Hei, I'm YFU Czech to Finland exchange student and this is a blog about my exchange year. Feel free to ask about anything :)


September 5, 2010

Ehm, in which code is this lesson? alias briefly about the school system

Offer of courses for the 2nd grade...jakso = period;
small numbers in the beginnings = codes
Said in a very simplified way – you have 3 (4) grades which are divided into groups/classes (09F = class which goes to the school since year 2009, group F) which aren’t together at all. You make yourself a study plan and have the chance to end up school in 3 or 4 years. Every study year is divided into 5 periods and your schedule is different in each of them and you are also in different groups with different people. You have to take certain number of certain subject usually in certain sequence, but what period you will take it in and what day time depends almost only on you (but still you are limited by the offer of courses for the period).
Placement of the codes in every day
And now come the puzzles – you have 8 codes in which is divided the offer of courses and every code belongs to 3 lessons in week (so if you chose for example English 4.4 which is in code 4, you will have it on Tuesday as 3rd lesson, on Thursday as a 2nd lesson and on Friday as 3rd lesson). This way you can fill all the codes (if you are self-murderer) or make your school start for example at 12 o’clock. Apart from compulsory lessons you can also chose from a lot of interesting courses which allows you to learn more about things you are interested in. Easy, isn’t that?

The numbers following after the name of the subject allow you to look up in your “school book” what is the course about (the first number) and what group you are in (the second number). For example my English again – its 4.4 and so I know it is about “society and the world around”.
Information about courses in my school book

Lessons in my school last 75 minutes and the first lesson starts at 8:15. We have lunch at 11.20, 12.00 or 12.35, depending on the grade you are going to. Lunch is free and also with vegetarian-choice (in my school is over 100 vegetarians!) which makes me very happy, of course.
And now the most unpleasant thing – what about the grades? Firstly, grades here aren’t 1-5 or A-F, but 10-4 with 10 being the best. Although you might be graded also for activity during lessons or small word tests (in languages), the main grade comes from an exam in an exam week which is after every period. Every code has its own exam day so it can’t happen you would take 2 tests in one day (yipeee). I can’t say much more about exams now since I haven’t had any exams yet (my first exam week is from 22nd of September).
My almost full schedule for the 3rd period
As for me, I’m in class 09F and now I have mostly courses for 1st graders although I will have mostly for 2nd graders in the next period. Now I have English, German, sport, music and long math (other option is short which is easier). I can tell you I have probably never had such a blast and amazing teachers as I have now! Especially music is great – we learn how to play guitar and drums, the class is also equipped with microphones, piano, electric guitars and bass guitars and many more instruments. There is guitar almost for everyone and after short practicing we always make a small ‘band’ and try to play the song we learnt before (for example Dreamer from Ozzy Osbourne or Truly Madly Deeply from Savage Garden).

I know I probably made it totally unintelligible, but at least something. :)