A school without classrooms

This short booklet has as its first objective to draw a direction, start to define some lines that may indicate strategies for the exploitation of the multiple-student class as a resource and not as a limit.

To realize this short writing, we started from the experience of a very small school of the Veronese Lessinia, located in the village of San Mauro di Saline, part of the Istituto Comprensivo Bosco Chiesanuova.

The daily work that has been made in this small reality is a passionate, dedicated and continuous research; there has never been a lack of sound self-criticism but the will, in all the educational actions, to strive for children’s future.

We’ve imagined to start building a tool for each teacher who has to work in a multiple-student class.

For this reason, this writing has been organized in four parts. In the first part it is described the relationship between a small school and the context in which it is. To do this we’ve started from the concept of “vertical continuity”. The next section provides some clarifying examples about living in a multiple-student class. In the third part there are some theoretical notes, certainly not complete and exhaustive, that want to underline the didactic validity and, above all, the social and pedagogical one, in a context of multiple-students class. The last paragraph deals with illustrating a school day, suggesting some operational schemes and some tools, useful to provide all teachers with a practical vision of how lessons can be organized.

We hope that this booklet will give some answers but, above all, that it will leave the reader with curiosity, trust and esteem for an educational model, that of the multiple-student class, which deserves to be valued and respected for the learning opportunities it offers to boys and girls. We also hope that it can be an incubator of opportunities for those who want to contribute in sharing ideas and skills.