Part One : Making Space Meaningful for Learning
The stories in Part One of Making Space for Active Learners talks about how the environment in your classroom can improve the learning experience for your students. In the first story, Mrs. Nolan talks about how her own experience learning to build a boat as she went inspired her to make a space in her classroom dedicated to the art of making, creating and problem solving. Mrs. Nolan started by giving the option of going over to the space to build and create as a choice at the end of the day (free choice time) but she noticed the students were sad when they would miss it due to an assembly or early dismissal. She then decided to encorporate more hands on projects making her whole room a space to create.
The stories continued talking about ideas to bring cross curricular experiences into the classroom whether it was Islamic Art or Native American story telling. A continued theme through out the section was making a place and time for creation. Not leaving our students confined to desks and lesson plans but being open to ideas that are student generated or inspired.
This made me think of an article I read in my favorite Educational Resource Edutopia. In the article "A Place for Learning: The Physical Environments of Classrooms" author Mark Philips talks about how the very physical nature of the classroom can inspire or discourage learning. Mr. Philips talks about the value of bringing Students thoughts and ideas into the designing of your space can dramatically impact it's effect. It can help students retain what they learn, reteach just by the student encountering the environment and inspire students to dig deeper through creativity.
I also found this video on Edutopia Called "Remake Your Class: Building a Collaborative Learning Environment" that shows how one teacher made his room more accessible for student learning.
