Finnish Experience

What are the Finnish solutions used, and how are they integrated into our curriculum?

Through this holistic partnership, UCSI Schools Kuala Lumpur will be introducing four new tech-based solutions in the first phase namely Code School Finland, Eduten Playground, GraphoGame, & Qridi to provide a truly 21st Century learning experience for all students. The inclusion of these modules is designed to inculcate skills such as coding, gamification, robotics, IT, communication, creativity, critical thinking and emotional intelligence in students, preparing them for the ever-changing 21st Century world.

Code School Finland

Based on academic research and Finnish education model, Code School Finland provides training, lesson plans and teaching materials for programming and robotics in primary education. In today’s era of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, coding has increasingly become one of the biggest trends in the education sector.

Learning to code will improve your child’s chances of a lucrative career in STEAM. In addition to that, robotics in education as a movement is gaining momentum worldwide. Robotics for students is an exciting and hands-on way to learn STEAM’s concepts by allowing them to build robots on their own.

Through this solution, our students will learn programming, problem-solving, decision making and many more skills that can help enhance their abilities to develop creative thinking, while preparing them for future challenges. Code School Finland is used primarily once a week in ICT classes for Upper Primary (Year 3-6), while Lower Primary (Year 1-2) and Secondary (Year 7-11) use coding applications developed by Apple Education . The Code School Finland courses that are implemented at our school use Scratch-based programming and teach students computational thinking and coding.

Watch this video to learn more about Code School Finland's pedagogical teaching approach

Eduten Playground

Eduten Playground delivers a carefully crafted learning environment that leverages gamification, differentiation and easy goal setting. Eduten Playground also provides students with a well-established exercise library that has been co-designed and validated by thousands of Finnish teachers, which comes with ready-made weekly mathematics exercise programmes for students aged between 6 and 15. Teachers choose when and how to implement lessons that match their taught lessons, and students complete the required number of tasks to earn trophies. Eduten Playground is based on the Finnish pedagogy with more than 15 years of University research on digital teaching and learning. Studies have shown that with Eduten Playground, students could solve up to 8 times more tasks compared to the traditional way of using pen and paper. Powered by AI driven analytics, teachers can effortlessly follow students’ progress and evaluate students’ strengths and weaknesses. This allows teachers to focus their efforts better, and provide the right challenge for everyone. Calibrating challenge levels for individual students also boosts morale and motivation for everyone. School leaders have access to the school-wide statistics dashboard. It provides real-time data that enables a seamless process towards data driven decision-making and teacher support. For parents, Eduten Playground includes a simple and powerful reporting tool for parents. Through this tool, teachers are able to share students’ progress and achievements with their parents or guardians.

GraphoGame

GraphoGame combines Finland’s educational and special needs expertise with evidence from cutting-edge research in neuroscience by the University of Cambridge Centre for Neuroscience in Education to provide 1-on-1 reading support.

GraphoGame focuses on literacy teaching and phonemes, the sound of a letter (/k/ instead of letter name ‘k’). After mastering all the letter-sound connections, students combine the sounds to make syllables and eventually words. Teaching starts with the easiest units of speech, eventually advancing to challenging syllables and finally complicated words, which can be classified as the synthetic approach.

This solution is designed to enthral our students with fun features. Taking inspiration from role-playing games, our students create their own avatar that grows with them, which in turn gives our students a sense of ownership in their learning.

Applied primarily in the Year 1 and Year 2 classes as well as English as an Additional Language (EAL) lessons, GraphoGame gives our students incentives to learn and improve. In addition to that, the game also collects valuable insights on students’ progress while also supporting literacy and dyslexia interventions by helping a parent or guardian to identify if – and where – they require further support

QRIDI
Qridi introduce learners and teachers to look at learning and progress as a group and as individuals. Learning is planned and monitored under the teacher’s guidance, and future skills are strengthened and personal strengths identified.

How will the Finnish Experience enhance my child’s learning? Is this partnership only limited to these four solutions?

After a thorough study, four initial solutions were initially chosen to be implemented into our schools in the first phase: Code School Finland, Eduten Playground, GraphoGame, & Qridi. The solutions were chosen to complement the curriculum and teaching approach of our school. While these solutions develop students towards academic goals, they also develop important transversal competencies, in alignment with the school’s Eight Critical Characteristics. For example, Eduten Playground provides self-paced learning that allows students to develop personal responsibility. Code School develops important technological skills by presenting problem-based collaborative learning opportunities. Qridi introduces learners and teachers to look at learning and progress as a group and as individuals. GraphoGame teaches early literacy skills while instilling into children that learning should be fun! In subsequent phases, more Finnish EdTech solutions will be introduced and implemented to ensure students continue to receive relevant, innovative and effective personalised learning experience. This partnership is also supported by regular exchanges of best practices between Finnish schools and UCSI Schools and also professional development of our teachers in Finnish education methods.

KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 11 – UCSI Schools Kuala Lumpur has signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) with Finnish Education Solutions Sdn Bhd, making it the country’s first and only Finnish Experience Flagship School.

The MoA signed on August 5 signifies the introduction of four new tech-based modules namely Code School Finland, Eduten Playground, Grapho, and School Day.

These modules designed to inculcate skills such as coding, gamification, robotics, IT, communication, creativity, critical thinking, and emotional intelligence, essentially provide a 21st century learning experience for all students – a concept that in line with UCSI Schools.

In his speech, UCSI Founder and Group CEO Dato Peter Ng said being inducted as an official member of Education Finland was gratifying and step forward for UCSI.

“The quality of Finnish education speaks for itself, and we see that each time the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) test results are released every three years,” said Ng, who is also the schools’ chairman.

“It is well-documented that Finnish students perform well above the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) average in reading, mathematics and science. Finland also has the distinction of being the world’s happiest nation and we look forward to inculcating more of the joy of learning here,” he added.

The MoA was signed between UCSI School’s Group CEO Willie Tan and Co-founders of Finnish Education Solutions Sdn Bhd – Petri Karjalainen and Minna Karjalainen.

Also present to witness the MoA was His Excellency Sami Leino, ambassador of Finland to Malaysia and Chris Edmunds, Principal of UCSI International School Kuala Lumpur.