Classroom Organization II

Classroom Organization II

Training Module

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Classroom Organization II

“Designing your own classroom”

Introduction

Multigrade teachers should and must reform their classroom in order to facilitate teaching and learning. Teaching in multigrade setting is much more complicated and time consuming and thus official classroom formation guidelines if they exist should not be followed strictly. Moreover, the teacher should have the chance to reorganise his/her classroom in a way that it facilitates good time management and permits the operation of multiple activities by student individuals or groups simultaneously. You have been already familiarised with the approach of creating an “activity centre” and you have used it in real teaching conditions. Indeed, the “activity centres” approach is a very effective method for reforming and managing multigrade classrooms. This paper will provide guidance[1] to teachers that are about to proceed in such a reorganisation of their classrooms.

Designing your own classroom

Theoretical Background

As it was mentioned in the previous document, the starting point of the classroom’s reform is the teacher to understand what kind of organisation reforming needs to do in his classroom in order to have a more effective classroom setting. We list again the questions that it is believed to help teachers define their classroom organisation needs:

·  What types of activities normally occur in your classroom?

·  What types of activities would you like to occur?

·  How can you facilitate students’ grouping activities?

·  Are there students who tutor?

·  Do you meet separately with individual students or small groups?

In addition it is helpful to list again the main types of activities that usually occur in multigrade classes and which are: Quiet or individual study and testing, Whole-class teaching, Pair work, Group work, Audiovisual and ICT work.

If you have answers to the five questions presented above and in addition define what types of the seven activities do usually occur in your classroom you can start redesign your classroom. There is no magic recipe to arrange your classroom but there are some general guidelines that apply to most multigrade settings that could improve learning conditions a lot. For instance instead of desks in lines, all facing the chalkboard, as this is the case for the traditional monograde classroom, in the multigrade school you may have:

The above characteristics are common in many multigrade classrooms and represent paradigms of good teaching and learning practice. Flexibility is always an important factor as far as multigrade teaching is concerned and thus you should adjust the above schemes according to your classroom and school resources.

Remember: The creation of activity centres might exist in different ways from classroom to classroom, equipment and furniture and other resources are different in each school and thus there are no golden rules.

Probably the only golden rule that you might follow is always to have in mind that the aim is to rearrange the classroom according to the school conditions and resources in order to achieve the most pedagogically effective setting for your multigrade classroom. Flexibility is again the golden rule for re arranging your classroom and creating learning centers in it. You should be guided by the specific teaching and learning conditions existing in your school as well by the amount of available resources and students’ age abilities etc.

One other important issue is to design and develop learning centers that could serve the needs of students with special needs that might be present in your classes. This is a very important issue that cannot be covered in this sections and you should take specific pieces of advice from expert educators of this field that could participate actively in the re organising effort.

Suggestions for further study

-  The Multigrade classroom, A resource for small Rural Schools, Book 2: Classroom Organization, NWREL

-  Conant, B. (1997). Room arrangement: The basics. www.nauticom.net/www/cokids/roomdesign.html

-  North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, Learning Centers, http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/students/earlycld/ea7lk19.htm

-  Hill, L., Managing the Multigrade Classroom, Primary and Secondary Teacher Education Project, Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID), (2002)

-  Birch, I., Lally, M., Multigrade teaching in primary school, Centre for Research on Rural Education, Unesco Principal Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, (1995)

Suggestions for good practice and activities

Reforming the multigrade classroom based on the activity centers approach is the aim of this module. You have already set up a technology center in your classroom with the assistance of the students. This time you are going to make a general reform of the class by creating more than one activity centers and arrange them in relevance to each other so as to best serve teaching and learning purposes.

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Record the kind and the amount of resources that are available for your classroom (books, laboratory equipment, desks, chairs, tools, educational material, technical equipment etc.)

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Try to specify any restrictions that might exist in terms of resources or space problems.

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Try to identify what learning centres can be created in your classroom and how you can reform it better. In this initial reforming approach, try to consider factors like the ones below.

Setting up activity centers

TIPS on setting up activity centers in your classroom

There are some other things that you should always have in mind like:

-  The activities centres should be well and appropriately resourced; students must not move from one area of the classroom to another to take material or furniture or equipment back to their activity centre.

-  Important parameter is to take into consideration the age differences of the students. For example, younger students that do not read yet might be confused by the labelling of the centres or the traffic patterns you have. You can use pictures or other signs to facilitate their needs. Other example is to keep resources for young students in low shelves of you library at the student resource centre etc.

Whatever are your choices, you should always be able to explain the rationale of these choices both to your students and their parents.

-  You should clearly define the activity centres and indicate rules of behaving and acting in each of it. The rules are not for restricting students and governing the class but should support the purpose of existence of each activity centre.

The overall advice is:

Design a flexible classroom that accommodates you and your students needs. Design it in a way that noise and disruption is kept in low levels, in way that facilitate students to work with as much less teacher guidance as possible and that all classroom resources are utilised and best used.

Three step design

You can follow a simple three step design approach in order to redesign your classroom having in mind the above presented issues. First of all picture in a piece of paper your classroom as it is now:

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Step 1: Design your room as it is now

Designing your own room

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Step 2: Specify what type of activities usually occur in the classroom

Try to specify what kind of activities does normally take place in your classroom. What kind of activity centres do you need to set up? Based on specific parameters presented previously, like classroom resources, total area etc. you can specify what activity centres might exist in the classroom.

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

F.

G.

H.

I.

J.

K.

L.

M.

Designing your own room

Beth Conant (1997)[2], a multigrade teacher from Washington, identifies six basic principles to help guide multigrade teachers in designing their classrooms for more efficient instruction. There are other approaches as well but Conant’s principles are an excellent and effective paradigm of multigrade teacher who tried to be more efficient.

When reforming your classroom, you can follow the same or similar principles that cover your needs and are applicable under your school conditions.

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Having all this in mind you can proceed to the third step of the design

Step 3: Draw the new plan of your classroom

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Share the plan with your students and initiate a discussion on the classroom reforming.

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Proceed with you students to the reform.

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For each lesson fill in the “lesson plan & evaluation” form that follows.

-  Try to be clear and give adequate information on the activities. It is preferable to fill the form electronically using your computer and send it back to your national training supervisor via e-mail.

-  Respect the format of it, it will be used for evaluation purposes

-  Try to share details and present aspects of the lesson that are related with peer tutoring in your class.

Since the current activity does not refer to the implementation of a specific lesson plan rather then concerning the reform of the class, fill in only the areas that are marked with *

PROJECT MUSE

TEACHERS TRAINING LESSON PLAN & EVALUATION

Lessons’ Title:

Grade: Date: .

Other grades Present:

Subject:

Teaching Chapters of the Curriculum:

Teaching Targets:

Expected Results:

Required Time and Teaching Time table (for all grades):

(If the class was divided in groups for attending the lesson)

Required Time: teaching hour/s / A min / B min / C min / D min / E min
Time devoted to the grade/group under main consideration in minutes
Time devoted to other grades/groups present in the classroom in minutes

Required Educational Material (books, notes, worksheets etc.):

Required Equipment (ICT, lab equipment etc.):

Required Software:

Use of Internet and Links:

Description of the subject to be taught:

Prerequisite knowledge of students:

Implementation Scenario: *

Steps to teaching of the subject:

EVALUATION DATA

(If the class was divided in groups for attending the lesson)

Evaluation of students: (1 to 5)

Group / Pupil / Attention / Performance / Cooperation / Group
Performance
Group1 / Name1
Name2
Name3
Group2 / Name1
Name2
Name3

General Feeling of the class *

Did any specific problems occur during the lesson?

Would you consider it as successful? *

Do you have any definite proposals for the improvement of teaching? *

General/ Other comments? *

[1] The steps for reforming the multigrade classroom is based on the approach that is presented in the book: The multigrade classroom: a resource handbook for small, rural schools, Book 2:Classroom Organisation, Northwest regional Educational Laboratory, NWREL, (1999)

[2] Conant, B., Room arrangement: The basics, www.nauticom.net/www/cokids/roomdesign.html , (1997)