international contacts, some of which may form a basis of future partnership projects between different schools in Europe. We already have a class corresponding with a class in Grafton School. The teachers were also able to improve their own foreign language competences and gain the confidence to take part in future projects. The school was particularly interested in the TA course as it had two levels, which gave the teacher time and space to digest and try out what she had learned and which should give her a firm basis from which to start making real and sustained changes in classroom practice. Originally another teacher, who is particularly interested in digital solutions, was to have taken part in the TA courses also, but he was unable to tend for unexpected medical reasons. Because of this the project did not move us as far forward as we had hoped on bringing thinking and computer-based solutions to the classroom. However, we used his two mobilities for the job-shadowing at Grafton Primary School in London and this has proven to be invaluable in helping to see how pupils could become better thinkers and more active in the classroom. We have had staff meetings where we have reported on what we did and saw, and there have been meetings with local language teachers about the Storyline Method. At the TA Conference in Riga in September one teacher made a presentation about how our project has helped us to start implementing the new Finnish curriculum. The aims of our project were long term ones, and only now are beginning to see how we can put much of what we have learned in place. It was ideal that the headmistress herself took part in the job shadowing as she is best able to influence how other teachers might start to change classroom procedures and methods to bring them into line with the new Finnish curriculum , which has very much the same aims as our project.

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