Kelly Knights Middle School - Joao

On July 25th we went to Kelly Knights Middle School in order to see how summer classes takes place. First, I had the opportunity to watch a class of Maths. As it is untill today ,the discipline I always had more difficulty, I was curious to know how it is taught nowadays. I loved it. There were two teachers working together and there were a genuine bond among them and students. They were studying average and mean, and it was just great. I am sure those students had a high level of understanding right after. The reason: student centered classes. They were also very meaningful using examples taking in their context in class. Then, they went for the second part of the class, which was using role modelling real life situation such as using a menu restaurant. As they modelled, one was the costumer and the other taking the order, charging and giving change back. The teacher provided them with money like bills and they were able to understand the situation and find the rest should they really bought something in a restaurant.
After Maths class, we went to an english one. There were three teachers because not many students showed up that day. The students were the same from previous class. They were also great there. Previously, the teacher Dr Shepper - if I'm not mistaken - told me they were students who had some kind of difficulty and were there in order to have more specific class. I could not noticed much difficult with those kinds. Instead, I was able to see kids really enjoying the class. They started discussing about a book previously read, then had a gallery walking as they produced posters based on what they learned, summarized and found the main idea.
After that, they listened to a teacher reading for them a new story called ' Walking on fire '. They were stimulated to jot down and after the teacher helped them find what the main idea was.
In the final 20 minutes they were given books about misteries and the same procedure was applied. However, they were given freedom to stay wherever they wanted as long as they continued reading. The teachers emphasized them to jot down the ideas and extract the main idea.
Professionally speaking, they were superb. I guess I would like to have had - as a child - similar classes in which freedom and responsability are part of the same learning system .
I do understand that in classes with more students , probably there would be some difficulties. Nonetheless, whenever classes are student centered those difficulties are mitigated and learning effectively takes place.