Sari Auramo

Biogram

Sari Auramo is a classroom teacher from Finland with 30 years of experience. She lives and works in Mäntsälä, southern Finland. Sari teaches in Riihenmäki school with grades 1-9. She focuses on the students and their individual needs, but has also worked as an ict coordinator in her town as well as an eTwinning ambassador for the Finnish Board of education.  She is constantly looking of effective ways of teaching and shares her experiences with other teachers.  Sari has a lot of experience  both in Finland and in other European countries as a trainer related to topics like information technology, international projects between schools and school development.

The local implementation of the curriculum in Finland

The Finnish core curriculum for basic education was renewed in 2014. Changes were made to the distribution on lesson hours, as the schools were to move one weekly lesson hour of language teaching from lower secondary school to primary school. How did this affect the language teaching? 

Finland has two official languages. Pupils start their language studies at the beginning of third grade at the latest. For Finnish-speaking pupils (almost 90 % of all pupils), the first language to be studied is usually English. For Swedish-speaking Finns, the first language is Finnish. More languages are added later during the school years.

But how is the teaching of languages organized? Even though the basics of the curriculum determine the boundary conditions for teaching, the municipalities have the power to decide on local implementation methods. Each teacher also can choose the ways in which she teaches, as the professionalism of trained teachers is trusted.

I will talk about the history and present of the language teaching in Finland and will also take a peek in the future.

How it’s done in Finland?

I have been a teacher in Finland for 30 years. I have taught English and Swedish to hundreds of students. During my presentation I will welcome you to join my English lesson! I will introduce different teaching practices, working methods and practical solutions I use. You will hear about real-life examples, including group work, listening and speaking exercises, games, international partners in learning etc. I will show what kind of books we use and also the online material provided by the book publishers, as well as all the other material we use.

The pupils are all individuals. It’s a challenge to find the best way of helping each of them to learn. I’m always trying to find new ways of doing that. At the same time I find some old methods to still have their place in my lessons.