Students at Pärnu Kuninga Tänava Põhikool

“If you do more practical stuff, you have more motivation to learn”

These eighth and ninth graders analyze their educational system and choose a more practical way of teaching through project work and games that make learning more fun and make homework unnecessary

MARTA LAMA FERNÁNDEZ AND MARCOS GARRIDO FERNÁNDEZ  | Pärnu

Tristan Eriste and Kirke Roosme are very good students. A ninth and an eighth grader who are not only intelligent and polite, but also do other things for the school community. Tristan is on the school council and he acts as a representative of the students.  As he says, “if you do more practical stuff, you have more motivation to learn”, so, in Estonia, they are “moving towards more practical studies”. But this is combined with more traditional ways that they both accept as positive: “If you enjoy practical activities and also have to take tests, you improve”, emphasizes Tristan.

—In Spain, most of the assessment activities are by means of exams. Many students in Spain don't like this. How are you evaluated here: theoretically or practically, meaning through exams or through projects, and what differences do you see between the two methods?

—KR: We use both of these. So, there are practical activities and also there are tests, but we don't have exams every year. 

—What do you prefer: to be evaluated theoretically or practically?

—KR: Practical methods are more fun for students because exams are really stressful and students don't really like them. 

—TE: In Estonia, we are moving towards more practical studies like projects that encourage schools in general to teach practically like group work instead of just reading from books.

—As group activities are very important, a critical task is to decide how groups are formed. How are groups organized in this school, how is group work carried out and which way is the most effective?

—TE: It depends on the teacher. Sometimes they form the groups and sometimes we can choose the groups, but it's two-sided, because, if you do the project with people you don't like, you're not as motivated as if you do it with your friends. But also, sometimes, when you are in a group with friends you can get distracted and maybe joke around and don't do the exercise correctly.

—KR: I think it's good that sometimes teachers let them pick the groups themselves because, when they organize the groups, the students don't really like that, because they want to be with their friends.

—In some subjects in Spain we have to do a lot of homework to complete the theoretical and practical classes. Once the school day is over, how many hours do you dedicate to studying and doing homework and how do you feel about it?

—KR: I don't think we have that much homework because few teachers do it. They normally like to do things in their lessons and don't like to give homework assignments. But I think we do homework for about an hour or maximum two hours. It's enough. I know some students take many hours to do homework because it's hard for them, but it's worth it. 

—TR: When you have lots of homework you do it for a maximum of around one hour. But I think we should do the stuff in lessons and not at home because a lot of people have activities after school also, like sports or a hobby that they do. If you have lots of homework, you don't have time for these activities. And it can also be bad for mental health because, if you don't have free time, you always have to study at school, get home, study and sleep. And it is always like this. In small portions it is okay, but not like completing four pages of a workbook at home, that's too much. Maybe only doing half an hour of homework is fine. 

“We have a project in Estonia called “Non formal teaching and learning” which needs to be more adopted in schools and have more teachers do more non formal activities like playing games” (TE)

—In our school sometimes student behavior can be a problem to make things work well in a classroom. Here we perceive this is less of a problem. How do your classmates' behavior change the way you behave and perform in class?

—TE: In Estonia it’s a problem, but not a speaking problem. In some cases, a few students think it’s funny to pick on a teacher, and when some people start to annoy the teacher, the other people in class start to do it too because they want to be cool. So teachers can’t teach as much as they want in one lesson because they need to get the students quiet and teach. So, it is not a big problem, and because of that in some lessons all the students can’t learn what they need to learn and that means there is extra homework. And, maybe, they are left behind and it is harder in school.

—KR: It’s not that big of a problem, because many students actually want to learn and they want to do well in school to get good grades. They don’t want more homework, because we prefer to do things in class and not at home.

—How do the teacher's strategies change your way of learning and which ones do you prefer and why?

—KR: Many teachers try to make learning fun and try to talk more and do less workbook and stuff like that so students don’t get as bored because they have to speak. I think that works well, because, for example, in English talking is very important to learn and gives us experience.

—TE: We are doing a lot of practical exercises, like speaking in English or Russian language class, so thanks to that we can practice the language, which is more effective because if you only learn languages in a book you will know how to read it, but not how to speak it. 

—You said teachers tried to make lessons fun, but you didn’t say that they actually do it. Do you think lessons aren’t fun?

—TE: It really depends also on students, because if teachers want to do something fun, but students are making jokes that ruin a game and they don’t want to do it, there isn’t any learning other than doing it by the book. But if students go along and take part of this, they can do activities like Kahoot, and it is fun, but if they put weird nicknames, or something like that, and teachers don't have the motivation to do that.

—KR: I agree. If students are quiet and do what the teacher says, it’s fun, but when a few students joke around and don't do what they are told, they can ruin the game for everyone.

“I will like that teachers do more practical stuff, like games to learn,  do less homework and do more during lessons” (KR)

—Estonia has very good results in PISA exams, and you said it’s more practical than theoretical the work you do in class and you don’t have a lot of homework. Why do you think, because PISA is an exam, that you have great marks?

—TE: It is that if you do more practical stuff, you are more motivated to learn because, if you only need to write half a lesson on the notebooks and also read, you don't have the motivation to learn. But if you play, if maybe in every lesson you do a Kahoot,  throughout playing you are more motivated to learn. If you just learn things and then don't remember them, it doesn't make sense, but if you do practical things more and more frequently, you will remember better and have more motivation to do them.

—KR: We also review things through a game. For example, in Russian we play a game where the teacher throws us a ball and asks something from this or from last year and you just have to remember it. So you review everything and I think this helps to remember things better.

—Looking to the present and the future, if you could change any part of your education system, what would you change and why?

—KR: I will like that teachers do more practical stuff, like games to learn,  do less homework and do more during lessons, so students will not have to do as much at home.

—TE: We have a project in Estonia called “Non formal teaching and learning”. I think it’s a project that needs to be adopted in more schools and have more teachers do more non formal activities like playing games and through that teach stuff. But we have a problem with middle school final exams in ninth grade. There is an exam to check your learning throughout school and they only give feedback about how you do in the test, but they don’t tell you what is bad and what you need to improve. So I think this needs to change, because right now this exam is after you apply to college so I believe it needs to change, so the college or high school can check the scores of what you did and they don’t need to do a double exam to get into high school.