The Open Ended Classroom

 "Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me - put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you." 

Philippians 4:9

My ideal classroom is one in which is open to the learning that comes from the peace who are found within it, my students, myself

      This post seeks to start with me envisioning the process of "getting my classroom ready" for September, but this time actually putting into practice some core beliefs I have around creating a space that is open-ended and co-created. At first, I'll admit, I thought this would be the easier way out of getting a classroom organized while putting my twins into daycare for the first time. Wow, was I wrong. The research and time that goes into being free flowing and inclusive in my classroom structure requires careful care and planning. My goals for my new space is to move from an "instruction-centred" to a "learning-centred paradigm" as outlined in their book, "Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching by Cook-Sather, Felten and Bovill.
       I dream of a space for wonder, mystery and discovery. Where the learning environment, "speaks to young children's inherent curiosity and innate yearning for exploration." (Heard & McDonough, 2009). When I plaster my walls with posters and TPT's pre-created rules or images, I'm left asking, what am I leaving to the imagination? I highly doubt I will swear off pre-created resources and definitely see them as having a place within education but I hope to be more conscious in their implementation. My goal as a human this year as my facets of my identity grow (now a teacher, partner AND mother) is to work as hard as I can at school but do so efficiently so I can be present in all spaces. Bringing students along for the ride will allow me to spend less time on the nitty gritty organizing of materials (we will do this together) and more brain time on the pedagogical. In my dream class, there is efficiency, accountability, and independence. Students know where items are because they had a say in where they were given a home. The location of objects, manipulatives and materials was of utmost importance to myself as both an educator and as someone who tires quickly of hearing "where is _____." Statements like the aforesaid go against my desire for students to easily maneuver around the classroom as independent learners. Most importantly, I wish for the walls of our classroom to illustrate the items we value in our classroom.
    
Step 1: Consult the Experts. 
The WCDSB's fabulous consultant Julie Tonin graciously shared her expertise with in a 1:1 session at the end of June. She shared ideas about physical space and led me through an exercise of asking what my goals were for the classroom was I at a bird's eye view looking down. 
Brainstoming key words:The words that came out were

• flow 
• independence
• calm 
• minimal 
• cosy
• clusters of students 
• small groups

Here are just a few Questions I had for Julie: 

What about the high bulletin board space?

Ask the students! What a classroom values is evident by what is featured on the walls

Julie used to showcase the students by taking their photo and mounting on the wall

Word Wall?

Word walls are amazing… if they are being used! A word wall that is constantly evolving with the students is most effective. During EQAO students have been found to refer back to the physical area when retrieving information despite it being covered.

Borders?

How are they helping the learning? I the cute hands that are bordering this image were cut up and put in our math manipulative space.

Julie T's classroom must-haves: 

• individual white boards

• dry erase markers

• plastic page protectors 

• massive ziplocks 

• painting centre 

• tree of wonder 

• lots of sticky notes

• etc.etc.etc. 

So many ideas emerging from Julie were centered around making student thinking visible and reminded me of an anchor text from the capacity building series, specifically the third teacher. I especially love this quote: 

“We need to think about creating classroom environments that give children the opportunity for wonder, mystery and discovery; an environment that speaks to young children’s inherent curiosity and innate yearning for exploration is a classroom where children are passionate about learning and love school.” (Heard & McDonough, 2009) 

 http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/CBS_ThirdTeacher.pdf 

Step 2: Change some physical aspects before the students arrive: 
One aspect I will focus on is minimalism - my biggest task was to minimize distractions for myself and the students. I set out to minimize the appearance of my amazing shelving spaces with some Reggio neutral brown material. Here is a before photos of the amazing space. It is exciting to see how it will evolve!

This entire process reminds me to SLOW DOWN and enjoy the process of building. I will do what I can over the summer but will make sure it does not interfere with the final weeks (just 1 more week!!!!) with my family before returning to work. After all... there's always something that could be done in the classroom so what's the point in worrying about it!