Christmas over here

Hi, this is Juergen again.
I would like to invite you to have a look at our christmas videos. Minna from Maininki school asked me to do some video recordings, in order to show, how christmas is like over here.
Our video shoes, that the climate has really changed. The only hint, that there might be cold temperatures is my scarf.
But after our recordings I got very cold of the rain. Enjoy our impressions, enjoy our ´crazy´ songs. Juergen

the game

As you can see in the picture, we have continued to work on a climate puzzle game.
The elder pupils worked on the lay out and the younger pupils worked on the game itself. The main idea of the game is to reach to goal together and - to get ridd of the hinderstones on the way to the goal. Whenever one of the participants reaches a hinderstone he has to take a card, where there are tasks, concerning the climate.
There are two kinds of cards - the more or less social ones and the ´global´ones.
The social ones are also with a lot of music. So it is a game where there is a lot of music in between. The songs for the game are listed up and we are working on a CD with playbacks right now. - It would be great if our partnerschools would give this game a try. It is called malefitz upside-down and it strengthens the empathy and the awareness of the climate changes in a very easy way.

Our project in the public

Last wednesday Steffi and I went to Lueneburg. We were invited to show our project at a ´market place´ for the diversity of running Comenius projects.
Here are some pictures about it. There were lots of visitors and I had to talk a lot about Comenius and our present work on the project.

Evening all!!

Today, Moorfield had a special visitor today..a person from Finland!! After my radio request, someone managed to contact me and I asked her to come into our school and talk about Finland and culture. Here are the pics from her visit..

Ruth x

Ruth is a superstar!

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to get on our local radio station! Radio Merseyside! I was interviewed at lunchtime, live on air, and asked about the Comenius project etc. This was a brillant chance for me to promote our project and to let the local community know what we are doing at Moorfield School. As a result of this, we now have a Finnish student who will come into our school to teach the children phrases and songs..so I am looking forward to this!

Lets see what the future brings..

Bye!

Schluss mit dem Wetter

a song from the musical Chess - with a german weathertext.

What´s the name of the game

Hi, on tuesday we tried to work on our idea - to create a new game. Here you can have a look into the process of developing the basic ideas. Learning by doing - during the religion lessons. Greetings Juergen



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bH6SIxR7g5M

Comenius Interviews

Hi - on friday we had a Comenius Day in grade 5b. We collected all we did since school started and made some interviews. As you may see in the background - we read the letters from the pupils from Maininki school. The answers are on the way. I hope you will enjoy the package, you will get next week. Greetings Juergen

a new start in grade 5

Today we started a very big project with our new pupils in grade 5. As you see in the picture, we collected all letters from Espoo maininki school in order to answer them with our pupils.
The summer has turned back and we made a long distance walk to the lake in Oerel. We walked about 15 km and had lunch in our Café Pause. Pupils and teachers were very tired after walking round about 6 hours. What a luck we had that Juergen could phone Helmuth (our brand new school diakon) he brewed some coffee and visited us at picnick time. Enjoy the pictures !

our last summer

Hi all over europe!
Summer time - actually it is very hot over here in germany - and we started working again at Hauptschule Bremervörde.
Right now I am working on a kind of medley: - Oh, Champs Elysées / Our last summer (Abba),
All you need is love (Beatles) and soi, soi, soi - Finnland (even though it is not spring over here!)
We got a good feed-back from our local agency and we are looking forward to join all of you in germany next spring (february) to have a workshop and a consert together with the pupils from Maininki School.
I found a nice video that shows how to play "Oh Champs Elysées" and I think, that - creating a medley with different parts of music from europe might be nice.

canooing on the river Oste

Today we made a 30 km trip with canots on the river Oste. It was meant to be a trip to encourage our social climate. It took 6 hours with nearly no break.

Breaks in the school

Our lessons last forty-five minutes. After the lesson there is a fifteen minute break.
Usually breaks are for talking and hanging out with friends.
We have one lunch break during the school day. That lasts about half an hour.
In the corridors there are chairs and tables where you can do your homework. (You should do them at home ;) )
At our school there is also a little canteen where you can drink coffee, cocoa, tea, et cetera.

(Juulia)

My school

Maininki is a very nice school. The teachers are friendly and helpful. They really know what they’re talking about. We have many different cultures in our school. I really like that because it helps to understand different people. We have lots of subjects and classes.
Here in Maininki we have a free lunch. We don’t have uniforms.
If someone bullies another pupil, teachers try to stop that as soon as possible. We have very clear rules in our school.
School days are quite long in secondary school. Luckily we have a snack at two o’clock.

(Iina)

Lessons (Maininki)

Lessons are 45 minutes but, sometimes lessons are 60 minutes because students can be behave badly.
We write and work in groups during the lessons. And sometimes we watch videos and DVDs.

(Juhani)

Maininki school

At Maininki school there are people from different cultures. They come from around the world, but most of us are Finnish of course. It's fun and interesting to get to know different cultures from different kinds of people.

Here in Finland school days can be very different. Sometimes we come to school at eight o'clock and occasionally even at twelve o'clock. School days usually end between one and four o'clock.

Languages that we study here in Maininki school are Finnish, English and Swedish. Optional languages in our school are French and those languages that the immigrants study, like Chinese, Vietnamese, Russian and Kurdish. The others subjects that we study are math, history, biology, physics and chemistry, home economics, P.E, art, craft and some other subjects too.

The lessons are 45 minutes long. Breaks are 15 minutes and they are between every lesson. The lunch break is 30 minutes, once a day. The lunch is free and good.

(Saara)

My school's teachers (Maininki)

Our school's teachers are very good at teaching. They are well trained. Every teacher has her/his own way of teaching pupils and they have their own classrooms. In secondary school the teachers teach only one or two subjects. They are funny and relaxed sometimes and sometimes they make their own tests. Our teachers have good sense of humor. There are about fifty teachers in our school. Fifteen of them are men and the others are women. Four of the teachers teach English. Two of them also teach Swedish. The teachers like their pupils.

By Leila, Sini and Kai-Ling

Maininki school lunch

Our lunch time is 11.45 or 10.45. Our school cafeteria is called ‘Merimajakka’.
In the school cafeteria there is always a big line before us, and that is very irritating.
Pasta and mincemeat are really good with ketchup but we don’t usually have that.
We seldom have tortillas. We never have good fillings for it.
Salmon is good and we also have it in this school.
Usually we have pork pot. It tastes very bad.
School’s soups are not really good but we always have fruits at the same time.
At Xmas we have special food. Usually it is fish, ham and casseroles.

(Jere)

Excursion to the lake

today, me and my pupils from grade 7 made a long distance walk (6km each direction) to the lake in Oerel. Somebody counted the steps - approximately more than 6500 footsteps in each direction.
We had a look at possible animal population the day before - in the internet and of course in our book. At first it seemed as if there were no more animals in the lake. We prepared a special means of watching under water. So we were able to take a lot of 'underwater images' - Elisa and Fabian made a filmclip which will be posted via youtube soon. Today I am very pleased to show some of our pictures. When our way back was nearly at its end - a couple of boys saw a snake directly on the way. - But the little one wasn't dangerous. Greetings Jürgen

Singing in the Rain day

A couple of weeks ago, the younger children in our school had a "Singing in the Rain" day. They all had to wear their wellies and some children brought their umbrellas! It didnt rain...they wished it had of been raining! They watchedn a clip from the Singing in the Rain (the film) and learned the famous song!

Enjoy our pictures..

Ruth