Like many teachers, who are now reaching the end of our summer break, I am beginning to get myself back into ‘work-mode’. Teaching in a Lower school, this includes sorting the classroom.
This of course involves;
- peg labels
- drawer labels
- book labels
- table layouts
- displays etc.
After making the photocopier smoke after printing nearly everything off teacher’s pet (www.tpet.co.uk), and laminating anything that the children will touch, my classroom looks all shiny and new, ready for September.
This year however, I’m thinking of something different. Yes there will still be displays, tray labels and the rest of the usual bits and pieces, but this year I’m scratching my head over the classroom layout. A few days ago, our head emailed us all for a quick update on the building work going on in school as well as arrangements for INSET days. She set us a challenge, draw what you want your classroom to look like.
This got me thinking, what should a classroom look like in 2015. At the weekend, I attended my cousin’s wedding where the reception was held at a private prep school in Canterbury. Curiosity got the better of me and I had a peep through the windows into some of the classrooms. What I saw were displays yet to be done (come on, get your act together), shiny tech around the room (laptops, desktops, Smart Boards, Clevertouch screens), and tables in rows. That last part surprised me some what. I’ve had my classroom layout in rows before. It had its benefits. The class where easier to manage, behaviour was easier to control as I could see everyone. However, I don’t feel the learning was fun.
For the past few years, I have had my classroom set out in groups or ‘islands’. each week I change the children around so that by the end of the year, they have worked with and sat with everyone in the class. Although this might make managing the class maybe more challenging, it gave the children the opportunity to work, collaborate and I suppose ‘copy’ more than just one person.
Back in June, on the hottest day of the year, I headed off to the Digital Education Show in London. A great opportunity to network with other professionals, hear and see some inspiring speakers as well as a good amount of freebies. First on the bill was a guy named Sugata Mitra. This guy has done some pretty impressive and creative things in the world of Education; Granny in the cloud, the Uruguayan Laptop Programme and the hole in the wall. The last of these ideas was the most interesting. He planted a computer in the wall in a slum in Delhi. The computer was for the children living in the slums to use as they please. What happened was that over the course of the next few weeks, the children taught themselves. They taught themselves to read, write, research and find answers to the many questions they know doubt had. Incidentally, this experiment was the inspiration for the book Q & A by Vikas Swarup, which later became the film Slumdog Millionaire.
Anyway, I have digressed somewhat. One of the things Sugata Mitra was talking about was a new idea called SOLE (the title of the blog will now hopefully make more sense). SOLE stands for Self Organised Learning Environment. At first I assumed that meant that children would need to be organised, remember pencils and packed lunches, but no. What he meant by Self Organised was that in the midst of chaos and confusion, we as human beings have the natural ability to find order. He gave an example which I later tried with my class. Ask a large room of strangers to start clapping. What happens? Everyone claps and its noisy. Leave everyone clapping and something quite remarkable happens. Over time, everyone will start to clap in unison. There’s no one at the front orchestrating this, it just happens, order is found in the chaos. Sugata Mitra took this concept and decided to build a classroom around it.
The first thing I learned at University on my teacher training degree is that we all learn in different ways. So in that case, why should we make everyone conform to the same teaching method? Sugata Mitra talked us through what SOLE classroom looks like. Tables in islands, laptops, tablets, books, pens, pencils, crayons, different colour paper. Sounds like a normal classroom right? Well this is where it changed. Most classrooms have a Smart board/whiteboard/screen which pretty much everything else is pointed to. In a SOLE there isn’t. From the pictures he showed us, it looked more like a conference room for children, or the offices at Google. He then went on to talk about how a SOLE worked.
- Teacher or adult gives the children a starting point or question.
- Teacher or adult tells everyone the rules and the time.
- Well that’s it!
The example he gave us was a SOLE he had set up in a school in Melbourne, Australia. This class of 20 12 year old girls was given the task; ‘What is Quantum Physics?’. At this point I had many questions.
What does the teacher do? How do you sort the groups out? What happens if they are not on task?
He answered all of these questions when he talked about the rules. You can work with who you want, you can use what you want, you can produce your findings in any way you want. But what about the naughty kid who just throws stuff? What about the bossy bright girl who takes over? Sugata Mitra saw this coming so went back to his point about ‘Self-organisation’. In this environment, the children found their place very quickly. The naughty child was engaged because he could use a computer and work with his mates. The bright girl who always takes over found herself having to compromise as no one else wanted to work with her. The kids got organised. Now i kept thinking there are probably thousands of children that wouldn’t work well in this environment and countless other reasons why it wouldn’t work, but I was intrigued as to what the results where.
Back to the school in Melbourne. Sugata Mitra showed us what one of the groups produced. The group of 3 girls produced a presentation on ‘Quantum Physics’ just like they were asked. One girl had used the computer for research, another presented the information, the third child used the crayons to create some amazing diagrams. Not only had they produced a presentation about a very complex subject, they understood it fully too! Sugata went on to tell us a colleague had watched the presentation and claimed the quality of understanding all three girls showed was at a degree level. WOW!
But why?
Well we’ve already established that in this environment, the children very quickly found their place and role in a group. They worked to their strengths and learnt to compromise with each other. Being given an open question such as ‘What is Quantum Physics?’ the children were able to research and find out what they needed to know. They could watch a clip on Youtube, find an article on Wikipedia and they could filter out what they needed and what they didn’t need. They found information that led to more questions and more research. Well that’s a brief summary anyway.
But what does the teacher do?
This part was interesting, seeing as the teacher, wasn’t teaching them the answer, what did they do? Mentor, coach, support, question amongst other things. All the things a teacher is supposed to do, but some how never gets the time. The role changed dramatically. Rather than being the person in charge at the front, the teacher became the one walking around and asking questions. What does that mean? How did you find that out? What if…?
It reminded me a lot of how the Foundation Stage is set up. Children explore new things, they collaborate with others. Yes, little Jimmy* just want to play in the sand pit but thankfully the teacher is there to encourage the child to explore other things. I’ve spent the odd lesson in the Foundation Stage classroom, it’s exhausting but fun. The most recent time I sat with a group of boys playing with LEGO (I was in heaven at this point). We were making towers but they kept falling over. I had my ipad with me, so Barry*, Roger* and I started to look at pictures of towers and buildings. We found a video on bricklaying which they copied to make their own walls. At this point, I could have walked away, recorded their observations etc. But seeing as the ipad they were using had my diary, emails and a collection of wedding photos on it, I decided to take it with me.
This got me thinking. Do we allow this enough? Do we need to follow the rigour of a lesson plan so much? Can we drop what we are doing and find the answer to the random questions Dorris* just asked during registration? Allowing the children to find things out for themselves seems to be a brilliant way of doing things. What is stopping us? Does anyone have any ideas they have tried that work?
So back to my task for INSET day and my classroom for the next academic year. What will it look like? What will adorn the walls? How will my tables look?
Maybe my classroom needs a bit of SOLE?
For more information about SOLE, check out School in the cloud
*Made up names, obviously!
boydytheteacher 