Our Class Environment
The Reggio Emilia Approach
A few years ago, I went to a little town in Italy called Reggio Emilia for training. This town has a unique approach to education. I have attached a link that explains this approach. This is a model that a lot of schools all over the world are trying to emulate.
http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
One of the principles of this approach is that there are three teachers in the classroom.
1. The teacher (this is obvious)
2. The children (they learn from one another)
3. The environment or the classroom (we call this the third teacher)
How is my Third Teacher teaching?
With every new unit, I will start with bare walls and slowly build up a picture of the children's learning. Here are some photos from the classroom that shows the children's learning.
The Nature Table is now a weighing and measuring centre as we learn to use different instruments and units of measurement to record the results of our experiments.
We have a Word Wall that we will keep adding to as we learn new Scientific words about Force and Motion.
We have a Chart that we can refer to when using the Scientific Method to design experiments.
We started the unit by talking about what Scientists do. The children wrote down what they think and added their post-it notes to the chart.
Our Maker Space is full of exciting kits which we can use to build machines that will help us make simple machines to test our hyphotheses.
The next two photographs do not have anything to do with simple machines. I just wanted to add them here as they show the sense of ownership the children have for our classroom.
Since the last unit, where the children organised the different spaces in the classroom, our class librarians - Anika and Mia, have constantly been trying to make the class library a lovely and inviting space for the other children.
While out practising their cross country run, Mia found some flowers that she felt would look nice in the library. She took three glass containers, filled them with water and arranged them 'in a pattern' like Anika suggested. How charming!
I added some fairy lights to help them create the intended ambience. Their faces lit up as they exclaimed, "So pretty!"
I truly believe that by setting up the classroom to provide choice and opportunities to explore, make and invent, I am creating a class of self sufficient and interested learners!
