I have been reading blogs and commenting on my designated sites. The variation in our blogs is interesting and echoes what we know about working with our students. Everyone’s journey is different. When you stop and think about how we have managed learning in the past, you can see the pace of change in the C21 is enormous compared with the years prior. However, I guess that each era had its own challenges. In the early days no-one knew much about how we think and not everyone thought children should even be at school. It just wasn’t feasible to consider individual needs when class sizes were enormous!  When I started teaching class sizes were up to 40 but colleagues would sometimes have taught 50 or 60 in a grade and I remember some of the nuns that I worked with in early times talking about classes of 100!

Now that we do recognise that different children learn in different ways, it seems so obvious that whole class teaching is only one option that we have at our disposal and most of what we deliver has to be tailored to small groups. I am not referring to the ancient method of grouping where cetain chn were in` Wombat’ group and stayed the same with a different group name until they left! I am talking about groups that change constantly according to the individual’s immediate learning needs. I think that all the questions we are researching for PARTS  are geared to providing support to this concept. Whether its provocations that will appeal to children based on their interests or use of the latest collaborative technology or publishing on-line, we are learning how to maximise learning for everyone at their point of need.

Given that, it is often the case that when I walk around I see heaps of  teaching to large groups. Why is this so? How does that fit with what we are learning about providing particular learning pathways and how are we using technology to optimise individual, small group independent learning? We know that focused teaching brings about powerful learning. Two focus groups of 8 children with a strategic intent having 20 minutes with a teacher  is much more powerful than a group of  16 for 40 minutes. Much much more useful learning in the group that really hones in on the student’s learning need.

Those of you who taught at a time when the CLaSS Literacy block was the established practice will remember that we managed to do 2 focus groups as well as Big Book and Reflection time all before recess. Are we achieving small focused group teaching for all the children across the week? Will blogging, collaborative online learning tools and rich provocations support and strengthen what we are doing in our clinics and focus groups. Will they enable us  to build them into our routines to support the precious individuals whose learning is in our hands? Big questions! Lets keep looking for big  answers!