What is an Efterskole?

I have been lucky enough to spend three weeks in an Efterskole in may. But now, I would like to explain to foreigners, especially Belgian people, what is an Efterskole. And it is a hard task as we have nothing to compare it to, nothing similar. But I found this little movie explaining rather well what is an Efterskole. I hope it will help you understand what this very special type of school is.

To watch the video in English, click here.

To watch the video in Danish, click here.

If you want more informations, you can read this file from the Education Resources Information Center, or this file from the Efterskolernes Sekretariat.

Animation Workshop in Askov Efterskole

This is a video we have made as a project with the pupils of the school I do my practice in: Askov efterskole. The project was to create animation scenes by the stop-action method. What does that mean? Well you take a lot of pictures of objects (or people, shadows, ...) that move slightly from picture to picture; then you edit the pictures to make a small action scene. To do that you have two main ways:

1: you use an editing programme in which you can work frame by frame. You import all your pictures and you place them (in the correct order of course) in something like 9-12 pictures / frame. Then you make a movie file out of it...

2: you use a programme in which you cannot work frame by frame but with a timing. You choose a very little timing for every picture (you have to work in tenth and hundredth of a second here), and you place them in order. You then make a movie file out of it...

After these picture editings, you edit the videos you made from the pictures to create a whole movie with introduction, effects, sounds, credits... After hours (not to say days) of work, you end up with a short movie like this one.

The second good part of this project is that the pupils did everything, even the soundtrack. The music teacher edited the soundtrack, and two students made the lyrics and sang. It is a complete Askov Efterskole made project.

This work was really great and I was lucky to actively take part in it.

See the film bellow. For better quality, click here.

Danish School - Uncomplete Summary

I made a video to summarize what I discovered in Danish schools that surprised me. Everything is not in the video, but you can still have a good idea by looking at it.

If you want more details, read the other posts with the label "school" (see "Key Words..." on the left side).

See video bellow. For better quality, click here.

Understanding and being understood by Danish pupils...

During my practice here in Denmark, I had to face a real problem for teachers: I was unable to communicate with the pupils...

Why? My level in Danish is very poor, and the pupils, 7 years old, could not speak english yet.

We could communicate, but very briefly and very basically.

Unfortunately, the lessons at UCSyd did not help much as the level was too basic and out of the theme of the class and school. So, I did use the basics we learned in Aabenraa.

The sentences I said the most must be "Jeg forstår det ikke" (I don't understand) and "Undskyld, jeg taler ikke Dansk" (Sorry, I don't speak Danish).

For the mathematics lessons, I could help some children because I knew how to say the numbers, plus and minus.

I had to use a lot of face and body expression to be understood when I wanted to communicate with the pupils, and it actually was very interesting, but really annoying also sometimes when I could not understand the questions of the pupils...

But another point was my understanding of the language. Because of the lessons in Aabenraa, and because I have been hearing Danish for four months now, I could understand what was happening in the class and sometimes understand the conversations. This made me very happy!

Pupils learn mathematics through computer games.

I found this article on the website of the Danish Ministry of Education. I found it very surprising...

A Danish school has introduced the computer game Battlefield as a supplement to mathematics books.

At the “Jakobskolen” school in the City of Frederiksberg, pupils can be seen sitting in front of computer screens playing their way through desert war scenes. And flashing by on the screen are helicopters, tanks and soldiers. All this happens during class – and pupils need not fear the teacher’s wrath for fooling around. It is all part of a plan.

The school has taken the step of integrating computer games in the classroom as a teaching tool and the popular game "Battlefield" is used in mathematics classes to aid exercises in relation to scale and distance.

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen from the IT University in Copenhagen has done research work on the use of computer games for education-related purposes. He believes the prospects are exciting.

“Computer games help increase the pupils’ motivation and make the taught subjects more concrete and vivid. Especially if the games are suited to the pupils’ individual interests,” he says.

Simon Egenfeldt-Nielsen also recommends that the use of computer games should be tailored to the teacher’s specific approach to teaching.

“The games can support the teacher’s chosen emphasis. Perhaps the individual teacher prioritises motivation, collaboration between pupils or visualisation,” he says.

Integrated learning.

I saw a nice activity during the PE (Idræt) lesson at school; a lesson with integrative learning.

The teacher had spread papers all over the floor of the sport hall.

The pupils, by groups of two or three, had to go to the teacher; the teacher would give the group a number (higher than 10, less than 100) and the pupils had then to run and find the correct number, turn the paper and watch what was on the other side. They had to remember what they had seen and run back to the teacher to tell him what it was.

The aim was to make the pupils recognize the numbers (and that was real challenge for some of them!).

I found this activity particularly interesting as the integrated learning (example: use a physical activity in PE class to work a mathematic skill) is, for me, a very good and very effective way of learning. But it is not often used by the teachers in Belgium.

What a school!

My biggest surprise so far while visiting the school I do my practice in is the size and the quality of equipment.

First, the playground. The school does not have a “playground” as so named in Belgium. The pupils can play nearly anywhere. They have a lot of space, a lot of games, a lot of nature, … I found the place very nice and very attractive. A child could not possibly be bored in such a space!

I then discovered the sport hall. One of the sport hall as the school has two, a huge one and a smaller one with a climbing wall. The lesson I observed took place in the huge hall. And I really am amazed by the place as it is bigger than the sport hall of my city! And it is only for the school, so about 550 pupils from 6 to 16 years old... And apart from the size, it is very well equipped, with a lot of equipment and interesting rooms (showers, changing rooms, storage rooms, …). When we departed for the sport hall, I was not expecting a room of that quality in a school...

Amazing lesson in a Danish public school.

We now started our practice session in Danish schools.

I am in a first grade class, so pupils who are seven years old.

I saw an amazing lesson on my second day of observation, a lesson of woodcraft.

Only in special schools, and with older pupils, this kind of lesson exists in Belgium. Here, it was done with seven years old pupils and one teacher.

The objective was to make the pupils do a gun shape in a piece of wood by using the saw.

I found, at first, the room and the equipment of very good quality for a school which was not made to teach woodcraft.

I was then surprised by the trust of the teacher in his pupils. He was just there to help them, not to make sure they would not cut themselves or play with dangerous tools. And the behaviour of the pupils was up to the expectations of the teacher as they were all working with their tool and their piece of wood and respecting the security rules.

First visit in a Danish public school...

I visited, last week, a public school. It was my first visit in a danish school since I arrived in Haderslev.

I was first surprised to see pupils from seven to seventeen. The danes go to to the same school from seven to sixteen or seventeen years old, making no difference between what we call in Belgium "primary school" and "secondary school".

I spent the morning with a class of the fifth grade, so pupils who were eleven years old.

Some observations:

Morning assembly:

Every morning, children from several classes gather in a room to sing together, and to listen to a little lecture about a subject chosen by teachers. This assembly is a very good transition between the arrival at the school and the beginning of the lessons. It is a nice way of welcoming the pupils.

Technology:

When I entered the classroom I had quite a shock. There was a smartboard in the classroom. In Belgium, even in my university we don't have that technology. And here, I saw one in a classroom of a public school.

After that first great discovery, I had an even greater sur

prise when observing a lesson during which the pupils had to make a folder about a planet. And to make those folders, they had laptops. Each group - of two or three pupils - had a laptop to work with. And each laptop had wifi access to internet. I was very amazed as in the primary schools in Belgium, some schools don't even have computers, and most schools only have a few computers in a special room...

Relation teacher-pupils:

First, the pupils call their teacher by her first name. And they do that for every teacher or other person in the school. No "sir", "mister", "miss" or other formal word.

Then, the pupils work for themselves, and not because the teacher asks to. Which means that after having given the instructions of the activity, the teacher is there to help pupils who have difficulties, prepare something for the next activity and can go out of the classroom to prepare... all the pupils work! No "policeman" role here, the teacher is not there to check that the pupils work. Still, the teacher told us that sometimes she had to be a bit strict to make sure everybody works... But it looks much less frequent than what I know in Belgium. I think the pupils are more mature, earlier independent, in Denmark.

Languages:

Everything was in danish of course. I might have missed some interesting things because I don't speak danish...

BUT, those eleven years old pupils had been learning english since they were nine; and therefore they could understand my questions in english, and they could easily answer me! Eleven years old pupils speak a good english after only two years of learning...

All in all, that first visit was very interesting. I expected some differences but not that much. Of course, a morning is not enough to know how the school works, but yet, I am very glad I had the opportunity to live this experience.