Giving students choice in their learning

Moving into an Innovative Learning Environment can be very overwhelming and scary. But as I look back at our syndicate and team members and what we have achieved during the pandemic and everything we had to adapt to and reinvent or change to make it work - we are AMAZING!!!

We had to quickly adjust our planning to make it user friendly for the students at school as well as students that are isolating at home and feeling up to it to do learning, hence HYBRID learning. At the time we didn't realise that it was just the beginning of our ILE journey. 

Take aways from Hybrid Learning:

• Importance of TRUST in a team
• Importance of COLLABORATION in a team
• Importance of COMPROMISE in the team
• Work with each others' STRENGTHS
• Being able to LISTEN to advise and change where applicable

Our Hybrid Learning model soon became our normal planning and it is great to see the passion getting back into the teachers' eyes, not spending hours over a weekend doing planning by yourself.

We also started the BSLA(structured Literacy) approach and are working more in ability grouping with our students. Being able to have differentiation within the ability group is truly a game changer. We are also fortunate to have a new BT who can manage a "nesting class" to fill those utter most important foundational skills. 

OUR NEWEST COLLABORATIVE IDEA:

Giving students agency in what they want to learn - only rule is that they need to stick with what they have chosen for the week. The next week they can change.

Our teachers used student voice to lead us into our inquiry learning theme. The students were interest in learning more about animals.  We lead them into the animal classification table and from there they could choose which animal they are interested in. From there we created a chart according to their main interest and how we can incorporate most of their choices.

four main classification groups were identified. 

The teachers chose which category they want to do and which animal they want to focus on for the first week. The students were given the opportunity to choose and work with that teacher for the week. On a Friday we will brainstorm which animal will be the next focus and we come together as a syndicate to form our new groups. This has worked very well and the students are excited to learn about something they are really interested in. 

YOU COULD HERE A BUZZ  - and that's our job!!

Create passionate and innovative learners.