The Collaboration Continues

Room 8 and 17 invade the new learning space! Dun Dun Dun!

Week 2 and we jumped in the deep end .... but we were prepared.

Our classes of 47 Year 5 and 6 children were very excited about using the new learning space.

Student Voice

"At first I was ecstatic about the idea and when we got into Room 4 I thought, "Wow this is an amazing space!" - Shanelle

"I was excited when I heard we would be moving into Room 4 and it carried on when we started working in here because it was something different from our normal class and we got to collaborate with other kids." - Britney

"When I first heard about going to Room 4, I was not very excited, but now it's a really cool place to learn because we can learn any where we like and work with another class." - Sam

"I was not keen about working in Room 4 to start with but now that I have tried it I have changed my mind completely." - Hunter

"I was excited and anxious at the same time." - Mia

We based our programme around a literacy theme, Seasons, and used a variety of thinking tools to encourage deeper thinking.

As teachers, we collaborated to design a programme that would ensure the children also had to collaborate both within and across the 2 classes.

The week before was a valuable time for us as we were able to work with the children to set up groups and programmes in writing, reading and spelling. We did plan to include Maths but after discussions with colleagues, we realised early on that this would be too much.

How to set up the space with furniture came from collaboration with the children

Luckily we were able to set up the learning space with the help of the children on the Friday of Week 1.

Day 1

The day started with the children arriving and going to work immediately. Their task was to work on Google A Day, and research the answers to the questions. They relished this task and were soon heads down and absorbed.

The children spent the day in mixed groups for spelling, writing and reading. The writing groups were given the task to set up a wall display with a variety of research notes, collaborative group charts and visual language material. They settled well into this challenge.

During the day both teachers worked with all spelling, writing and reading groups.

At the end of the day before we packed up the children reflected on their day on a Google doc we set up to document student voice for the week. Here are their comments.

Good Things about Day 1 in Room 4

Today we liked working with different people. GAGA

Today we liked working in room 4 because we were collaborating really well in our  group . swift

Today our group liked working in room 4 because we had a chance to work with more children than usual.-Aguilera          

It was exciting working with different people. - Teachers.

I D - It was very very exciting because it was comfortable and we got to sit anywhere we wanted.

Today was great because I was working really hard with my groups. from Mars

We enjoyed working in room 4 because it was a new start in our learning. We also liked the new learning space in room 4 - Maddens

We liked working in room 4 because it is a bigger space. Eminem

Today I liked working with Room 17 because we got to work with different people we never usually do.

Today I liked working with Room 8 and collaborating with my writing group. from Mars

Today we liked working with other people.

Today I like having a break from our classes.

It is a new room to us to people to be in. We loved collaborating From Legend

Collaborative working. Beyonce

We loved everything especially the comfort. Jessie J

Today I liked working in any spaces we wanted. from Rolling Stones

Day 2

The programme continued with some minor changes to increase the collaboration time for the students to successfully complete their tasks.

We added a new task which was inspired by our guest Maths speaker. The children were to extend their thinking about their compare and contrast Hot Visual maps to find an activity which could take place in 2 different seasons. They were then to create a visual language display to show How To ......

We modified an activity from a survey analysis to a 3D presentation to show an aspect or aspects of seasons.

Things we want to improve in Room 4

Today we disliked working in room 4 because it got really loud sometimes.- Coldplay

Today we disliked working in room 4 because some people were wandering around the room . Swift

Today I disliked being in room 4 because it was a bit loud and my writing group didn't get to print out our name page.

Today we disliked that the noise level got too high  and some people were wandering. GAGA

Today our group disliked being interrupted and the noise level around us.-Aguliera

Today we disliked people floating around

From Legend

Today was really loud and it was quite chaotic. from Mars

We didn’t have any dislikes - Maddens

Day 3 and 4

Today the major emphasis was on planning and drafting an information report about seasons. Children had to refer to all their previous research in order to effectively plan out their writing. 
Teachers spent time with each group to provide guidance and inspiration. These conferences are to continue on Day 4.

It has been great to have parents in to see what we are doing.

What was better today than on Days 1 and 2?

Today our group thought that we were on task more than days one and two so today was the best day of this week.

Today was better than Day 1 and 2 because today we had heaps of time to try to finish off some of our Writing work and Spelling and we are nearly done. From Beatles

Today we know that we got most of our seasons work done and hope that all the groups  got half done as well.  from Legend…...

Today we enjoyed working with our writing group and got heaps done .

Today we enjoyed getting up to the standards of our work. Beyonce

Today we finished more than we expected

Today the noise level was ok

Today our group enjoyed the fact that we all got along really well. -Maddens

We think today was better because we got more finished for writing!!!

Today we liked working in room 4 better than day 1 and 2 because  we got more work done and we were more focused. Swift

Today our group got  a  great amount of work done . 1D

Today we liked getting more work done from Mars

Today we liked that the noise wasn’t as loud as last time. Lorde

Today we liked the work we had to do. Our group got lots done and we are ready to go again tomorrow. -Eminem

Day 5

The final day for this group.
Our task was to make sure we completed the tasks we had started. Our writing focus was to compare and contrast seasonal characteristics and our feelings about seasons.

Each writing group was challenged to set up a wall display with specific displays. All activities required group collaboration. of the 15 groups, 13 had worked very well together. Three groups did this very well and produced an amazing display.

Student Voice

How has working in Room 4 made my learning better?

Our learning is better because we can work where ever we want.

We get to know how different people work differently.

We have learned how to deal with working under pressure and to a deadline.

We got valuable feedback to help us improve.

We were able to learn new things from different people.

We had an opportunity to complete the tasks set and to be ready by a deadline.

Working in Room 4 taught us how to work in different spaces.

If one teacher is busy we can go to the other teacher.

It has let us learn from other people and in different ways.

We have been able to collaborate with the teachers and they were able to learn with us.

We have learned that if we don't like one area we can move to another and that different spaces can be used in different ways.

It has taught us to meet other people’s expectations by becoming more flexible.

Teacher Reflection:
Collaborative planning made all the difference for this experience. We had 3 weeks to plan and organise our programmes and activities. We were both in on the planning from the beginning and had equal ownership of what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. We clearly defined our roles early in this process.

This made us quietly confident coming into the room on Day 1. We had spent the first week setting the programme up so the children felt they knew what was expected from them too. We arrived in the room and just kept going. Room 8 children were more comfortable as they had had a lot of experience of a Self Managed learning programme from the previous 2 terms. They had had some experience of collaborative learning and were able to show the Room 17 children who readily took the ideas on board. This is exactly what we had hoped.
During the week we made some changes to our programme as we saw how things were progressing and to focus the children. We started with writing as the main focus with reading and spelling as a minor focus. We decided to drop the reading programme after Day 2 as time was running out. We kept up the spelling activities mainly as Can Dos.

We enjoyed our time in Room 4 and the experience was a real learning curve for us both. The children were challenged with activities and learning experiences and were sad to leave on Day 5. One of the hardest things for them was to dismantle the displays that had taken all week to build.