When the opportunity came up for us to look at adding a classroom and providing for a much needed upgrade of our most dated buildings, the first place I looked was the New Zealand Curriculum.  One of the discussions I have been leading, and certainly an area I am reflecting on a great deal at the moment, is the concept of learning communities and how we can establish and build on learning communities in the School.  I particularly like the simple explanation in Facilitating shared learning under the Effective Pedagogy area of the document:

Teachers encourage this process by cultivating the class as a learning community.  In such a community, everyone, including the teacher, is a learner;  learning conversations and learning partnerships are encouraged; and challenge, support, and feedback are always available. As they engage in reflective discourse with others, students build the language that they need to take their learning further.  (NZC – p34)

Our wonderful staff are taking steps to make this happen… (that’s another blog entry!).  So how could we design our building upgrade to support this?  I had a chat to our Board, reviewed the strategic vision for property in the School to reflect the curriculum and then we engaged an architect to support us to enable this to happen.  I spoke about openness, shared spaces, as a leadership team we have had dialogue about communities of learners and how the physical environment could support this (wider than just our own classrooms).  People are on board.

The result, while only a preliminary 3D sketch and design is outstanding and very exciting… don’t you agree?

(I may post a photo of what it looks like now just as a comparison!!)