Ǻs Ungdomsskole

On September 12, 2008, I visited Ǻs Ungdomsskole, thanks to a former Fulbright to the US, Renate. She set up a half day of observing 8-10th grade English classes. The school is about a 35 minute train ride outside of Oslo and has around 400 students. The students are then further divided by grade level, approximately 135 per grade, and then in teams, base, of approximately 45 students. Each team has two teachers who are work (teach their classes, to parent-teacher conferences, etc.) with them for the entire three years they are in the school. Those teachers loop with the students. If a teacher does not loop it is because he/she teaches a specialized subject like art or due to changes in teaching assignments. There is a leader who is in charge of the teams at each grade level. This person is in charge of scheduling, in particularly finding class coverage for teacher absences.

The school day starts at 8:30 and goes until 2:00. The students are given two 15 minute breaks and one ½ hour lunch break. During this time they are mostly unsupervised, there are about 5 teachers who walk around and monitor specific areas of the campus, but they are not as visible as the teachers in the US and students are not herded into specified areas. Most students during this free time sit in the halls and listen to music and talk; go to the Cantina, the cafeteria, for a snack; or go outside. The teachers who monitor wear bright yellow vests that look almost like a traffic controller. A couple of things I noticed that you would probably not see in US schools were small groups of students sitting with IPODs and their speakers in the hall way listening to music and kids swearing in English (even using fu--) and it’s not an issue.

The first class I went to was an 8th grade English class. Anna taught this class. She seemed to be in her mid-50’s (though I find Norwegians generally look younger than they really are) and she has spent time teaching in the US (in Texas) and in Scotland. She conducted the entire lesson in English and only a twice used a Norwegian phrase to help students translate an idea into English. The students were reading a play out of their textbooks about a mean teacher. There was a line, “You’re not indelible.” The student reading this part stumbled, and I thought to myself how many US 8th graders would stumble on that as well?! All the students have brown paper book covers on their books. They all had some sort of backpack or bag that contained their books for the first part of the day. Their notebooks have lines in them, but are smaller in size. They are most similar to composition books in the US; however they are paperback and are a bit more square so they are a bit shorter in length. The desks were actually small square tables with chairs and were placed in three rows of two. This configuration was the same in all 3 classrooms I visited:

There was nothing hanging on the walls. The furniture looked like it came from IKEA. Everything had clean lines, light colored wood, and metal. The windows were big and did not have window coverings of any kind on them. There was no teacher’s desk. The teacher’s have an office in another part of the room, a large room with 6-8 teacher’s desk. The main part of the day was orally reading the play. Since the 8th graders have all come from different schools, not all of them had similar training in English. Today some students who had never read plays aloud struggled with the role of the narrator, or forteller. Only one student read the words with appropriate expression. The teacher called by name on different students to read different portions of the play. After they had completed orally reading the play, the teacher had the students begin the first of 5 activities that they would do with the play (though they only got to the first 3 before time ran out): key words, mind map, timeline, venn diagram, and spool text. I was familiar with all of them but spool text of which the teacher told me it came from California. I googled it but couldn’t find anything about it. Since it was one of the last ones, I still don’t know what it is. After the reading Anna, the teacher, asked the students to write down key words from the story and then close their books and summarize the story to their neighbor using those key words. She walked around and listened to conversations as they students worked. After that, the students were asked to create a mind map using some of the key words and anything additional they would like to add. She started them off with possible central ideas as spelling, Matilda, and the teacher. After 5-7 minutes, Anna asked the students to create a timeline of the story. She told them that next week their homework would be to prepare to write about their summer holiday and that they may find these strategies helpful as they write their stories. In class, they will only be allowed to use a dictionary and whichever prewriting strategy they choose. They will then in class actually write the story. She began the timeline for them by having 3 students volunteer events to be placed on the timeline. It was then time to begin Math. Anna immediately switched to speaking in Norwegian and the students had a few minutes to put their English books away and get ready for math. Several students walked out of the classroom to get books and came directly back, some students walked over to other tables. This was when I left and went to the next class I was observing.

The one difference in this class that was not in the others was a bilingual teacher who sat with a Filipino student. The teacher, who herself was Filipino, sat next to this student the whole time and helped translate. However, in talking with her later she said that this student does the best in English class because she had quite a bit in the Philippines, but struggles more in the content areas in which they speak Norwegian. This student has only been in the country for a year. The bilingual teacher has a case-load. Two days before school starts (this year it started on August 20) the family, the student, and the teachers sit down and create a plan for the student. There are times when a student might be pulled out of the class to be given instruction on the language and other times the bilingual teacher (which is actually a misnomer because this woman speaks a minimum of 4 languages!) stays in the classroom and translates as needed. This particular school has a lot, by Norwegian standards, immigrant students primarily because it is located in a college town. The university is focused on biotechnology and science and often science professors from around the world come and their children go to this school.

My next class I visited was Renate’s year 10 students. These are who they call seniors and will, if they choose to, continue on to upper secondary, or videregående skole. Renate’s English was impeccable and she was really excited about my visit. She had the students plan “mini-talks” about Norwegian culture. These mini-talks were to last approximately 3 minutes. Each student came up and presented on such ideas as varied as towns and sites to visit (e.g., Voss, Lofoten, Torghatten), Olden bottled glacier water, holiday traditions, Vikings, traditional clothing and food (komle), Sami culture, northern lights, polar bears, ski jumping, and the new opera house. Then there was a student who talked about the platypus, one who talked about the paper clip (apparently it is incorrect that the Norwegians created the paperclip), and skateboards (in particularly longboards). Each presentation was very individual, some brought visual aids, some used the map. The girl with the skateboard even showed some tricks. Renate’s class had a strong sense of community and it was one of those classrooms that makes you want to go back and teach. The students were fun (i.e., Renate asked a presenter to write the name of the mountain she talked about on the board for me, and one boy in the front joked, “Can Jennifer pronounce it?”). Throughout the whole time, the students paid attention to the other presenters. Most of the students used a piece of paper as they presented with varying degrees of reliance on it. One student had the entire speech memorized. Each speech was peppered with excellent tidbits of information that would be interesting to the audience and most had an incredibly sophisticated structure (more so than I am used to seeing even in my college students).

There was a 15 minute break in the middle of the class, in which several students came up and spoke with me. The student who talked about the Olden water gave me a bottle of the water and two girls came over to tell me about their trips to the US. After the break the students came back and passed around some cookies (aka biscuits because they learn British English). Renate explained that every Friday they have cookies and they rotate who brings them. She said even the teachers have to join the rotation. The girl who brought them this time had offered me a cookie right at the beginning of class and I accepted. As I watched the presentations, I ate it and it was delicious! During the 15 minute break, Renate and I went to the faculty lounge to have coffee and tea. The faculty lounge was a large room with plenty of sofas (all matching and very IKEA) large windows and a small kitchen area. In between the two rows of sofa are coffee tables each decorated with placements, candles, and a vase with a live rose in it. All the furniture matched and there was no clutter. There was also a flat screen TV in the room. When we returned from the break, the students finished their presentations.

After all the presentations, Renate asked the students to reflect on the mini-talks as a whole. One student said she thinks they have gotten much better from their first mini-talks and another student said he learned new things from these that he didn’t know (like how the Northern lights worked). They said in the future they needed to work on speaking more slowly (though I felt like they did a fine job with that) and they needed to memorize their speeches rather than read them. One of the students who went first said, he need to be more relaxed. The last 5 minutes of class, Renate had the students discuss in small groups what you would tell a foreigner about Ǻs. Throughout the class, one student had an IPOD in one ear and some students had their shoes off. It was a very relaxed atmosphere. Renate had lunch scheduled for us. The cantina provided a plate of fruit and a platter of Norwegian sandwiches (more like open faced sandwiches with no condiments).

After lunch I visited a 9th grade English class. This class had a student teacher who was teaching it and it was the largest class I visited. This class was more chatty than the others and the students seemed more like US classes (they were more disruptive, less attentive, putting heads down, etc.), but I think that it may have been due to the student teacher, as several times the coaching teacher walked around, added to the lesson, disciplined, etc. This lesson was directly taken from the text book, Key English (Larson, Lia, & Solberg, 2007). The coaching teacher left me a teacher’s manual to follow along with, which is why I was able to tell that the student teacher was even asking the questions that came from the textbook. She also stayed behind the podium for most of the lesson. However, I want to acknowledge that she said she was VERY nervous when she found out I would be in to observe and I am sure that impacted some of what she did. The lesson was to read a short story, “Roy Rotter and the Curse of the McRotters.” The students round robin read the first portion (about 3 paragraphs) and then the student teacher asked questions like, “What do you think about _____?” They then did an activity in their workbook (decoding a jumble of letters), and listened to the next section on CD with no words to follow along. As a class the students answered multiple choice questions about the listening portion and then another workbook activity that highlighted vocabulary. They did not read the next section, because the students had read this at home for homework, so they read (by round robin) only the last paragraph of this section, did another workbook activity, listened to the CD and another workbook activity. This continued until the end of the story. The workbook activities that were to be done after the reading of the text were at much higher levels than the ones that occurred during the reading. However, this particular class didn’t get to that point before it was time to go to the next subject.

At the end of the day, Renate and I sat in the teacher’s lounge and she we talked about different aspects of Norwegian schools. One of the things I find really interesting is that their exams may be written or oral. Students are randomly selected, but can be assured that at least one of their subject exams will be oral. Teachers from around the country volunteer to be assessors of the oral and written exams and are paid extra for this job.

On a personal note, I enjoyed my day so much. I loved getting back into the schools and meeting kids. The majority of the 8th graders were really shy, 9th graders would talk to me one-on-one, and 10th graders were much more confident. The teachers were so welcoming and the students were typical kids doing funny things throughout the day. It was a great day!

I returned on September 24, 2008 to meet with the English teachers during their department meeting. Before the meetings, there was a short faculty meeting for all teachers in the lounge. Though Renate kept apologizing as it was held in Norwegian (the only thing I got out of it was that they were planning a shopping trip to Sweden). However, it was interesting to note that there were no side conversations and no one was grading papers. It was no longer than 20 minutes as they have one every week, which made me think there is something to that and keeping teachers' attention!