Waimairi Visit

As part of our journey into Modern Learning we were all allocated a day to visit another school and gain inspiration. This was a hugely beneficial exercise and really helped to clarify and inspire where I want to go with my practice in the future.

Teaching

I would love to work collaboratively with a colleague in a team-teaching or shared teaching environment. I feel I need to do some more research around the different models of collaborative teaching as I saw a huge variety of different teaching combinations and styles on our visit. I am already working in a collaborative team for maths which is working really well as the children’s needs are being met more effectively than before. As a team we have talked about extending this teaching approach into reading as well to target specific needs and abilities. I am looking forward to doing this as it means I can focus my teaching on a specific need and really concentrating on helping those children make gains.

Something that concerns me with team teaching is the relationship between the two teachers and how this is managed and chosen. Waimairi were very open about this process and how people chose to work together. As a relatively new staff member to the school I am still very uncertain about who I would work effectively with and how this process would be decided. The different models of teaching were really interesting to discuss with the staff at Waimairi as there seemed to be different models and choices made in each power. I am really interested in the idea of working smarter not harder and sharing planning, assessing and moderation tasks across a small team of teachers.

Learning

The children at Waimairi were very engaged in their learning. There was a big emphasis on self-managed learners and the children could all articulate their timetable and routine. Something I didn’t see was a focus on a physical timetable which surprised me as it is something I have quite an emphasis on in my room. I would like to know how much ‘training’ the kids have had to be at the stage where they know and manage their timetable and learning. We also didn’t see the lesson start so the timetable may have been articulated to the children beforehand. I have been trying to use a self-regulated timetable during literacy time with my children which is working well. I would like to continue this and expand it into other areas of my teaching next year and feel a collaborative teaching approach would be complementary to this.

Students are scaffolded and accessed by teachers into learner styles (supported to autonomous) to help children make choices when learning. This model was great for the kids to see where they are at and their next steps for independence. Also helped the teachers manage different behaviours and needs. I think this would help address several of my concerns about how to manage certain behaviours and children in a large, busy learning environment.

Buildings

The physical buildings at Waimairi were another huge source of motivation. Ideas I have taken away from these are:

• · Removing cloakrooms and thinking smarter about where bags are stored (double hanging pegs etc).
• · Collaborative resources – students are more responsible when things are shared.
• · Focused areas – not trying to cram everything into one room.
• · Less books!
• · More space and resources for extra learning opportunities e.g. cooking.
• · Quiet spaces, room within a room – could use for withdrawal support, students that need quiet time, collaborative groups.

Solo taxonomy

Something I have been thinking about for a while is the use of thinking frameworks in my classroom. Currently I don’t feel I do justice to any kind of framework. At Waimairi we saw solo taxonomy used across the whole school. This framework inspired me as it is simple, the analogy of the hands is easy to follow, and it can be applied to many different curriculum areas. I would like to do some more reading around this and implement it in my classroom next year. I feel this would really help the children see what their next steps are and come up with these next steps themselves rather than being teacher set goals. The framework is also very flexible so children can move back ‘down’ to nothing/unistructural for each new topic they discover rather than feeling they have regressed a level or progression stage.

Questions/wonderings I still have:

• · Philosophy surrounding feedback to children and teacher marking? Didn’t see evidence of this. Is this part of modern learning and teaching? (would like to research this)
• · Lots of art work and finished work on walls but not many scaffolds or focused learning intentions. Is this because spaces are being used in more creative, multi-purpose ways?
• · Noise? Mess???? Personal barriers for me to overcome!
• · BT programme – how do partnerships get formed when release days and other teachers are factored in.
• · Changing year levels or staff – admin staff said it was challenging appointing new staff as partnerships had to be the right fit. How could we make this transition smoother?

Key thoughts

• · Community needs to be onboard – would it be useful for parents to have a visit to a modern learning school to see where we are headed?
• · Children have ownership over designing space
• · Teachers design spaces for their teaching styles – spaces tailored for how you and the kids work.
• · Rivers analogy – syndicates are formed across year groups not junior, middle, senior. Assemblies etc are held in these groups, helps with pastoral care and continuity throughout the school.