As the term has progressed Kate and I have definitely felt we are refining areas of our practice in our new learning space. The children are becoming more receptive and we have been continuing to work together as part of a team. The subtle changes that we continue to make are having the impact that we have wanted them too.
The students have become more comfortable in the space. Their respect for the space has improved as well as their respect for the gear they use. Last week we took away the glue guns and just pretended we didn't know where they were. Because of this they were forced to think of other ways to "stick" things together. We are hoping that it will also help them appreciate them so much more when they mysteriously return from holiday. We have had less broken pencils and items seem to be getting returned to where they were originally taken from. We have had to continue to model these things and also make sure we are seen ourselves doing these things. End of the day clean up is getting better but still having a little trouble with cleaning up as you go.. Just today a girl had paint everywhere!! And then didn't even clean it up just moved on to something else. She did go back and clean it up but only after being prompted. Still working on the soft systems to create successful hard systems… But we have seen noticeable improvement which is wonderful. Makes us feel like we are getting somewhere.
Talking with the students about the physical changes we have made and taking on their suggestions has made the students feel like they "own" their environment more. Talking about the placement of a mat to where we should put the box of tissues! All extremely vital parts of their environment.
This week we changed our foyer area. We took away the table that wasn't working, got rid of the lost property box which was becoming a lost property mountain and moved the rubbish bins. We added a whiteboard explaining our programme for the day and notices for our classes. We put a nice table cloth on the table and put out some of the kids work to display. It seemed to be an instant success. I have asked the children how they feel about it and they thought it made the foyer seem more inviting and welcoming. It was also good to know all important information they needed to know was in one space and was clear and easy to read. It allowed also for the parents to know what was going on as well.
It is week 8, next week we head away on school camp for 3 days and I can't believe where the term has gone already. We do feel though we are getting somewhere now. We can see the small things that have made a real difference in what we are trying to achieve.
Next steps for us are choice within choice and providing a good quality structure for inquiry learning. Some more storage would be great too!!
Friday, March 28, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
The first 6 weeks
Well, this is the first blog I have ever done… I have often thought about doing a blog but it has never amounted to anything. Maybe I just didn't feel like I had really had anything important to write about. Oh how that has changed this year.
In 2013 I got the option posed to me as to whether I would be interested in working in a co-operative learning environment with another teacher. They were taking down the walls between two classrooms and we were to become one large learning space. I was very keen to give this a go as this sounded like a fabulous opportunity to be a part of the future of the development of Christchurch education. Kate and I had known each other for about 3 years… Or so we thought… You really do get to know a person much more when you have to work in such close quarters with them.
Anyway in 2013 we both said "yes please!!" and there we were staring on a roller coaster of PD leading up to the end of the school year. It was tough. I had to try and think about my class that was finishing up for the year and then I was already thrown into a situation I knew nothing about for the next year. It was all rather confusing and I never really comprehended what I was getting myself in for. I though "yeah i've got this"even though I had no idea what was expected of me or where I was even heading with my career.
We did get some wonderful PD sessions during 2013. I can not fault the brilliance of education genius Julia Atkin. She is so inspiring. She helps you to connect everything together.. Know exactly where you are at… And help you to think about where you need to go from there and you will have had no idea at all where you were at when you walked in the room. She makes you think about everything differently and puts things in such a way it gives you perspective.
During the Christmas holidays Kate and I spent more time at school than anyone else! We tried to nut out what we wanted to happen and how we wanted it to look. We spent a long time planning the class programme and sorting out the perfect spots for furniture in the classroom. We had worked out our vision and put so much thought into the placement of everything. This included where the pens would go, where the sewing machines would be set up. The tables in one end for group work and the open community space down the other end for large group meetings. We were going to start everything together as one group. We planned on starting how we wanted to continue and by then time the school term started we were feeling pretty good about all the work we had done. We couldn't wait for the term to start and for the kids to work and learn in the environment just like we had planned.
Unfortunately things didn't work out quite like we planned. The biggest thing that we noticed first was the lack of structure in the programme. Some of the children just couldn't handle the freedom they were being given and either took advantage of it or just didn't do anything at all and became lost in what they were supposed to be doing. The children expected us to tell them what to do rather than them having to think for themselves about what to do. They just didn't have the strategies in place to be able to handle the environment or work successfully in the environment we had provided for them. The initial programme we had decided on was just not working. They were not ready and possibly neither were we… We were jumping way ahead of ourselves.
Our programme was made up of 6 x 45 minute blocks where one of us would be teaching and the other would be roaming the classroom questioning and guiding the others. The one teaching would have a group of students for maths, reading or writing. Once the group lesson was done those children would be provided with a follow up activity. All the other children not with the teacher were doing an inquiry based project of their own choice which they could continue on with at anytime unless with the teacher or doing a follow up activity. They were to fill in a learning journal. A book that would document all of their work with photos, written text, diagrams and SOLO maps.
After two weeks of doing it this way we knew it wasn't working. There were a lot of children off task and were doing nothing that had any real significant meaning or it wasn't something that they couldn't already do at morning tea and lunchtime. They were just playing - and even though I know that playing is important they were not learning anything new through their play. As much as we didn't want to admit it, we knew we weren't getting what we wanted from the new environment and something had to be done to change this. It also became obvious in our groupings. Some children would be seen 3x a day for reading, writing and maths and have no time for their own inquiry projects where some days you might not see another child even once in the day. It was hard to keep track of where each child was at with their learning and it was also evident that a lot of children had no idea how to plan their work in any kind of way.
We did not want "lost" children and we did not want any children missing out. We also wanted to know where our children were at and what they were doing with their learning. Kate and I knew that we would have to take a step back and re-assess the situation.
As successful classroom teachers we had never felt this way before. The year before we had had strategies and practices in place in our rooms that worked successfully. We had known where all the children were at with their learning and what their next steps to learning would be. We then decided to take these aspects into consideration as we now moved into our next steps of learning.
We sat down and wrote down all of the practices that we had valued in out previous classroom teaching, such as; shared story, writing programme, basic facts programme and task boards for reading and maths. I also valued daily fitness and oral language. With all of these things in mind we split our day into 3 separate blocks; Literacy, Numeracy and Inquiry. My daily programme looks pretty much like this everyday:
Admin
Focus groups
Writing
Reading
------------
Basic Facts
Numeracy
Maths Investigations
------------
Science Inquiry
Own inquiry time
Fitness
We all come together after the admin in the morning for our focus group time, the start of our writing time, maths investigations and all afternoon during inquiry time.
Writing, reading and numeracy are all totally separate - Just like they would be if we were in a separate single cell class. We both teach groups at the same time and while we have our groups everyone else is doing the same subject as well. We have noticed that a lot of the children are responding well to having more structure in their day and they have begun to think more about what they are actually learning and why. And we have begun to realise that we were expecting a lot of the children. To get them to being autonomous learners we need to go right back to the start and support their learning by modelling and prompting.
Lots of discussion with a couple of other teachers that have already been working this way for the past year has really helped us. After we changed the programme we felt a bit better about the learning that the children were getting. Even though it wasn't what we wanted we knew we had to go back to go forward. We have also had conversations with our visionary principal and the amazing Julia Atkin to help us guide our way or help to provide us with the thinking that can get us started again. Kate and I have decided that we will make now small change everyday. We need to also think about our hard and soft system balance. We have started with the issues in the physical environment.
Focus Groups became about from a tweak. We knew our system for cleaning up and respecting property within the class needed to be fixed. In order to fix the hard system (physical items being returned and tidied) we needed to create a soft system (a strategy for the children to use to help them). As class they came up the steps that they needed to do to put away items within the classroom. A sign has been made by one of the children showing these steps. We also modelled it by doing a role play of packing up correctly and putting things back in the right place - They won't forget that in a hurry!
They have also discussed the things that they think are not working for them in the physical environment this year. The cloakroom was a very large issue. Our initial intention was to use this space as an extra working space. The bag hooks were going outside and this would create a whole new space. The hooks outside have not been ready and as a result all the bags have continued to be inside where we had also set up a comfortable couch, chair and table. This equalled one big tight space and a mess with bags everywhere. Not a convenient place to work comfortably in. The children made suggestions about taking the couch and the chair away to create more room. We listened. Our caretaker has been harassed by us to make the hooks outside… But he has started and just has the finishing touches to do - They should be ready by Monday! We have moved the chair into the quiet room and in my end we have put the couch. The children have responded well to the changes. There has been more room on the cloakroom and room 12 has had a couch which has made things a bit more "homely" down their end.
Another issue we had was when we changed the programme to be slightly more separated from the other class, my class felt like they were getting the raw end of the deal. They had no bean bags or pillows or anything, just a hard floor. While at the other end they were complaining of not having enough tables to work at. Together with the children we have made the appropriate changes to make them feel comfortable and have ownership of their space. We realise that this environment is not going to work if we do not work together in a partnership with the children. This is their space just as much as it is ours or even more than it is ours and we want them to be comfortable and feel like the environment is theirs.
Clean up has been much better and its amazing how a small thing can make a big difference.. like moving a table a different way or gaining an extra seat. Thinking about where you put the television or the microphone and making sure that all the time you share your thinking with the children and get them to share theirs with you.
Everything needs to be in partnership together.
In 2013 I got the option posed to me as to whether I would be interested in working in a co-operative learning environment with another teacher. They were taking down the walls between two classrooms and we were to become one large learning space. I was very keen to give this a go as this sounded like a fabulous opportunity to be a part of the future of the development of Christchurch education. Kate and I had known each other for about 3 years… Or so we thought… You really do get to know a person much more when you have to work in such close quarters with them.
Anyway in 2013 we both said "yes please!!" and there we were staring on a roller coaster of PD leading up to the end of the school year. It was tough. I had to try and think about my class that was finishing up for the year and then I was already thrown into a situation I knew nothing about for the next year. It was all rather confusing and I never really comprehended what I was getting myself in for. I though "yeah i've got this"even though I had no idea what was expected of me or where I was even heading with my career.
We did get some wonderful PD sessions during 2013. I can not fault the brilliance of education genius Julia Atkin. She is so inspiring. She helps you to connect everything together.. Know exactly where you are at… And help you to think about where you need to go from there and you will have had no idea at all where you were at when you walked in the room. She makes you think about everything differently and puts things in such a way it gives you perspective.
During the Christmas holidays Kate and I spent more time at school than anyone else! We tried to nut out what we wanted to happen and how we wanted it to look. We spent a long time planning the class programme and sorting out the perfect spots for furniture in the classroom. We had worked out our vision and put so much thought into the placement of everything. This included where the pens would go, where the sewing machines would be set up. The tables in one end for group work and the open community space down the other end for large group meetings. We were going to start everything together as one group. We planned on starting how we wanted to continue and by then time the school term started we were feeling pretty good about all the work we had done. We couldn't wait for the term to start and for the kids to work and learn in the environment just like we had planned.
Unfortunately things didn't work out quite like we planned. The biggest thing that we noticed first was the lack of structure in the programme. Some of the children just couldn't handle the freedom they were being given and either took advantage of it or just didn't do anything at all and became lost in what they were supposed to be doing. The children expected us to tell them what to do rather than them having to think for themselves about what to do. They just didn't have the strategies in place to be able to handle the environment or work successfully in the environment we had provided for them. The initial programme we had decided on was just not working. They were not ready and possibly neither were we… We were jumping way ahead of ourselves.
Our programme was made up of 6 x 45 minute blocks where one of us would be teaching and the other would be roaming the classroom questioning and guiding the others. The one teaching would have a group of students for maths, reading or writing. Once the group lesson was done those children would be provided with a follow up activity. All the other children not with the teacher were doing an inquiry based project of their own choice which they could continue on with at anytime unless with the teacher or doing a follow up activity. They were to fill in a learning journal. A book that would document all of their work with photos, written text, diagrams and SOLO maps.
After two weeks of doing it this way we knew it wasn't working. There were a lot of children off task and were doing nothing that had any real significant meaning or it wasn't something that they couldn't already do at morning tea and lunchtime. They were just playing - and even though I know that playing is important they were not learning anything new through their play. As much as we didn't want to admit it, we knew we weren't getting what we wanted from the new environment and something had to be done to change this. It also became obvious in our groupings. Some children would be seen 3x a day for reading, writing and maths and have no time for their own inquiry projects where some days you might not see another child even once in the day. It was hard to keep track of where each child was at with their learning and it was also evident that a lot of children had no idea how to plan their work in any kind of way.
We did not want "lost" children and we did not want any children missing out. We also wanted to know where our children were at and what they were doing with their learning. Kate and I knew that we would have to take a step back and re-assess the situation.
As successful classroom teachers we had never felt this way before. The year before we had had strategies and practices in place in our rooms that worked successfully. We had known where all the children were at with their learning and what their next steps to learning would be. We then decided to take these aspects into consideration as we now moved into our next steps of learning.
We sat down and wrote down all of the practices that we had valued in out previous classroom teaching, such as; shared story, writing programme, basic facts programme and task boards for reading and maths. I also valued daily fitness and oral language. With all of these things in mind we split our day into 3 separate blocks; Literacy, Numeracy and Inquiry. My daily programme looks pretty much like this everyday:
Admin
Focus groups
Writing
Reading
------------
Basic Facts
Numeracy
Maths Investigations
------------
Science Inquiry
Own inquiry time
Fitness
We all come together after the admin in the morning for our focus group time, the start of our writing time, maths investigations and all afternoon during inquiry time.
Writing, reading and numeracy are all totally separate - Just like they would be if we were in a separate single cell class. We both teach groups at the same time and while we have our groups everyone else is doing the same subject as well. We have noticed that a lot of the children are responding well to having more structure in their day and they have begun to think more about what they are actually learning and why. And we have begun to realise that we were expecting a lot of the children. To get them to being autonomous learners we need to go right back to the start and support their learning by modelling and prompting.
Lots of discussion with a couple of other teachers that have already been working this way for the past year has really helped us. After we changed the programme we felt a bit better about the learning that the children were getting. Even though it wasn't what we wanted we knew we had to go back to go forward. We have also had conversations with our visionary principal and the amazing Julia Atkin to help us guide our way or help to provide us with the thinking that can get us started again. Kate and I have decided that we will make now small change everyday. We need to also think about our hard and soft system balance. We have started with the issues in the physical environment.
Focus Groups became about from a tweak. We knew our system for cleaning up and respecting property within the class needed to be fixed. In order to fix the hard system (physical items being returned and tidied) we needed to create a soft system (a strategy for the children to use to help them). As class they came up the steps that they needed to do to put away items within the classroom. A sign has been made by one of the children showing these steps. We also modelled it by doing a role play of packing up correctly and putting things back in the right place - They won't forget that in a hurry!
They have also discussed the things that they think are not working for them in the physical environment this year. The cloakroom was a very large issue. Our initial intention was to use this space as an extra working space. The bag hooks were going outside and this would create a whole new space. The hooks outside have not been ready and as a result all the bags have continued to be inside where we had also set up a comfortable couch, chair and table. This equalled one big tight space and a mess with bags everywhere. Not a convenient place to work comfortably in. The children made suggestions about taking the couch and the chair away to create more room. We listened. Our caretaker has been harassed by us to make the hooks outside… But he has started and just has the finishing touches to do - They should be ready by Monday! We have moved the chair into the quiet room and in my end we have put the couch. The children have responded well to the changes. There has been more room on the cloakroom and room 12 has had a couch which has made things a bit more "homely" down their end.
Another issue we had was when we changed the programme to be slightly more separated from the other class, my class felt like they were getting the raw end of the deal. They had no bean bags or pillows or anything, just a hard floor. While at the other end they were complaining of not having enough tables to work at. Together with the children we have made the appropriate changes to make them feel comfortable and have ownership of their space. We realise that this environment is not going to work if we do not work together in a partnership with the children. This is their space just as much as it is ours or even more than it is ours and we want them to be comfortable and feel like the environment is theirs.
Clean up has been much better and its amazing how a small thing can make a big difference.. like moving a table a different way or gaining an extra seat. Thinking about where you put the television or the microphone and making sure that all the time you share your thinking with the children and get them to share theirs with you.
Everything needs to be in partnership together.
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