In the past, I always eliminated all decorations in my physical and virtual classrooms. However, this article mentioned what Godwin et al. (2022) found out: "There is evidence that classroom visual environments can be used successfully to improve a sense of belonging".
Does it mean that I should include decorations to build students' sense of belonging? If the answer is yes, I may need knowledge and skills from community building.
Thoughts about reading skill development:
I have always embraced a traditional classroom in terms of reading skill development. Based on my personal feeling and teaching/tutoring experience, reading requires a higher level of concentration compared to many other learning activities, and minimizing distractions would be obviously beneficial.
Meanwhile, reading deals with more abstract information. With the development of modern technologies such as VR, does reading skill development become easier or harder? When we learn to read and interact with abstract information, do we need background knowledge in the form of concrete information? In other words, do we go from concrete to abstract, or from abstract to concrete? If the answer is both ways, which one comes first?
And finally, thank you so much again for providing the microlessons in CTL1620! They were a great help to strengthen my learning! Even today, I can retell and apply most of the topics in this course without looking at any materials. This is an example to demonstrate the extent good teaching can facilitate skill building and knowledge retention!
References
Godwin, K. E., Leroux, A. J., Scupelli, P., & Fisher, A. V. (2022). Classroom Design and Children’s Attention Allocation: Beyond the Laboratory and into the Classroom. Mind, Brain, and Education, 16(3), 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12319
Thanks Linyi for your comments. Regarding decorations: I think you're right that the goal is to decorate in ways that both foster a sense of community, and at the same time, are less likely to distract. Montessori classrooms are one model for this: somewhat minimalist decorating where the decorations are practical and can feed into lessons. Here's a website that provides some helpful suggestions regarding striking the right balance: https://www.edutopia.org/article/dos-and-donts-classroom-decorations/
Thanks again for engaging with this piece Linyi. You share some fascinating thoughts and raise important questions. Been thinking of concrete vs. abstract. I heard in a podcast today (focusing on math) wherein the speaker mentioned that there is research out there that suggests starting off with concrete but then soon enough moving on to abstract ideas like numerical representation in math. It seems to help children learn math better in the long run. I haven't read the research myself but since you asked the question, thought I'd share what I heard. Makes sense to me but will share more as we read more.
Thoughts about decoration:
In the past, I always eliminated all decorations in my physical and virtual classrooms. However, this article mentioned what Godwin et al. (2022) found out: "There is evidence that classroom visual environments can be used successfully to improve a sense of belonging".
Does it mean that I should include decorations to build students' sense of belonging? If the answer is yes, I may need knowledge and skills from community building.
Thoughts about reading skill development:
I have always embraced a traditional classroom in terms of reading skill development. Based on my personal feeling and teaching/tutoring experience, reading requires a higher level of concentration compared to many other learning activities, and minimizing distractions would be obviously beneficial.
Meanwhile, reading deals with more abstract information. With the development of modern technologies such as VR, does reading skill development become easier or harder? When we learn to read and interact with abstract information, do we need background knowledge in the form of concrete information? In other words, do we go from concrete to abstract, or from abstract to concrete? If the answer is both ways, which one comes first?
And finally, thank you so much again for providing the microlessons in CTL1620! They were a great help to strengthen my learning! Even today, I can retell and apply most of the topics in this course without looking at any materials. This is an example to demonstrate the extent good teaching can facilitate skill building and knowledge retention!
References
Godwin, K. E., Leroux, A. J., Scupelli, P., & Fisher, A. V. (2022). Classroom Design and Children’s Attention Allocation: Beyond the Laboratory and into the Classroom. Mind, Brain, and Education, 16(3), 239–251. https://doi.org/10.1111/mbe.12319
Thanks Linyi for your comments. Regarding decorations: I think you're right that the goal is to decorate in ways that both foster a sense of community, and at the same time, are less likely to distract. Montessori classrooms are one model for this: somewhat minimalist decorating where the decorations are practical and can feed into lessons. Here's a website that provides some helpful suggestions regarding striking the right balance: https://www.edutopia.org/article/dos-and-donts-classroom-decorations/
Thank you for giving me this link, Jim! This website makes me think: should I include non-distracting decorations in my virtual lessons as well?
Thanks again for engaging with this piece Linyi. You share some fascinating thoughts and raise important questions. Been thinking of concrete vs. abstract. I heard in a podcast today (focusing on math) wherein the speaker mentioned that there is research out there that suggests starting off with concrete but then soon enough moving on to abstract ideas like numerical representation in math. It seems to help children learn math better in the long run. I haven't read the research myself but since you asked the question, thought I'd share what I heard. Makes sense to me but will share more as we read more.
Thank you so much for telling me about this research, Nidhi! It makes perfect sense, and I will find out more about it!
Look into Jennifer Kaminski's work. https://people.wright.edu/jennifer.kaminski
Thank you for providing this link, Nidhi! I'll look into it 👍