Te Waipuna ō Tamaki
As a teacher that has experienced working in both single cell classrooms and shared learning spaces, and conducting research on working within newly opened ILEs, I can acknowledge both the affordances and challenges of both learning environments for teachers and students.It is with an open mind and awareness of the need to adapt our practice to meet the needs of our learners, that my wonderful colleague Laadan Jalili and I negotiate our way in our exciting new shared learning space Te Waipuna ō Tamaki.
Honesty and a fail fast approach have already begun to guide us through our first term as we quickly find out what works and what doesn't, changing things as we go.
This blog is a space to share the journey with others interested in or working within a shared space. It is not a 'how to' as anyone working within a shared space will now that what may work for one set of learners and teachers may very well not work for another. But it may provide ideas that can be adapted or a sharing of experiences others can relate to or offer advice on.
So far this is what has worked for us establishing our shared learning space:
- Acknowledgement of each other's strengths, allowing each other to take the lead in these areas whether it be in the organisation of resources, the teaching of a specific area of the curriculum, or sharing of ideas.
- The flexibility of changing what isn't working. This has been on a near daily basis in the form of groupings of students, routines that haven't worked or needed adapting, and timetabling.
- Learning from each other as we watch each other teach.
- Developing a respectful and honest working relationship.
- Constant discussions regarding students needs and learning.
Current challenges we are facing are:
- Students attempting and succeeding in gaining attention from each other through inappropriate behaviour within a larger audience. This can quickly escalate and management of behaviour takes teaching time away from other students. To manage this we have decided to separate the students into two mixed level groups for the afternoon which is when this behaviour is mostly happening, give student choice through Daily Five to motivate them to stay on task and focus on praising these students when they are doing the right thing giving attention to positive behaviour.
- Everything on mass including paperwork. We need to ensure the workload is spread evenly and that we support each other so we don't feel overloaded.
Any advice and ideas would be appreciated.
