Keeping the Environment as the Third Teacher During COVID.

For my new parents getting to know me, my teaching is very heavily influenced by the way of teaching in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The founder is quoted as saying, “Nothing without joy!” This teaching philosophy is hands on, experienced based, student-centered, relationship driven and uses self-directed learning. When children have choice and are interested in what they are learning, they are more engaged in their learning. Through topics that the students are interested in, they use academic skills in authentic ways as they play and explore their environment. The Reggio Approach to teaching believes there are three “teachers” in the classroom: The child, the teacher and the environment. Since the environment is considered to be the third teacher, every part of it is planned to be safe, supporting and stimulating. No matter where children go in the classroom, learning in authentic ways will take place, with or without me. 

Because of COVID restrictions and safe distancing, learning through relationships, collaboration, and teamwork will be a challenge but I don’t think impossible! To see how my classroom environment is run in a typical year, see this post about The Environment as the Third Teacher  Here I will show the changes made to keep our students safe, yet the learning joyful, interesting and engaging.

The wonderful Mrs. Albanese has been teaching face to face since school started. From her blog(You can visit it here) I saw how she divided the class into Friendship Pods. Each group stays in their Friendship Pod for a whole week. They only interact with each other. Small groups is one key in keeping the spread of the virus down and helps with contact tracing. I started thinking about how I could make this work in my classroom. Here is what I came up with! 

Here is a map of my room divided into our four Friendship Pods (Each color represents a pod):

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A small group of three or four children are assigned to each friendship pod. They can only play with the other children within their friendship pod. The friendship pods will explore and create in one area for a full week, then rotate to the next area for the next week. They have to stay in the area that their friendship pod is assigned to. Each pod area is large enough for those within the group to social distance. 

Each pod area has a main attraction, such as building/math, dramatic play/literacy, art/sensory, and maker space. Then I added books, math, literacy, writing, building, art, small world play, and science exploration materials on shelves, tables and in bins or trays to each pod. That way they have choices from all of the areas within their own pod along with the main attractions of their areas. Here is what their Friendship pod areas look like with some examples of activities available in each one for them to create with and explore (The colors don’t match the ones in the map):

When the kids come in, they will all be wearing masks and sanitize their hands. Before exploring anything they have to sanitize hands again to ensure no germs get on the materials. When we are done, we will sanitize again and wipe down surfaces. At the end of the day I will spray everything with a spray provided by our district. At the end of the week they will rotate to a new pod. They rotate once every week to give them a chance to explore and create in all of the areas. 

They have their own individual tools to use and take with them around their pod. They do not need to work at the tables. To help with social distancing, some may choose to work at the tables while others may grab their tools and clipboard and work on the floor or another table in their pod. 

In the past I used community tools in the center of their tables like this. 

This year they will each have their own individual tools. Their tools are displayed rather than thrown in a box or pouch because they tend to take better care of their tools this way. We usually only go through one or two boxes of crayons per year!

They also have individual math tool boxes to use with our whole group or small group lessons. 

They have bins to store all of their materials such as clip boards, paper, individual play-dough and math tool box in. 

This is my plan for getting started. Once the kids come I will observe how they interact with the environment and then I will make changes as needed based on my observations. I know that this will not all work perfectly at first but it will evolve based on the kids and how they use it and ultimately, even with these restrictions, we will make it an environment for a community full of joyful learning, creating, and exploring!