FLEX Room Usage

A few posts back, I talked about creating a room that can be used by all classrooms for various purposes. In fact, I believe all classrooms for all subjects should be mutable in some way; but we had to start somewhere, so low and behold, the KCS FLEX Room!  So what does this FLEX room look like and how is it working?  First, it seems to be working very well! The room is used by various classes and grades, with the booking of the room done with a simple whiteboard outside the room (with a few added sticky-notes for good measure and future booking it seems :).

FLEX Room Sign Up

For the most part, the grades span from Kindergarten to Grade 12 and the subjects also vary. In fact, there are even groups using the room outside of the standard classrooms (more on this later).

So, it is being used, but how is it being used? First, let us consider the philosophy of the room: I wanted a room that could be used by a classroom for independent or group work or lecturing or whatever else is needed. Some of these things can even be done at the same time in this room, while others would simply be too loud to do at the same time in the same space.

So, is this happening? Can this room be used by numerous groups for numerous reasons?

Below is a recent picture of the Grade 2 class using the room. As you can see, students are able to sit where they want and work on whatever the assignment requires of them to work on. Visually, what you see is that some students are reading, while others are working on projects of some sort.

Other students are sitting on chairs, while some have chosen to sit on the "poofs" (which are simply big bean bag kind of things). In fact, in the directly below, you will notice that a few of them are lined up along the window bench working independently.

The teacher for this class mentioned that the Elementary department has been working on trying to implement a strategy whereby students are asked to be more "independent learners", being given more freedom to choose topics that they would like to study or work on that are not mandated by the teacher. The thought is that this would help students to become more independent learners. For this teacher, the FLEX room makes it easy to implement such a strategy since the students can be working in different areas of the room on different topics at the same time. In fact, the classroom teacher commented that she "was not sure how I was going to do this" before the addition of the FLEX room.

With the addition of a computer, webcam (for teleconferencing), a Smartboard, and four movable whiteboards, this room becomes a great place to use for any grade and topic to work on whatever assignment(s) they would like to! In the picture to the left, for example, a high school student is able to use the whiteboards to present the information he needed to show to a group of his classmates.

In my opinion, however, this is not the best part of the room. For me, the best part of using this style of room is how it naturally changes the role of the teacher from lecturer to co-worker, mentor, and coach of either independent or group(s) of students. This, I believe, is because the room does not have a static front or back, but is completely mutable in every way (movable chairs, tables, and boards).

The usage does not seem to stop with classrooms either. Other groups within our school's extended family also use the room for various reasons (ex: PAC meetings, Graduation committee meetings, staff meetings, etc.).

Though there are still things to add and update in the room, I feel that the room itself is a success. Yes, it is a simple room and some might make comments like "How could you use this for a science class" or "Math wouldn't work here", but I think it can, and perhaps even should be. The subtle change that goes along with setting up a room like this is the philosophy that knowledge is easy for students to get now from various sources (the teacher is not the wellspring of knowledge anymore),  thus classrooms should change from a lecturer / listener style to group / independent work with a teacher / mentor style: this is the style this room is set up as.

Let me know if you have any thoughts about it!