Physical Classroom Environment

As a substitute for the past several years I have seen many differenc classroom environments. Now I am going to have my own class and I would like some input on wall decorations, posters and hanging things from the ceilings. My instinct is that LD students and even typical students focus better if there is some quiet or blank space on the walls and nothing dangling from the ceilings. I also believe that limiting some of the personal furniture that teachers bring into the class would help. Any thoughts? Has anyone tried to tone down their walls and seen a positive result? Thank you for any help you can offer.

You are quite right about visual distractions. Follow your instinct on this. Sunlight glaring onto the blackboard can also be a forgotten interference.

Let me share my child's experience in what I consider the worst possible scenario. This was a split Grade Two/Three class of 72 students in a language immersion setting. A double classroom was divided with a floor-to-ceiling folding door. I'm sure you can imagine it.

Distractions were multi-sensory, but here are a few of them:

- Odors and noise from the adjoining school kitchen (recycling of beverage containers done during class time; juice boxes, etc. drained in kitchen, without thoroughly flushing/bleaching drains -- mold growing?)
- people shortcutting to the school kitchen through the classroom; even the principal did this, b/c the kitchen door was locked, but the classroom was not
- classroom door usually left open
- divider between classrooms usually left open
- classroom situated directly across the hall from entrance to the gym and music room (remember, the door was usually open)
- high volume of hallway traffic in school of nearly 550 students
- adjoining classroom had a piano, which was used when my son's class was learning science, etc.
- overcrowding; this double classroom held 44 students in previous year; my son's side had 38 students; children bumping into each other, chairs, desks
- not enough coathooks; coats, backpacks, snowpants, etc. thrown on floor
- Students split into A, B and C groups for various subject instruction throughout the day; subjects like Social Studies taught to split grades, despite widely varying curriculum
- little help for the students in core subjects due to a student-teacher ratio of 38/1 ratio in certain subjects

One of the greatest stresses came from the sheer noise of having so many children in such a small space, moving chairs on the floor, etc.

And of course, children in primary school should have a single teacher for optimum performance. Attachment to the teacher aids learning at this age. Instead, there was a complex schedule involving splitting the children up and moving around from classroom to classroom and teacher to teacher several times daily.

My advice is to avoid all of these distractions. I felt very sorry for the children and teachers in this situation, which was the disaster you might imagine.