We are three forestry students from the Rovaniemi University of Applied Sciences. As part of our English course we spend a couple of hours in the Viirinkangas elementary school. The pupils were fourth and fifth graders and our visit was linked to their school project “Walking through the forest”.
The goal of our visit was to familiarise the children with the forest vocabulary in English. We started our day by reading a forest-related story. The story was about Winnie the Pooh and his friend Piglet going hunting in the woods. The story was read in English, and afterwards the students were asked to summarise the story in Finnish.
We had prepared a forest vocabulary for every student. The words were given in English and the students translated them in Finnish. Most of the words were familiar and the rest were translated with our assistance.
The next part of our visit to Viirinkangas consisted of forest drawings. The students were divided in groups and each group was given its own season. This way we had one group for each season in the Finnish forest: spring, summer, autumn and winter.
The pictures turned out to be beautiful. The drawings included trees, plants, water and animals. Next the forest vocabulary was added in the drawings. The drawings were put on the Internet to the website of the Viirinkangas elementary school.
We had a nice experience with the two classes and hope that their walk through the forest would be even more interesting after our visit.
Best regards to you all!
Anne-Mari, Matti and Mikko
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