Finurlige Ord

Shrewd words
– Learning concept for danish 5th grade students

The Libraries and schools of Hvidovre Municipal where worried that so many young students showed severe reading problems when they entered 5th grade. The major reason was, and still is, that the nature of texts changes from stories to texts heavy on facts.

So I was hired to design a learning concept that could help the students in becoming better readers. The result was Finurlige Ord (Shrewd words) that challenges the student: “can you talk about your favourite waste of time, for 60 seconds, without no one can guess what the h… you are talking about?”.

Try it yourself, it is not easy!

Shrewd words is a workshop in constructing a narrative, an elaboration in what makes a text difficult to understand. During a couple of weeks the student elaborates her subject through a number of exercices and workshops to end up with a dense and well written story, to battle against the others. Shrewed word is a flexible concept, it can be used as a whole or as part of other activities.

My belief is by becoming a shrewd writer, you also become a shrewd reader.

Shrewd words is also an example of the idea to create a third space to embrace the students experiences, life and interests. An attempt to design a school that better connect with the minds of the students.

Finurlige ord is available and free to use for teachers in Denmark.

• Concept design
• Didactic Design
• Service & UX Design
• On commission by Henriette Ritz, Hvidovre Bibliotekerne, the projects was financed by the Danish National Library Council.