more thoughts on eighth grade in Futuraskolan

In Futuraskolan, each grade has its own different style. To me, it looks like my sister in fourth grade has practically no school work, and watches movies and gets out of school early. In seventh grade, the classes had homework, and were more challenging.

In eighth grade, it is like a whole new school. There is lots of homework, and it is much more difficult than the seventh grade. When I moved to eighth grade, the main thing that I thought was going to be better was that during lunch, I could leave school, and do whatever I wanted to. 

In eighth grade, there are more challenges and also more freedom. As well as being able to leave during lunch, now my gym class meets at a gym thirty minutes from the school. I take my bike, get on the train, and walk to the gym by myself, all to get to class. In my other classes, some of the more challenging aspects include learning all the different parts of speech in English, how drugs impact and relate to to the nervous system and the body in science, and globalization in humanities. Some specific examples of things that we have covered are all of the different types of pronouns in English, how signals are sent through the nervous system and different labs relating to drugs and the human body in science, and in humanities we did an essay about globalization, and whether it is a good thing or a bad thing, and different projects examining things like where t shirts and jeans come from and how it relates to globalization.   

In school, the difficulty has also gotten harder. I had to study hours for tests, even after we reviewed and discussed the subjects in class. The classes are now more serious, with less goofing around, like in seventh grade, and in all of the lower grades. I think that in Sweden, they believe that kids should play for the first years of their lives, and in about eighth grade, they start to focus on schooling. They also think that children should be independent, and so you can see six year olds walking home at 8 o clock. I think that in Sweden the schooling might be a bit less hard, but I think that it is much more independent.

We are just wrapping up with the unit, and now fall break is starting. Soon I will be starting a bunch of new topics in all of these classes. So for now, hej då (goodbye in swedish.)