School in Sweden

The girls have just finished their second week of school.  There's been no whining about going to school and they're happy when they get out.  Our girls, however, are the only ones who bring their lunch to school.  I knew I should have stuck with the story that they had to eat the school lunch!!

The school really emphasizes a healthy lifestyle by discouraging (not allowing!) cookies, chips and sodas and encourages a lot of healthy options in the cafe.  The girls talk about the 'Fruit Lady' who comes every day to fill the baskets in each classroom and on the window sills in the stairways with fresh fruit.  The kids and parents are encouraged to help themselves to fruit whenever they are hungry.  The students also have two outdoor breaks each day in addition to PE three times/week. 

The night before Gabby left for her class trip she said she realized that no one at this school has said anything about her size.  At Inman, students and teachers commented about how small she is all the time which really bothered her.  When you are in a school with students from 60 different countries there are a lot of differences and everyone seems to be very accepting.  It seems like a small thing (no pun intended) but there's a big difference in feeling self conscious and judged vs. being accepted as who you are and feeling confident. 

The second week of school all 60 7th graders spent 4 days traveling and learning about the Gotland area of Sweden.  The trip is strategically planned for the students and teachers to bond at the beginning of the school year.  Gabby started out not wanting to go and being homesick and ended up not wanting to leave Gotland and come home! 

We attended Back-to-School night for the Primary classes (K-5) this week.  The school follows the International Primary Curriculum which teaches in Units throughout the school year.  The first Unit is a 2 week long, mini unit on learning.  Basically, they spend the first two weeks of school introducing:

• how learning takes place
• providing students with strategies to use in their own learning
• encourage them to think about their learning as something over which they have control 
• talking to the students about how everyone learns sometimes similarly and sometimes differently
• getting them excited about learning
•  how we can help ourselves to become better learners by studying, diet, exercise and sleep

During this time the students are assessed in math and reading.  Audra's teacher said they used many different methods to assess math skills... old fashioned pencil and paper and math centers with different games where she found it interesting to see how the students interacted, who jumped into math games and who hung back. 

The rest of the Units for the school year have themes and history, science, etc. will be taught within those themes.  

The Primary classes follow the multiple intelligence model for curriculum... basically there is more to a person than IQ.  Each person has their individual strengths whether it's verbal, logical, musical, artistic, etc.  The curriculum is tailored to each individual student's needs.  WOW!  There are 20 students in Audra's class and 14 in Sofia's.