Because my student teaching placement was in a school that emphasizes student collaboration in learning, I hoped this exploration would shed some light on the best ways to encourage collaboration and participation by students in ways that make them most comfortable. As mentioned in Brasof’s research, student input can have the power to change the norms in a classroom and even an entire school. The students’ firsthand account of the positive or negative impact of the changes on student collaboration and participation could play a huge role in the way my future classroom is physically structured. In order to implement any changes to the physical arrangement of the classroom, I wanted to establish a sense of what my students are feeling about themselves as a learner, how they would like the classroom to be arranged, and what they believed good student participation looks like. For one of the warm-ups in class, students were asked to complete a survey to share their opinions.
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As I reviewed the responses from my Algebra II class of tenth and eleventh graders, there were some patterns that I somewhat expected to see. Namely, I predicted that many students would respond that their current seating arrangement, Groups of 4, would be the arrangement they valued the most. In terms of student learning style, I received the majority of responses as visual and hands-on learning in the top two spots with auditory learning ranked third. This did not come as a surprise, and based on the explanations from the students, I can understand why they felt that auditory was their last choice. Most students noted that with visual or hands-on learning, they were able to see the process at work and experiment with it on their own. I found that my response to this question would be the same as a student. I found the most meaning through seeing examples of how a process works as well as some hands-on manipulation in order to see a process or concept at work physically. This was very informative for my practice for the rest of this year and for future groups of students. While this pattern would not always hold true, I knew to bring more visual and exploratory learning opportunities in order to promote success.
The next two questions asked students about their ideal classroom layout and to rank a list of possible arrangements from their favorite to their least favorite. There was definitely a large range of responses, but something that stood out as somewhat as a surprise to me was that a few students were actually advocates for an arrangement of individual seats in rows. As student who attended a school that emphasizes collaborations in all classrooms, I was taken aback by the preference for an arrangement that promotes individual learning opportunities. Initially I thought that students would want to sit with a partner or in groups, so it was very interesting to see which students preferred independent, individual learning instead. While these responses for individual seats in rows existed, there were also quite a few responses that stated “anything but rows.” This was more of the response I had expected from my students, and this was the shared opinion of my classroom mentor when I asked her to weigh in on the seating arrangement in the classroom. At this point in my inquiry, I synthesized the students’ ranking of seating arrangements as best as I could in order to dive further into my exploration.
The next two questions asked students about their ideal classroom layout and to rank a list of possible arrangements from their favorite to their least favorite. There was definitely a large range of responses, but something that stood out as somewhat as a surprise to me was that a few students were actually advocates for an arrangement of individual seats in rows. As student who attended a school that emphasizes collaborations in all classrooms, I was taken aback by the preference for an arrangement that promotes individual learning opportunities. Initially I thought that students would want to sit with a partner or in groups, so it was very interesting to see which students preferred independent, individual learning instead. While these responses for individual seats in rows existed, there were also quite a few responses that stated “anything but rows.” This was more of the response I had expected from my students, and this was the shared opinion of my classroom mentor when I asked her to weigh in on the seating arrangement in the classroom. At this point in my inquiry, I synthesized the students’ ranking of seating arrangements as best as I could in order to dive further into my exploration.
Sample Student Responses
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