Designing a Classroom for Learning

There are generally two types of physical classroom environments that I think teachers have: an ideal setup and an actual setup. Often something that sounds good in principle cannot be executed in practice because of a myriad of complicated reasons.

Part of designing a classroom environment is based on the research that comes into your age level of student, content area, and other distinguishing factors. For most high school classrooms, rows are the most common. Why and where did this trend start? Because it is the easiest for custodians and teachers.

But what is best for students? In a high school math classroom, we do most of our work in an “I do, we do, you do” method. This means that students have an opportunity to work in groups but then are expected to work alone as well. Based on this website, that means I should stick with some variation of the row setup.

The problem with that is I don’t want it to always be that way, and I want students to have the opportunity to see the rest of the room and work with those around them. That means I can use the stadium arrangement or some variation where students are facing each other as well. I also like the idea of having at least one giant, central aisle that allows me to get to the back of the room quickly, as mentioned here.

But perhaps the best advice I can give to any teacher looking to alter their classroom environment is to try it for themselves. Every teacher, classroom, and situation is different, and you should try it if you think it will work. You never know what will work for you!