Strand Skole

In the afternoon of the 25th, I visited Strand Skole in Osen, which is a small town of about 1300 people. The school itself was a 1st-10th grade school of about 110 students. I did a two hour lesson with the 8th and 10th graders combined (about 26 students in all). There were two parts to the building (and yes that is a mini rock wall on the left hand side of the building in the picture above).The older students meet in the separate smaller building shown below.

The lesson I did for the students was the "Who is Barack Obama?" This group was extremely good and I enjoyed the entire 2 hours presentation. There English was strong, the were engaged through the whole lesson (they even chose not to take a break), and their final products were some of the best. I am wondering though if some of it had to do with my scaffolding. This time I gave the students a glimpse into what we were going to do before they went into the stations so they had a purpose for the note taking. I also slowed down the directions and took them step by step through what I wanted rather than gave it all at once. It will be interesting to see if this is the difference or if this group of students was just really strong. I will be doing the same presentation next week so I can test my theory then.

Here are some of the examples I got from the students:

The two illustrations above are actually the closest to what I was wanting from the students this whole semester. They created an image that had several facts that they brought together from what they learned about Obama today.

I really liked this one for many reasons, but mainly because when the girls stood up in front of the class to describe their picture they said the one negative comment I heard this whole year about Obama. They said, "we put the 'Yes I can' phrase above his head because we think that with all this attention he might get a bit full of himself."

This illustration like the other 4 also included several facts that they learned and this particular caricature was interesting.

In general I had a lovely day working with great students. The teachers at Strand Skole made a hot lunch for each other. So I had a delicious carrot, tomato, onion, and celery soup. Apparently they are trying to lose weight and this soup helps. They gave me the recipe so I may have to try it at home. Regardless it was very pleasant sitting with the teachers over a bowl of warm soup while it snowed outside. Days like this make me think that teaching in a little school would be exactly what I would love to do the rest of my life.

I did email the White House office and shared some of the experiences I have had here in Norway and offered to share some of the pictures the students drew as well. It will be interesting to see if I get a response. I would love a letter from Obama to the students here, but I didn't outright ask for one which was probably not a good idea. So I will just have to wait and see.