Reflection: Alfriston College Visit on Integrated Learning
15th Novemeber 2016
After participating in Twitter chats based around the topic of integrated learning I was interested to find out more. I had heard Alfriston College were doing some pretty cool things and managed to get in touch with a couple of PE teachers from Alfriston College through Twitter. From there we organized the opportunity for me to go out and see it in action. Here are some of the things that I managed to note on my visit:
How did you start?
- Starting website
- Key themes and questions for each term e.g. a catalyst and then driving questions
- 5 people one form each curriculum area to create the plan
- Website to create consistency across all whanuas
- iLearns – project based learning in which they can dig further into their own learning and present back to the class
- Wonder walls – students are able to
- Non-googable questions
What have been some of the barriers?
- Not everyone is on board
- Collaboration can be hard but needed e.g. even small things like teachers pet peeves aka being late need to be shared for a successful learning environment
What did I see to help encourage Integrated & Authentic Learning?
- Modern learning environments – mixed furniture including traditional desks and chairs, stools and high desks, low benches
- Classroom with doors/walls that can be pulled down for a large classroom – 60 students with about 3 teachers (generally from different curriculum areas)
- Students work in classes based on year groups within Whanau groups
What’s happening in classes?
- Year 10s
- Do now focusing on filling the gaps for their Astile testing
- Year 10s within whanau group are split into different groups in which they are responsible for planning a trip/camp for their year group
- Groups include activities, EOTC Rams forms etc.
- Students are responsible for their whole trip – no teacher involvement in planning
- Year 9s
- Split into subject rooms by topic
- Topics include science, maths or English
- Not really integrated learning at the moment
- Year 9 maths class working on algebra – students were stuck on their equation
- Aimee sat down to help kids, admitted that she was struggling and sought help form the teacher and other students
- Helped students through working out different equations, got students to focus on the learning process
- Before leaving asked students questions about what they noticed e.g. what were they like at the start – always checking with her to see if they were correct after each stage etc., what effects did it have on Hauora, collaborative learning
Behaviour Management:
- One teacher stood in the middle of a large class with his fist in the air and the whole class went silent
- In another large class although they were all doing the same task one teacher stopped half of the class to go through the answers. He counted down to wait for silence started to work but didn’t wait for complete silence and was writing answers on the board so students started getting rowdy again. Also what is the point in stopping half of the class? Why not work with the whole class or get students to share answers with each other?
So although it was very interesting for myself and most of the teachers that I got to speak to loved the integrated learning I was curious to see what the students thought. I managed to talk to some of the students to see what their opinion was. Of course there were differing opinions and they seemed to fall into either liking or disliking the integrated learning approach. Some students believed that they would be more on task and more productive if they were in a smaller class with one teacher focusing on just one subject at a time. Others enjoyed the modern learning environments and having a variety of teachers in the same class.
Overall the visit to Alfriston was great. I learnt a lot and it was great to see the idea of Integrated Learning in action. Now to try and put some of these ideas into action!
