The profile for Member-institution:
Kvadraturen skolesenter
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| Address: |
Serviceboks 412 |
| City: |
4604 Kristiansand |
| Telephone: |
+4738077300 |
| Telefax: |
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| Email: |
bjorn.baugsto@vaf.no |
| Web: |
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| Studentages: |
16 - 18 |
Additional information:
Kvadraturen skolesenter(KVS) has 1200 students and the staff counts about 250. The school has different courses - general courses, vocational courses and a technical college. Around 10% of the students come from different minority groups. Our school has been part of a network of teachers from schools in two other counties in Norway - Rogaland and Hordaland. The teachers forming this network are all working with minority students in special preparatory courses - courses they attend before entering the ordinary courses.
A lot of our minority students start in our school with too little language competence in Norwegian to be able to benefit from the ordinary teaching in class. They are consequently unable to learn their main subjects in the same speed as their class mates. Some have in addition low skills in learning different subjects in school because they have only spent 2-5 years in school in their home countries.
During the years we have tried different ways of teaching our students the Norwegian language as well as culture. We have focused on how to understand idioms and concepts. In doing so, one of our main ideas has been to give our students different kinds of experiences to make them able to understand more fully the terms we use. One way of doing this has been to take the students out of the classroom and teach language, culture or other subjects (eg mathematics)in other surroundings.
We have brought the students into situations they have never been in before to give them new experiences. We have taken them to a lot of outdoor activities: Walks in the mountains and by the sea, experience all kinds of weather, canoeing, bicycling, sleeping in tents and cottages, eating outdoors, making hot food outdoors, go for walks in the forest when dark and snowing, making campfires. Most of our students have never taken part in any of these activities before. We also go to art exhibitions, to cinemas, libraries and cafes.
As a rule we prepare the students before we leave school. We teach them a relevant vocabulary and talk about proper behaviour. When we return to school after an excursion, we use our common experience to go deeper into the meaning of relevant idioms and terms.
Our intention is more than just building a vocabulary. We hope to give the students as a group some agreeable experiences, something positive to relate to when we are talking about different subjects in the classroom. We also wish to give them some of the same experiences as their classmates have, being brought up in this country. Finally we also like them to see that they have lots of possibilities outside their homes. Most of the activities are suitable for the whole family and they are neither dangerous or expencive.
We have tried this method in the preparatory course. We are now trying this way of "experiencing" language and culture in other programs, and the results are interesting. The students tend to write longer essays after an excursion, they seem to understand different terms easier and they seem to get better along with each other.
We think we have managed to teach the students language - not just in a superficial way, but giving them the opportunity to experience the meaning of different terms.
We like now to continue this workand try to use this method in ordinary courses where the students have only one language lesson a week and a certain syllabus to follow.
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