What is it?
Flexible Learning Time allows students to choose learning opportunities to meet their particular interests and needs. A student may choose any of the following activities during this time:
- Meet with a teacher in a small group or on a 1:1 basis for additional help.
- Meet with a teacher in a small group for enrichment or enhancement activities.
- Pursue personal fitness goals in the Fitness Centre
- Take part in supervised athletic activities in the gym
- Attend a scheduled meeting with a teacher to complete missed work, take tests or receive additional help.
- Work on assigned projects with other students.
- Attend club meetings and activities.
Students may be assigned or directed to a particular activity during Flexible Time by administration or teachers. Students are expected to choose some component of flexible time to eat their lunch.
What are the advantages to this change?
- (1) Allowing students to have more access to teachers as needed - in small groups or even 1:1 - this is an area of need identified by students in the Round Table discussions.
- Allowing students to make personal choices about their own learning - an essential 21st century learning skill.
- Allowing teachers to have access to cross-curricular instruction or to meet as Professional Learning Communities.
- Allowing more opportunities for students to pursue enrichment learning.
- Specific to the dual campus - allows time for students to move between campuses if necessary.
Additional Thoughts:
The April edition of Educational Leadership focused on the topic of restructuring schools for 21st century learners and for student success. The following excerpts relate to this initiative:
-from "A Visionary Look at New Schools for a New Century' by Patricia Kokinos
We must vastly reinvent schooling by creating a paradigm that includes:
- Moving schools away from mechanical models toward human-friendly models of working and interacting.
- Creating small, personalized, supportive learning environments...
- Allowing flexibility of space and time for collaborative teams of teachers to work with teams of students.
- Making use of new approaches to learning that build on higher order thinking skills, creativity, collaboration and entrepreneurship for students and teachers.