Classroom Environment
Your classroom environment can impact how behaviours are managed, allowing all learners to maximize essential learning in the room. Presenting an organized, clean, clutter-free work environment is key because, according to an article by Michael Linsin, How Your Classroom Environment Can Improve Behavior, “If your classroom environment doesn’t match your call for excellence, hard work, and respect, you are sending the message to your students that poor behavior and middling work habits is acceptable—regardless of how often or how forcefully you say otherwise”.
Here are some reasons why having an organized and clean classroom can do wonders for your classroom:
· It commands reverence
· It’s inviting
· It’s a statement of respect
· It makes you a better, more confident teacher
· It strengthens your influence
· It makes a statement
· It gives students a sense of pride
· It calms and focuses
Excellence is Expected!
“Your classroom environment has such a strong bearing on how your students perceive themselves and the expectations you have for them that you can’t afford to let it fall into disarray or get swallowed up by accumulated materials or cluttered hodgepodge”.
Strategy for Classroom Environment:
In researching beneficial strategies used/implemented in the classroom to assist with classroom management, one of the strategies presented by Karen Burke and Barbara Burke-Samide in their article, Required Changes in the Classroom Environment: It’s a Matter of Design, is to change the classroom environment, taking the students’ needs and preferences into account. When examining some classroom settings, they found that the well structured classroom may actually be preventing some students from achieving. Researchers conducted more than seventeen studies on the environmental elements in the Dunn and Dunn Learning-Style Model (design, sound, light, and temperature) and revealed that students achieve higher or have improved attitudes when their learning environment reflects their learning preferences.
Key Points:
· change/rearrange classroom from the “highly structured, skills-based approaches to mandate progressive approaches to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic”
· teachers are expected to design classroom spaces that are conducive to students' individual learning styles; we do not want to prevent students from achieving & growing
· students are affected by the conditions of their classroom environment; Researchers Dunn, Thies, and Honigsfeld (2001) confirmed that a student's response to environmental stimuli is biological
Learning-Style Model explained:
· Design: Position is Everything in Life.
References:
Burke, Karen & Burke-Samide, Barbara (Jul/Aug 2004). Required Changes in the Classroom Environment: It's a Matter of Design. https://www-lib-uwo-ca.proxy2.lib.uwo.ca/cgi-bin/ezpauthn.cgi/docview/196864927?accountid=15115
Linsin, Michael (October 8, 2011). How Your Classroom Environment Can Improve Behavior.
http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2011/10/08/classroom-environment/
Your classroom environment can impact how behaviours are managed, allowing all learners to maximize essential learning in the room. Presenting an organized, clean, clutter-free work environment is key because, according to an article by Michael Linsin, How Your Classroom Environment Can Improve Behavior, “If your classroom environment doesn’t match your call for excellence, hard work, and respect, you are sending the message to your students that poor behavior and middling work habits is acceptable—regardless of how often or how forcefully you say otherwise”.
Here are some reasons why having an organized and clean classroom can do wonders for your classroom:
· It commands reverence
· It’s inviting
· It’s a statement of respect
· It makes you a better, more confident teacher
· It strengthens your influence
· It makes a statement
· It gives students a sense of pride
· It calms and focuses
Excellence is Expected!
“Your classroom environment has such a strong bearing on how your students perceive themselves and the expectations you have for them that you can’t afford to let it fall into disarray or get swallowed up by accumulated materials or cluttered hodgepodge”.
Strategy for Classroom Environment:
In researching beneficial strategies used/implemented in the classroom to assist with classroom management, one of the strategies presented by Karen Burke and Barbara Burke-Samide in their article, Required Changes in the Classroom Environment: It’s a Matter of Design, is to change the classroom environment, taking the students’ needs and preferences into account. When examining some classroom settings, they found that the well structured classroom may actually be preventing some students from achieving. Researchers conducted more than seventeen studies on the environmental elements in the Dunn and Dunn Learning-Style Model (design, sound, light, and temperature) and revealed that students achieve higher or have improved attitudes when their learning environment reflects their learning preferences.
Key Points:
· change/rearrange classroom from the “highly structured, skills-based approaches to mandate progressive approaches to teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic”
· teachers are expected to design classroom spaces that are conducive to students' individual learning styles; we do not want to prevent students from achieving & growing
· students are affected by the conditions of their classroom environment; Researchers Dunn, Thies, and Honigsfeld (2001) confirmed that a student's response to environmental stimuli is biological
Learning-Style Model explained:
· Design: Position is Everything in Life.
- more informal or comfortable seating can increase attention span and improve attitudes for some students ( not all students are capable of sitting in, focusing and learning from hard wooden or metal chairs)
- There is more to redesigning the classroom than just the furniture- sound is an element of the environment that can affect academic achievement.
- The kinds of sounds in a classroom can influence students' abilities to concentrate, think, and perform well (while some students actually need noise to concentrate).
- Pizzo, Dunn, and Dunn (1990) examined gender differences with sound and concluded that sound sensitivity is both biological and developmental.
- Light is one of the elements of the immediate environment that affects some students' ability to learn (it also has to do with students’ preference –some prefer brightly lit classrooms, while others do better with dimly lit atmospheres)
- Allow students to work in areas that are responsive to their lighting preferences.
- “Research on the environmental element of temperature reveals that most students prefer a warm yet comfortable instructional climate”.
References:
Burke, Karen & Burke-Samide, Barbara (Jul/Aug 2004). Required Changes in the Classroom Environment: It's a Matter of Design. https://www-lib-uwo-ca.proxy2.lib.uwo.ca/cgi-bin/ezpauthn.cgi/docview/196864927?accountid=15115
Linsin, Michael (October 8, 2011). How Your Classroom Environment Can Improve Behavior.
http://www.smartclassroommanagement.com/2011/10/08/classroom-environment/