Classroom Environment

Designing Your Learning Environment

Physical classroom environments have a significant impact on how students learn and retain content and skills.

The question becomes "How can teachers create the best classroom environment to help students make the most of their time at school?"

The first step in the process is to reflect on your current space. Use these guiding questions to look critically at your classroom real estate. Then, look at the critical elements and examples provided below to help you design the best possible learning space for your students.

Classroom Environment Reflection Questions:

Clutter: Does your classroom have too much visual clutter? Despite our best intentions, a visually cluttered classroom can distract students from learning.
Decoration: Are the visuals that you have on your walls for decoration or to support current content and learning? How long have they been up on the walls? Are the displays interactive for students?
Procedures: Are your classroom procedures visually accessible to students? Can they be read from EVERYWHERE in the classroom? Are there images to support the procedures?
Mobility: Can you and your students move around the classroom successfully? Are there opportunities in your classroom for students to stand and work?
White Space: Is there white space between wall displays that help students visually "chunk" material in the classroom? Is there too much whitespace, making your classroom feel austere and uninviting?
Storage and Organization: Does your storage design keep your classroom uncluttered? Is there a student work center that allows students to access the "tools" they need to facilitate learning?
Lighting: Natural light reduces headaches and vision problems. Colors also have the power to affect the nervous system, cerebral cortex and hormones. Are you maximizing natural light and ambient lighting in your classroom?
Vocabulary: How are you making the CURRENT vocabulary of your unit/lesson visually accessible to your students? How are you making the academic language of your course visually accessible to your students?
Advanced Organizers: How are you visually supporting lesson and unit organization for your students? Is there a space where students can visually access upcoming due dates, assessments, breaks, etc?
Focal Point for Learning: Where is your learning focal point? Is this the least visually cluttered space in your classroom? Can all students access it successfully?

Anchor Charts
Anchor charts are displays of information made during a lesson that reinforce instruction. They "anchor" students learning to support future thinking and learning. Done well Anchor Charts support cognitive development, develop critical thinking skills and help students become more self-reliant in the classroom.

Writable Spaces
Maximizing spaces where students can make their thinking "visible" in the classroom increases engagement and provides opportunity for real-time feedback from peers and the teacher. Increasing the writable spaces in your classroom can lead to increased mobility, collaboration and critical thinking with your students.

Advanced Organizers
Students need visual reminders of procedures, expectations, upcoming events, deadlines, sequence of learning experiences and assessments in order to be an active participant in their learning in your classroom.

Visual Vocabulary in Context with Learning
Supporting literacy in your classroom includes providing students with a visual map of content words in context with lessons in order to help students build connections and ownership of the language of your discipline. Sometimes called "Word Walls" - there are several different ways you can make vocabulary visually accessible and usable to your students.
- Learning Map Word Walls
- Timeline Word Walls
- Thinking Skills or Critical Thinking Word Walls
- Interactive Lesson Driven Word Walls

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