BORONIA K-12: June 2011

Sunday 26 June 2011

Ashburton Primary School

Ashburton Primary are currently undergoing a major building program which will include Open Learning Spaces. They are trialling some open spaces that have been converted from old traditional classrooms with Inquiry Based Leasrning projects. In these open learning spaces they have different seating options available to students as we have seen at all schools with flexible spaces. They make a point of not having enough chairs and tables for every student in the room; instead they have beanbags and couches as well as traditional seating.

One of the most interesting things at Ashburton was the current LOTE program. They have had difficulty getting a teacher and are in the process of deciding which language would be the best to go with. In the mean time they have "World Wide Frenzy with Dr. McEnzie" which has the students "travelling" around the world investigating the culture of countries all over the world.

Again there was an emphasis on providing joint planning time for teams.

There was also a recognition that homegroup teachers do need time alone with their particular group each week to build relationships.

We also discovered some new contacts which will help with our investigations in term three.

Mt Ridley College

Mt Ridley College opened in 2009 with 150 students, in 2010 they had 500 and 1040 in 2011. It is currently P-8 but grows by one year level each year, they will be P-12 by 2015.
The 5-8 Learning Community worked as one group for Numeracy, Literacy and "Neighbourhood" (An integrated program with Inquiry Based Learning). All other subjects operate as 5-6 and 7-8. Once again this is successful because of a large number of adults in the classrooms. They have a large number of graduate teachers which gives them extra funds in the budget to employ extra support staff.

This year they have a TPL team working on planning curriculum for next year's year 9's. They will be a stand alone Learning Community with many of the activities based around careers etc that are traditioanlly done in year 10. The idea is that they will be better prepared for starting some VCE studies when in yr 10.

They have made a clear distinction in their leadership structure to separate Curriculum planning etc from Student management.

Berwick Chase Primary

Berwick Chase Primary is exclusively Open/Flexible learning Spaces. It opened in 2009 with 160 students and ended the year with 200. They currently have 415 students 83 of those are in grade Prep. The layout of this school has the Library centrally located with the other open spaces branching off from there.

They have flexible "streaming " in Prep to grade 2. This means that a prep student reading at grade 2 level would be given the opportunity to read with other students at that level and vice versa for students who are struggling. Each morning there are 2 hours of literacy and one hour of numeracy with no specialist classes in the first few hours of the day. The Principal believes firmly in planning time being crucial to the success of these open learning spaces. Each team is given one full day to plan every 5 weeks. He believes it is not possible to plan further than 5 weeks at a time.

The open learning spaces are successful partly because of the large number of adults in the spaces. Many of these are parent helpers but there are also quite a few aides.