Day 2

27th of September 2022

Today we have spent all day in Reaalkool school (Tallinn Secondary School of Science), a municipality centre where children from 7-years till 18-year-old study the national curriculum and they also have the opportunity to complement their studies with non compulsory courses. In fact, the school is opened from 6.30 to 22.00h.

This is a renown institution in Estonia specialised in the science field, so a lot of students want to join this school and the ones that enter are the best students who had the best marks in the entrance exam. This is a traditional and very old institution specialised in promoting science among theirs students. They encourage them to participate in science contents and Olympiads and the school offers a lot of different non formal courses to widen the students knowledge about the subjects they are more interested in. So students can end their studies haven taken more hours of different subjects (Physics, Maths, second Languages...) and they also can join clubs as Debate Club, Astronomy Club or any other Club to prepare for the Olympiads.

Mrs Ene Saar, the school director, welcomed us and received us in her office with three students of the 12th grade (18-19 years old) who told us about the history of the school and guided us during the tour of the school.

After the tour we met a bigger group of students of the 10th and 12th grades and we had a conversation with them about "What motivates to study STEAM".

After this interesting meeting with the students, we had the opportunity to observe different lessons. The group divided and we were able to be in English, Maths, Biology, Technology, Physics and Chemistry lessons. The majority of the lessons were very traditional. Teachers do not do many interdisciplinary projects but the school schedule plans many experimental lessons, so we noticed a great difference between Technology and Physics practical lessons and the other ones.