Where to from here for ourselves and St Patrick's Macksville? By Rachael and Elissa

We have seen many great things to share on return with our staff next week.

During our visit we have been mindful of the fact that in the near future we will be moving to a brand new school with open classrooms that focus on flexible learning spaces.

We have learnt that even though the majority of our classrooms are single rooms, we need to continue implementing changes into our classrooms to ensure a smooth transition for ourselves and our students to the new school. It is possible to have open and collaborative classrooms where teachers work and plan for students together, across the cohort from K-6. We need to reflect on our own pedagogy to ensure that at all times, all adults in our classrooms are engaging with small groups of students on tasks that meet those children's needs at that time. 

Another factor that we identified as being important to our school is the collection and analysis of data to help make informed decisions to cater for the diverse range of needs of students within a cohort. We need to make sure that we use current data on a regular basis when forming fluid and flexible groupings. We don't expect our staff to have flexible groupings in all areas of the curriculum at this stage, as this 

is a new learning path for us all. However, it is important for staff to continue on their professional understanding and implementation of flexible groupings across the cohort, and when they feel comfortable, to identity and implement another curriculum area.

When we move to the new school, the classroom and the furniture will be completely different to what students and teachers are used to. There will no longer be one desk and one chair per student as the classroom will focus on smaller learning areas that are flexible depending on the learning activity. When speaking to staff at St Mary's, we learnt that they didn't simply through out the old furniture and by new. There was a lengthy transition period where they downsized the number of desks and chairs in the room and added trestle tables, small lily pads and created pods within the classrooms. This change of furniture and classroom setup helped the teachers with their shift in pedagogy. It also gave them a vision of what to expected and how they wanted their new space to look and work.

Our visit to this school, keeping in mind the change we will go through in the next 12 months, was truly inspiring! We have learnt that we have a lot of work to do but anything is possible in a 21st Century classroom if we are all willing to change, work together and always strive for more for ourselves and our children. Thank you St Mary's!