Visit to Stonefields School

At the end of Term 1 I visited Stonefields School to see their Breakthrough learning in action, as well as to have a look at their modern learning environment. Breakthrough is very similar to Adventure Learning. It's personalised inquiry learning where the children are given a large portion of their Friday to work on a project that they're passionate about. 

The children work through this model called the 'Learning Process'. They also talk about how when you are stuck in the pit that this is when the real learning happens. Have a look at the YouTube clip of Courtney explaining the pit. This is something that I have identified as a next step for Adventure Learning. 

Breakthrough projects are tracked using a Google Doc. The Google Doc shows what project each group is working on, what their current goal is and where to next. I was doing something very similar in my own class, but liked the idea of using a Google Doc so that everyone had easy assess to the document. This is something that I personally took away and implemented when I got back to school. 

I didn't take a lot of photos of the hubs as didn't want to have children in any of the photos I took. However; I did manage to take a snapshot of one of the smaller learning spaces within the hub. I liked this concept as the space could either be closed off as a quiet space, or used when children needed a place to be noisy e.g. musical instruments, recording etc. 

 A big thank you to Chris Bradbeer who took a lot of time out of his day to show us around. It was an excellent opportunity to connect with other teachers who were passionate about personalised inquiry learning. Going down to attend Ignite at some stage id definitely on the cards. 

Smidgens I will take away 

• Track children's projects via a Google Doc. 
• Create a visual model for Adventure Learning. 
• Encourage family to come in to work alongside their children and/or share their own talents.