Changes after lockdown

After lockdown our school trialed a change in lesson times. Initially, we had 3 sessions; session 1 was 75 minutes, session 2 was 2 hours and session 3 was 75 minutes. We had two breaks, 20 minutes and an hour. The new times were 4x 70-minute sessions with 3 breaks (2 x 30-minute breaks and 20 minutes for morning tea). After trialing the new lesson times for a fortnight staff voted to keep the new times and not to revert to the old session format.

Along with that change, my senior teacher and I (with the permission of management) decided to rotate classes. As we shared the only two Year 7/8 classes in the school, we decided that Hevaha would teach Math to both classes and I would do the Reading for both classes. Our decision was based on the fact that after speaking to some teachers at TC, it was mentioned that one of the things that the Year 9 students struggled with was having a different teacher for each subject and moving from class to class.  We hoped that getting the students to rotate classes would help to smooth their transition into high school. The feedback received from students (using Google forms) was extremely positive about the change.

Some of the benefits of rotating teachers include:

• Students avoid getting bored with the same teacher.   
• A different teacher brings a new style, a different accent, a different sense of humour….
• Class rotation helps children become more flexible and forces them to better organised.
• It introduces variety into the school day for both teachers and students.
• It has encouraged a feeling of camaraderie amongst students as we feel like one big class. 
• Both classes getting the same information and instructions.