Student Focus Group Years 5-8 Wednesday 27th July 2011

On Wednesday 27th July a group of year 5-8 students met in E-space at BHC to undertake the visioning activity that staff and parent groups had already participated in. The students also viewed the "flythrough" of our new buildings and photos of various furniture items that the TPL team had seen used in open learning spaces at other schools. The groups were led by Sandy Johnstone and Chris Kors. It was an extremely positive afternoon enjoyed by both students and staff, who are keen to be involved in more activities. Following is an overview of the students ideas.

INTERESTING QUOTES

"Tick of approval from Education Department for new K-12 school in Boronia which assures teacher,student and student safety at all facilities"

"Our logo is U K-12 because the school is for you."

"Friendly and inviting school."

MAIN AREAS OF COMMENT

*Subjects/Learning
*Buildings
*Uniform
*Rules/Safety
*Technology
*Care of the Environment

SOME IDEAS FROM THE STUDENTS' WORK

Completely different colour for our uniform because it is a new start.
The suggestion of hoodies was a recurring theme. Jeans and Summer/Winter uniforms were also mentioned.

VALUES
When asked to include values for our new school respect featured in almost all groups. Contributing, Participating and Motivation were also included by many groups as were sharing,caring,kindness, truth and honesty and love of reading.


All expressed a desire for the school to be safe for all students, staff and parents.

In general all were excited about the new facilities and hoped that learning would be fun.


They also had some interesting ideas for dividing the school into various groups. Two groups mentioned Kinder and prep together, yr1-4 and then yr5 and up. Another group mentioned the concept of a senior school but did not mention which year levels this was.

MAKING LEARNING REAL.
They expressed an interest in Cross Age Tutoring, Work experience and training programs and a student run cafeteria.

Silverton Primary School

Silverton Primary School was built in the 1970's with open learning spaces that were soon turned into traditional rooms. In 1993 Tony Bryant (Principal) took over and opened the rooms back up. It currently has 430 students with 68% coming from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Each learning community was about 400square metres with four homegroups and four teachers. The students work together for some activities and then as a homegroup for others. The students moved around the learning centre to work on different subjects rather than each homegroup being attached to specific area. This meant that the students and teachers had ownership of the whole area.
As we have seen in many other schools acess to technology is vital in the Open Learning Spaces. At Silverton Primary there are 600 devices including I-Pads, Desktop computers with Touch Screens and Netbooks available on demand for 430 students.
"Discovery Time" runs in four two hour blocks per week. There are no themes and Kids come up with their own project ideas. In the other times they run the usual literacy and numeracy workshops as well as specialist classes.
From 9:00-9:30 each Monday morning all staff and students work in "Mentoring Groups" where groups of 10 multi-age students work with an adult in the school. These include Canteen staff, maintenance, ICT techs etc.Students usually remain with the same group for 2 years.
They also have "Early Bird Reading" where 70-80 P-4 students come to school early (8:40-9:00am) and read with grade 5&6'S who have been trained in reading with younger students. They have found this has improved the reading of students across all year levels.
In addition, weaker maths students meet in a small group 20mins prior to a maths lesson to cover terminology, equipment and pre-knowledge required for the lesson. These sometimes take place during recess. These students have shown improvement in their self esteem and attitudes to maths.
There is also a radio station that transmits 24 hours a day to a 1Km radius with programming produced by the students and an in school TV station.
As we have seen in all open learning spaces there were a variety of seating options including beanbags, couches, cushions and lapdesks as well as the traditional chairs and tables.

Silverton ps

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Inquiry based learning in open learning spaces

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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.

TPL Report May 2011

Tpl report may 2011

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