Frogs, seashells and worms may seem like an unlikely learning tool, but for Grade 3/4 teacher Sandra Wood at Morinville Public Elementary School, they are the cat’s meow.
“The first week was great and I found the students are very interested in science. The very first day they saw the ‘Vermi’ box — which means ‘worm’ in Latin — they wanted to know what living thing was in the box,” Wood said.
Her new classroom, in the brand new Morinville Cultural Centre, is new in other ways too. The doors just opened last week for the 12 students in her classroom in the new non-faith-based Morinville Public Elementary School, which is now included in Sturgeon School Division.
Wood’s split class has four Grade 4 students and eight Grade 3 students. A folding room divider and just a few metres of space are the only separation between her classroom and Jenn McCoy’s split Grade 1/2 classroom.
On Monday, as Wood’s students learned about poetry, McCoy’s students were concentrating on group puzzles that helped them to learn shapes, letters and numbers.
Wood’s students sit four or five to a table, while McCoy’s 14 students were clustered around the puzzles. There was some noise confusion in both classrooms, but it was minimal and everyone seemed to have adjusted to learning their daily assignments in such an unusual classroom setting. The youngest children have the smallest space, but perhaps because of their own small stature and because it’s their first year in school, they seemed unperturbed by the room’s limitations.
“We know the Grade 1/2 class is cramped but it is manageable. We are going to get a rolling board, with a chalkboard on one side and a bulletin board on the other, which provides a bit more space,” said Wayne Rufiange, principal at the school.
The board will provide a few more inches of space but it will also allow more noise pollution between the two classrooms, because it will be the height of an office cubicle divider.
“But if the teachers are doing something that may be a bit noisier, it just takes a minute to separate the classes with the folding divider,” he said, adding that he is looking forward to moving the classrooms to the new modular units during December school break.
Parents have checked out the new classrooms and, for the most part, understand the challenges of setting up a new school in a temporary facility.
Amanda Collins has two children in Wood’s classroom, and is happy to have her children in the small setting. In fact, she believes the small classrooms give her children an advantage that will help them learn.
“It is non-faith-based and that was important to us. But in addition, they still have their friends and still play with their friends in Notre Dame School. But there’s only 12 kids in the class and, to me, that is good,” Collins said.
