In Gilroy Prep's eighth-grade math class, there are not any quiet rows of neat desks in front of a teacher. Instead, the space feels less like a classroom and more just like the trading floor of a stock market, with the constant hum of voices as students sketch gradients and equations on tablets that project their pen strokes onto nearby screens.
Meanwhile, three students armed with clipboards flow into amongst their classmates – huddled in groups of three at the sting of the room – asking questions, gesturing at screens and explaining algebraic concepts.
Gilroy Prep is amongst a small cohort of colleges within the country experimenting with this method, generally known as the Squads model — students in grades six through eight teach one another under the supervision of a teacher.
Despite the novelty, students seem to understand the collaborative approach. “At first it seemed a little strange to me, but then I feel like it's better because we work together more,” said Daniel Lopez, a sixth-grader at Gilroy Prep.
The final grade for this method remains to be pending, but school leaders say it teaches essential “soft skills” that improve interpersonal communication, increase social awareness and higher educate students. They also indicate that Gilroy Prep has a bigger proportion of scholars who rating higher on state standardized tests and that the proportion of scholars who’re repeatedly absent from class is lower than in the encircling district.
While education experts warn against trusting the strategy too soon, the Squads model is slowly spreading.
Navigator Schools — the group of charter schools that features Gilroy Prep — reached out to a whopping 16,000 schools across the country to supply to coach them about their teaching practices. So far, just a few dozen educators have come to learn more about squads, and last school 12 months a charter school in Seattle adopted the strategy.
The original idea for Squads got here from boredom.
James Dent, chief academic officer of the Navigator schools, recalled his son complaining about being bored in school. So Dent – then principal of Gilroy Prep – told his son to show himself. Weeks later, his son still remembered the self-taught lesson.
Dent wondered if this self-learning may very well be applied to teaching, so he developed a system that might get students to show themselves and one another. Together with a gaggle of teachers who were keen to experiment, he began testing the strategy on students in 2016.
Initially, the scholars created instructional videos, but later moved to groups, inspired by other teaching methods and the study groups Dent loved at university. The first Squads attempts used military terms for the assorted roles – majors supervised captains – and students were divided into groups of two and five before Dent and his entourage eventually settled on groups of three.
“When we started trying all these crazy things, I was really just scared,” said Hollister Prep Principal Norma Knox, who was among the many first teachers to show squads. “I remember we had a meeting with one of our funders and I said, 'These are people's children.' We're experimenting with these practices on real people.'”
Eventually, the experimentation slowed and teams settled on the current version, where it is being used at Gilroy Prep, Hollister Prep and Watsonville Prep. Here, one teacher supervises three student teachers, each of whom is responsible for three groups of three. Before class, student teachers are assigned homework that covers the lesson plan for the next day.
While the other students are working on a warm-up task on the day of class, the teacher talks to the team leaders to make sure they understand the material. The teacher training students are given a key with answers as well as questions and suggestions to make it easier for their fellow students to answer independently. Student teachers also monitor whether members of their groups understand the material and pass this information on to the teacher, who can pause the lesson and offer a quick lesson if the class is struggling with a particularly tricky concept. At the end of class, each student takes an electronic quiz that immediately tells the teacher what concepts students have understood.
The model can present a learning curve for both students and teachers, but students and peers alike are able to fill in each other's knowledge gaps.
For eighth-grade teacher Jeremiah Williams, immediate access to students is the biggest benefit. Instead of observing more than 30 students with just a glance, he now has three students and often another teacher to help him monitor the room. Combined with the instant analysis gained from the electronic quizzes, he says he gains deep insights into the class.
“I have five pairs of eyes to take them all in. So that no one is left behind. Nobody is hiding. “Everyone gets the personal attention they deserve,” he said.
According to Eva Vives, a psychologist at Ghent University in Belgium, similar student-to-student methods can help students of all levels learn while improving their communication skills. The squad model could also be beneficial because the teacher is active in the room, which could help ensure that students are not teaching each other incorrect information.
But despite the promise, Vives warns against placing too much trust in a technology that has not been scientifically tested. “As far as we know, there is no revolutionary miracle teaching method,” Vives said in an email. “Developing a new teaching method is good, but developing an evidence-based teaching method is better.”
Caprice Young, executive director of Navigator Schools, emphasized that the teaching approach makes the difference, and she hopes the model will spread.
“What we do in the classroom is something that can be done in other schools,” she said. “It is fully reproducible and we look forward to supporting other schools who may want to do it.”
As for Williams, who has used several other teaching methods in his seven years as a teacher, he prefers this one. “It takes the best qualities of all of them and combines them,” he said. “I think it’s the future – plain and simple.”
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