The Connection between Environment and Learning

A student’s culture defines how they look at the world and learn about the world! When we can tap into the culture, we will help the student make deep learning connections that stay with them! Culture can be traditions, beliefs, ethnicity, music, and values – just to name a few. When these cultural points can be included in the physical environment, students will take a huge step towards taking ownership of the learning.Here is a good rule of thumb: Represent your students first, then yourself. I’ll never forget walking into a 5th grade classroom last year that looked right out of Pinterest – camping Pinterest. This room had camping decorations from top to bottom. Clearly the teacher liked camping. But there was not one representation of her students’ likes, culture, or even work.Let’s move to academic representation now. I want to give you 4 ways to set up the physical classroom environment in a way that promotes learning.Have visual vocabulary posted. This can be in the form of anchor charts, word walls, or simply vocabulary lists. It needs to be clear, readable from every seat in the class, and only the vocabulary that students are learning currently.Have a learning objective for the day (or class period) posted. I know that learning objectives can seem like “one more thing to do” , but giving the students a clear learning target to hit in kid-friendly (but academically appropriate) language is so important. For example, being able to say, “Today, before you leave second period, you will be able to list and explain 3 events that led to World War II.” It also gives you and the students something to measure their learning by.Have sentence frames posted. If you are wanting students to produce language in writing or speaking (which you should), giving them sentence frames can be hugely helpful for producing language.Have directions posted. You can lower the affective filter and set students up for learning when they have directions to read and refer back to. Think about it – if someone is giving you more than two-steps worth of directions, isn’t it helpful if you have it written down as well?So to sum it up, we want to represent our students culturally and set up our classrooms to be the best learning environments they can possibly be!We also talk about using the environment to lower the affective filter. Here are 4 ways!Have a positive routine when students come in the door. Call them by name, give them hug, handshake, fist bump (whatever you are comfortable with), and tell them something authentically positive. Even if their affective filter is up from something that has happened previously in the day, you've taken huge steps to lowering it by having them enter the room positively.Have a classroom that represents them. We all need and like connection. When you have set up a classroom so that it represents the students' likes, backgrounds, traditions, and work, an automatic comfort and sense of belonging occurs, which lowers the affective filter.Use music to calm and stimulate. Calming instrumental music can be used to bring students' anxieties and heightened states down. Upbeat music (that students like) can be used for brain breaks and recharge. Music is a research-based way to help regulate emotions.Have an orderly classroom. Chaos, whether that be from people or from clutter or things can raise the affective filter. If students are in a dirty classroom or don't where to find or put things, this raises the filter. It may not bother you, but for students who often live in chaos, it can be a trigger. **Quick tip, have systems in place for your students to help clean each day. This instills a sense of responsibility and ownership, and takes the brunt of it off of you! A quick 3 minute clean up time can make all the difference in the world!If you want to take your staff into a deeper dive on respons