Friday 19 March 2010

Agile spaces

Our lead sponsor was fortunate to visit schools in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales where many are now working, teaching and learning in large agile multifaceted spaces with large student numbers, but teams of teachers too - these spaces are common in schools across Victoria too. Children work well together in teams, seem to be particularly effective when timetable blocks are longer and pay back the schools with self reliance, engagement and focus. When it is done right, these spaces are hugely efective.

In this picture a kindergarten group of 120 children were working with remarkably low levels of noise - they seemed to take the 20 teachers visiting with Professor Heppell comfortably in their stride without distraction. We have an open invitation to link in by Skype conferencing to chat to these visiting team of teachers about what they learned from this and other visits to effective teachers in these exciting new spaces.

1 comment:

  1. We're finding this the best type of space too. Our Foundation pupils are already benefiting hugely from the free-flow learning space and I'm so glad others have realised the opportunity. We've done heaps of work looking at children managing more and more of their own learning, making their own choices, and recording what choices they've made. It has definitely made critics rethink their beliefs - a bit of a revolution for them!

    Flip video cameras are properly fab for this age group by the way.

    ReplyDelete