Although I just introduced the overview of the education in Finland, I happened to find a book called “Calculation and mathematics education of Finland” written by Hiroyuki Kumakura published in September 2013. I found some interesting descriptions from the book about the real scenes in classrooms.

First of all, it’s a scene in the third grade in elementary school where the teacher was teaching plus and minus with 23 students.
The teacher taught how to calculate 309+217+68 by asking questions to students and listening answers from students.
It’s nothing surprising.
However, the following calculation of 651-235-171 was not taught with the same method. The teacher paired students to be teams of 2 people and white boards were distributed to all teams. The teacher asked all teams to discuss with their teammate to think about how to do the calculation.
This is a quite unique method for me since the teacher was not only teaching calculation but also team work and independent thinking.
Latter, the teacher explained the correct method by discussing with students.
When the lesson from the teacher finished, the teacher requested students to practice all rest questions on the text book. While students were resolving questions, the teacher came to the desk of every student to see if there are any problems or any support needed.
“Not just teach, but make students think”
Continue reading →