Laura is a Year One Teacher, ICT Coordinator and S4PL Project Leader at West Hill.

Describe the space before the S4PL project? 

The space previously was an empty hall, with PE equipment and some storage areas. The room was used for lots of different things – but not very effectively. It was very cluttered, so you had to make it suitable for your purposes. It was never ready for use and so therefore not very user-friendly.

What does the space look like now – and what goes on in it?

It’s completely different. A variety of lessons go on in there now – it’s cross-curricular. It’s colourful, user-friendly – set up for every learning context, lesson and learning style. Everything is ready-to-use. It’s very intuitive – you know what the space is designed for – and the children have responded very well to that.

It’s set into three colour zones. The blue area is for designing and making – we wanted that space to look very innovative. The red space is the bright, friendly, speaking and listening area. The green space is for quiet, reflective learning – with the idea being to bring the outdoors inside. 

How do you feel as a user of the space?

I love using the space – I would happily swap my classroom for this – in fact lots of the teachers have complained that I’m in here a little bit too much! It’s so geared up for the type of learning and the type of teaching that I enjoy doing. It just fits perfectly for lots of different learning styles and the different ways that children approach their learning. This in turn allows the children to feel comfortable when learning. It’s very personalised – it’s set up for that.

What do the other teachers think of the space?

There’s a variety of opinions – some of the teachers were a little bit nervous at first, and unsure as to whether they had to completely revolutionise the way that they taught. I think they’re overcoming that now however.

Many of the teachers were very excited from the start – with lots of ideas coming to them; how could they change their curriculum, change their style of teaching that they do – resulting in more open, personalised learning. 

What do the children think of the space?

The children really love it; they’re very excited by it. I think they were in awe when they were first allowed to come in after the building works had finished. They were completely taken aback by the colours – it was just a completely different space for them.

My class in particular are thrilled by it. They love the fact that they can move around and find an area that suits the purpose of the task that they’re carrying out. They’re actually much calmer and more comfortable using this space, because they’re not constrained, they’re not constricted to sitting at a table. They can move around, they can find something that suits their needs. 

Could you describe some of the activities that take place in the space now?

For my class a lot of the activities involve designing and making. We’ve made food in the blue area and investigated different toys in D.T.

I also do a lot of literacy in here because it is geared up very well for speaking and listening. There are lots of opportunities for paired talking in the red area, on the bean bags. This then affords the children the option to go off and do some writing in the booths, or go and research a little bit in the green area. I pretty much teach every subject in my curriculum in here – if I get the opportunity with the timetable – because it’s just so geared up for all of those different activities.

I think for the school as a whole, our enquiry-based curriculum lessons tend to be taught in here more than anything, because that usually lends itself very well to research and paired talking, group work and collaborative learning – which is one of the big focuses of the hall. 

What would you say were the aims and priorities for the pilot project for the school, at the end of the initial workshop process?

We wanted to achieve an outstanding teaching level, whilst using the space for personalised learning. We wanted to develop collaborative learning – speaking and listening skills – within our children. We also wanted there to be a readiness for learning. 

Lots of our children come from more challenging backgrounds. When they enter school, their heads are mixed up with lots of things that are happening outside of school. What we want to do is help them overcome that, so that they’re ready and happy to learn, and can improve their emotional intelligence. That was one of the key focuses of the space.

And do you feel the space has contributed to filling these aims?

I think it has. We’ve set up our learning mentors and transitional times to use the hall, to help children overcome the difficulties of leaving the playground, and entering the classroom. Lots of the children really struggle with that transitional time. 

It’s also used for lots of small group work – again, helping some children overcome different barriers to learning. We’ve carried out baseline observations of teachers – and we will carry out a second round of these at the end of this year to see if it has helped improve teaching. We’ve also issued pupil questionnaires, to find out how the children feel using the space – are they able to learn collaboratively, do they prefer this learning style and what are their feelings in general about it.

So far the feedback is really good, it’s all been work in progress – but I feel we definitely are on target in achieving those aims.

Turning to personalised learning, what would you say it means to you?

To me personalised learning is a learning style that suits particular needs of a child. It looks at where a child is, where they need to go. It’s very child-centred learning, it meets their particular needs, or it meets the needs of a whole group of children, depending on the context of the learning. 

Do you think the new space supports the West Hill personalised learning practice?

I think it absolutely does because it allows the freedom for children to choose how they learn best – where they need to do that – and in what sort of context. As we’ve got so many different learning environments, all within this one space, and the flexibility to adapt those learning environments to meet the needs of a particular task or lesson; it provides children with the opportunity to make choices, and think ‘yes’, this is the way I want to learn, this is the way I learn best, and then move into the space that meets that need. The hall is designed in a very intuitive way, so much so, that we haven’t really had to give the children any guidance. They’ve just got on with it themselves, and found the area that meets their particular needs. 

Is the teaching practice different in this space than in a normal classroom? 

Yes, it’s quite different, and one of the things we noticed when we carried out the baseline observations was that there was less time with teacher-led instructional based learning, less time with children just sat still looking at a teacher, and a lot more opportunity for children to talk to each other and learn in groups. There was a lot more freedom, a lot more opportunity for them to actually carry out tasks.

There was also the freedom difference in the fact that the children were moving around a lot more, working within small groups, but then mixing in between other groups. That kind of learning style is very different to classroom based learning which tends to be more isolated to one table and more independent learning. 

Are there many differences in the way the children themselves learn compared to a more usual classroom?

Certainly; through learning by talking to each other and collaborative learning tasks, they’re supporting each other learning, helping each other to overcome challenges and meet a group need, a group challenge. This definitely improves speaking and listening skills. I find that my class are a lot quieter, a lot calmer when they are in here. They are very much ‘on task’ – it seems again, it lends itself very well to that. 

Comfort is also a huge factor – we all know that if you’re sat in a chair and if you’re uncomfortable, you’re fidgeting, you’re clock-watching, thinking how quickly you can go out to play. If you’re comfortable you’re a lot more relaxed and a lot more able to access the learning.

Would you consider the project a success?

Yes, personally I definitely consider it a success, and hopefully our evaluations will back that up as well. 

Could you give three words that you think describes the space?

Exciting, user-friendly and innovative.