Changing the environment.

The learning environment of my classroom has changed greatly.  I feel students are much more engaged and often comment they are amazed the lesson is over so quickly.  This change in culture can be seen during the sessions at change overtime.  In the second week I started playing music at the transition stages and gave students the task of walking around the room to explain what they had learnt and find out what they were going to do in the next part of the cycle.  This reduced greatly the lead in time for each part of the cycle.  There were also marked differences between the first group who had teacher session  and the last group.  The last group to have a teacher session were much more confident about asking questions which they said was strange as they knew more but needed to ask more.  There was also a shift to higher level questions in the latter group.

The physical environment of my classroom has also changed greatly.  I managed to get two flat screen TVs "temporarily" mounted on the wall for student collaboration groups to display their ideas and resources.  For younger students I had the collaboration phase sitting on the carpet, this let me move one third of my furniture out and open up the room.  Some students wanted to work in isolation at this stage therefore I needed to model what their learning environment would look like i.e. sitting in a circle facing each other.  Special need students at times found the social aspect of this phase hard and I used my teaching assistant to observe at a distance. The assistant then if necessary withdrew the student(s) causing concern at the independent study phase and discussed how they could develop their social skills using a restorative approach.

Above.  Here you can see two of the three rotations (individual work and group work).  Teacher instruction was done in a joining room.

Above.  Here you can see how the classroom has changed.  On the back wall you can see a post it mind map which lets students share their ideas with each other.  Each group of students in a rotation has a personalised learning experience which can then be shared with other. 

The heavy tables are a problem and are now being replaced by a variety of tables that can be moved by the smallest of my students, all tables will have wheels and will be in a variety of shapes and colours, the are supplied by http://www.furnware.co.nz/ .