Do MLE actually raise the academic achievement of students?

Edchatnz is a great Thursday night twitter conversation that is fast paced and really gets you thinking. Last week’s conversation was no different - MLE Modern Learning Environments.

Lately I have distanced myself from this term as since beginning my journey into this area, I have realised how much my opinion and ideas have changed. I have realized and seen that although some schools use the term MLE they still teaching like a single cell classroom just in a bigger space.

I began to question what was really changing. Had we misinterpreted what MLE were supposed to be? Should we have never introduced the ‘bean bag’ catch phrase? Had we run with one idea and forgotten to look at all the other parts of a MLE? Is ‘modern’ the best word to use at all?

A lot of educators have been throwing out the term MLP- Modern Learning Practices. To sum it up teachers are creating a personalised, collaborative and reflective classroom. This is where I am. I teach in a single cell classroom in a school where the buildings are older than me! But I am changing the way I teach and think students should learn. My pedagogy is changing and becoming more in line with what students of today need.

One of the questions raised by the devil’s advocate aka @BeccaSweeney was Do MLE actually raise the academic achievement of students? This is what others thought.

I have been questioning this as a parent and a teacher. To be honest, I don’t think they do. It’s more about the MLP that is happening inside these buildings rather than the building itself. And this can happen in a brand new  building or  a 40 year old prefabs. The only bonus of a MLE is that you can easily fit more than 30 students into a room and it allows for more collaboration among teachers.

I made a hard decision last term to pull my son out of a MLE. I began to realize some MLE schools believed that by letting students move from class to class to be taught by different they were  ‘modern’. Yet they were still streaming their reading, writing and maths groups.  I wrote about this and my own personal battle about how we were trying to develop a more MLP and what I felt wasn’t working. The more I reflected on my own teaching and learning practices with my own class the more I became aware this was not happening in my sons own school. Therefore I made the decision to move him. I realized by putting him into a school that worked more on MLP rather than focused on the MLE his own mindset about school and learning had completely changed. I suddenly had a child who was learning and wanted to learn!

So no, MLE don’t raise the academic achievements of students it is more about the teaching and learning and how inline it is with MLP’s. This is only my own personal experience and I also think a lot also come down to the teacher/ student relationship as well as how dedicated a teacher is to wanting her students to succeed. But then if they’re dedicated, they are probably a teacher who is always reflecting, changing and looking at ways to improve themselves to meet the needs of their students.

This has got me thinking a lot about where I want to head with my journey. So far we still stream for maths and reading. This is something I want to try and change next term but and still unsure how. Mainly because this term we had two new teachers start with us and next term I will have another new teacher starting. I have to think about what is best for my students but also what is best for a teaching coming in half way through the year.

With 112 students and five classrooms where 3 are still single cell it does face me with a lot of challenges. I know where I want to head, but it is the getting there that is causing me headaches!

Part of me still feels I am only halfway there with my MLP’s and I have areas I still need to work on and change.  Where we are focusing more on MLP I can see the benefits. In those areas I can see that students have succeeded and are enjoying their learning. My job now is to work out how to continue and develop my MLP’s so that the whole day is like this.

Collaboration- It's a winner!

The great thing about planning as a team is all the wonderful ideas everyone else comes up with. This term we have been trying to link all our subjects together more rather than just stand alone lessons.

Our Topic this term has been ‘Change’ and we decided to look at it from the scientist point of view and investigate solids, liquid, and gases. The idea was that we wanted to do some hands on experiments that even the students could do at home with their parents.

As I have been somewhat unhappy about how we have been planning and integrating our learning I decide to try a more ‘cross curriculum’ approach to these lessons.

We had just finished two weeks on ANZAC where we based our reading and art work on this and we had thoroughly enjoyed it. So we decided why not continue.

The hardest part about doing this is all the ideas everyone has and narrowing it down to what is best for the students. Planning together is great but there has to be an understanding that your ideas may not be used. I think this can be a hard one for teachers to grasp and understand as obviously we all have great ideas!

The next challenge was to try and link it to writing!

This is where one of my colleagues came in with the book ‘The Oobleck’ by Dr Seuss. This is a book I had never heard about and when I Goggled it I realised that making Oobleck was a thing. Straight away I was hooked!

Collaboration works as on my own I would have never come up with this idea. To be honest I don’t think any of my ideas would have been this exciting either.

What we managed to do was link our writing, maths and science from just one book. It meant that even though I only have some of my homeroom students for an hour a day when we were talking about Oobleck they knew exactly what I meant.

I have always been a big fan of planning together and trying to link more of our subjects together and so far it has paid off.

So simple yet so effective

Term Two started with a change in teacher, change in classrooms and a slight accident. Because of changes that occurred at the end of term two, one of our team members moved up to the senior school therefore we employed a new teacher. This meant that we had to switch two classrooms around (and teachers) to support the changes we had made. Then our team leader had a slight accident that (at the moment) will see her out for four weeks.

So it has been a busy two weeks for me!

When I last posted I wasn’t sure how I would feel about term 2 and doing exactly the same as we had in term one. However, slightly small changes have seen me feel a little more comfortable.

With is being 100 years since Gallipoli, we decided to start term two with a mini Anzac Day unit. What came out of this was we ALL decided to do the same planning throughout the team rather than the spilt planning of two ‘power’ teams. That meant we ALL used the same big book (Dawn Parade), taught the same writing and completed the same art ideas. Now before you think-  exactly the same? We structured it so that we used the same resources but we still had the freedom to teach it in a way we liked rather than feeling like synchronised  swimmers.

What this meant was when I got my own class back, I could refer back to resources like the big book, or the clip we used for writing and they knew what I was talking about. To me it flowed more and I felt more connected with my own class. We also were ALL talking about the same things throughout the team and no matter if we were in homerooms or literacy we were ALL on the same page.

As a team, we all enjoyed this and therefore decided to continue this for the next two weeks. Our Topic this term is ‘Fizz, Bang, Pop’ with a science focus (which I love as I personally feel we do not teach enough of it in the primary sector).  Therefore we found a book that would tie into our topic and are also uses this as the basis of our Topic work in the afternoon. We will also been incorporating our maths into this as well.

It doesn’t answer all my concerns but we are making changes that I personally feel are positive ones. Because we mix and change the students throughout the team rather than just between two classes, us ALL teaching the same things makes more sense.

We will see what the next two weeks bring but I am feeling a lot more positive about how term two is shaping out.