Last week, I agreed to allow a school to combine their two 5th grades into one group (of 57) for their Inquiry program. Things I did not know when I agreed: they aren't accustomed to working together (the two teachers didn't know the names of students in the other group), there are no tables/chairs in the gym we were using ( 2 days of the program are based on WRITING their 6 page Inquiry Work Sample), and there is no whiteboard or projection screen and overhead (clearly listed in the "materials you need to have ready for the program" they received 2 weeks prior to this).
I spent the week trying to clean up the mess this made. The first day, I muddled through. Couldn't write the steps of Inquiry on anything for them to reference, so I had to repeat and use big arm motions and repeat again until I thought it might sink in. Then we did the animal observations (they had picked my Happening Habitats class) which, fortunately, doesn't require any written notes or graphical representations to understand. Look, it's a pill bug. It's a crustacean. What does it do? It runs around the Petri dish. No, we don't know if it likes it, all we can do is see it doing that.
Day 2, begged for a portable whiteboard. Got 2' x 3' of worn out white board on an unstable easel. Woo hoo. Okay, so I wrote out the steps of inquiry, copied our question, erased, wrote our planned procedure for the experiment, erased, drew a data table for them to copy. Felt useless.
Day 3, continued down this path of uselessness. Finally noticed that there's a giant projection screen (like to show movies to the whole school) hanging behind the basketball hoop. Hit head against floor in frustration.
Day 4, 'borrowed' a projector from husband. Had him Frankenstein an infrared pointer for me and download Wiimote Whiteboard onto my laptop. Set up for class. Wondered where this had been all my life. Okay, so the pointer couldn't write on the board the way I wanted it too. The quick Frankenstein job didn't quite cut it - the power wasn't consistent or something so I'd get disconnected letters. But I got their attention (something which had been lacking for 3 days). I could type things for them to see and copy. I could point and highlight. I could draw data tables and graphs. I could demonstrate how to write a conclusion for their experiment! Hallelujah!
This week:
The school says "oh, one of our classrooms is really a double, there's 55 kids in it, but it's okay, they're always together, there's two teachers, they're used to it" uh, no. Not an option. I may have made it work last week, but it was a disaster. It just doesn't fit my teaching style.
Me? I give instructions, including the "If you get this done..." instructions so no one (should) be bored. Then, I circle the room, and see who really understands, which groups aren't communicating well, which students still don't understand what a hypothesis is, etc. When the majority are ready, I give the next whole-class instruction. In a room of 30 (the supposed maximum for the program), I have, at most, 6 groups to check on. In a room of 55, I have 11. And spend WAY too much time saying "it has gotten too loud, please sit down, and review your work and your group's work - you can't start the experiment until everyone in your group is ready" then getting to groups that are swearing they're done just to find out that one person has no data table, 2 have incomplete plans, and the 4th is distracting someone in another group instead of helping his teammates. Yes, they're 5th graders. No, this isn't too hard for them. But I only get 5 hours. My style works 99% of the time, your classroom is the exception, and you need to help me out here.
Also, I get to this room, and it's really two rooms. In one, big projection screen, white board space, etc. And the risers they sit on. No desks, I don't see any clipboards, and the cues I'm picking up on say that they don't do any writing over here. Okay...
The other side of the room? Desks that are too close together, one cluster set so far back against the door that they have no hope of seeing the tiny white board space on the other end of the room, some groups so close to the board they can't see because of the angle, etc. And today (end of day 3) I pick up on more clues like one of their teachers saying "I know we never work on this side of the room..." Well, WHERE do you work? Help me out here! I need to show these kids suggestions, spelling on the new vocab I'm introducing, how to draw graphs. AND THEY CAN'T SEE IT IN ANY EFFECTIVE WAY!!!
And I can't even just bring in my laptop - THERE IS NO SCREEN or clear wall space on this side of the room - ANYWHERE!
NO MORE GROUPS OF 55. None.
Update:
Got back evaluations from these teachers. Apparently I get to take the fall for all of these problems. Awesome. I'm sticking to the rules from now on: 30 students, maximum! 4 classrooms/teachers a week. And you WILL tell me when you want our "student-free" conference time to discuss scoring the work samples.
