Sunday, March 20, 2011
Best schools in the world
I just read a very interesting article on the school system in Finland which is ranked #1 in the world in both reading and math. Guess what? They have many similarities to our school. One of the most interesting to me is that students stay with the same teacher for several years, just like at CDS. They also do not push formal reading before age seven(I knew this was true for Russia) and yet students do very well by third grade when they first measure their ability. It shows that earlier is not necessarily better! Some other factors were the emphasis on creativity, and the high esteem teachers are given. They stated they took $s which might have been used for early standardized testing and put it towards higher teachers salaries...makes sense to me. I have visited the schools in Denmark, and they too have many things like CDS. We have done exchanges whereby our teachers have visited and taught in schools there and we hosted a intern from there recently.
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So interesting! Can you post a link to the article? I'm especially interested in the best ways to help children learn to read. My daughter will begin preschool at CDS in August, and I was also wondering what you thought of the Tools of the Mind approach, and if CDS uses any of these methods. (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/27/magazine/27tools-t.html)
ReplyDeleteI just read the article on developing "executive function" in preschool and found the article to be very intriguing. I will research tools of the mind further and comment again. We do believe young children should be given opportunities to think creatively when solving problems and researching with a group to develop their thoughts and solutions on topics they are interested in. This is the basis of the Reggio inspired Project Approach.
ReplyDeleteThere are so many great articles on the school systems in Finland. If you Google Best schools in the world Finland, there is a lot to explore.
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