Education Week - April 15, 2015 - Special Report - S21

EDUCATION WEEK n
April 15, 2015
Blended Learning: Breaking Down Barriers > www.edweek.org/go/blended-barriers
| S21
The Shade
A group of tables
clustered together under
a large lampshade-like
fixture, located between
the Coastline and the
Big Board/Little Board.
This is where students
work collaboratively
on small-group projects
or confer with peers if
they need extra help.
The Coastline
A row of fixed tables around the perimeter of each pod, where
students work individually on school-provided Google Chromebooks,
using a variety of commercial programs. At its temporary campus,
Intrinsic positioned the tables facing the pod's other areas, but
students were too easily distracted, according to Ami Gandhi,
Intrinsic's director of personalized learning. Now they face the wall.
Photos by
John Zich
for Education Week
thinking that things would work, and it really didn't."
School leaders are expanding the student population at Belmont by
grade level. It currently serves grades 7, 9, and 10, and will expand
to grades 7-12 in the next two years. The vast majority of the school's
students are from low-income families and are either Hispanic or
African-American. Intrinsic chooses its students using a randomized
lottery, although school officials try to enroll as many neighborhood
students as possible.
Intrinsic's Belmont campus is designed to use different areas within
each classroom for different styles of learning-from traditional,
teacher-led instruction to small-group collaboration and digitally
based personalized learning.
Each grade has two interconnected classrooms, or "pods," based on
subject matter-one for English/language arts and one devoted to
math. Within each 90-minute class period, students rotate between
different sections of the room, all of which serve a specific purpose in
the school's blended-learning model.
Within each pod, different sections of the classrooms serve their
own functions, some of them closely resembling those of a traditional
school, others representing a major break from the norm.
Areas known as the "Big Board" and "Little Board" host teacher-led
discussions.
A set of tables known as the "Coastline," where students engage in
personalized learning, wraps around the perimeter of the room.
Nearby, other sections known as the "Shade" and the "Exchange," serve
their own, distinct functions. (See photos accompanying this article.)
Each pod serves upwards of 65 students at a time, with two co-teachers
and one special-education teacher working in tandem with one another.
Ashley S. Haywood, a 9th grade English/language arts teacher at
Intrinsic, specifically praised the school's co-teaching model, especially
for newer educators. "It makes it so none of us can totally fail," Ms. Haywood
said. "You have all these other adults in the room to support you."
Intrinsic also features other, more traditional classroom spaces:
Each grade level, for instance, has a science lab within its pods, with
fixed lab tables. Each grade's pods also contain a "Seminar Room,"
where social sciences are held and with small tables on wheels that
can be easily moved. Depending on the need, teachers can set up the
space to look like a small-scale version of a college lecture hall, or used
for 1-on-1 or small-group instruction.
Mike Walsh, the school's department chair of social science and a
9th-grade world studies teacher, changes the look of his seminar room
from day to day.
"We don't generally do anything for more than 15 minutes at a
time," Mr. Walsh said. "We do a lot of moving around and different
types of activities."
The layout makes it easier to tailor instructional strategies to students
with different academic needs, school officials say. Tyrese Wetzel, a 10th
grader at the school, noted the difference he's seen in his brother, Tyjuan,
PAGE S22 >
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The Exchange
A cluster of desks located in the center of each room, where teachers can pull students aside for
1-on-1 or small-group help. This also serves as the teacher's "landing spot," where he or she can
store classroom materials, for example. This is the most flexible of all the spaces-sometimes
used as extra seating for the Big Board, and other times as an extension of the Shade.
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Education Week - April 15, 2015 - Special Report

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