When it comes to teaching young children, what you need to bear in mind is that their brains are incredibly susceptible to the outside stimuli. This means that everything, ranging from the skill of the teacher and the composition to the learning materials affects the pace and efficiency at which they acquire new knowledge. There are not a lot of these factors that are more relevant to this than the classroom organization. Here are a couple of tips to get the most out of it.
A proper seating layout
The first thing you need to take into consideration is the seating layout within the classroom. This is why you might want to invest in combination desks, seeing as how they allow you to organize the place in whatever way you see fit. For instance, you could make the layout of a traditional classroom, you could make a circle so that you place a whiteboard or a teacher in the center or you can organize isles of four around the place in order to assist your learners with group projects. Either way, combination desks are your best choice since they give you the most room and the most options. When it comes to the organization, flexibility is key.
Keep everything colorful
When it comes to attracting and keeping the attention of your students, the key lies in keeping things colorful. While this may not seem like something incredibly important, you also need to bear in mind the fact that for young learners, immersion might be a crucial thing when it comes to learning motivation. Other than keeping everything colored vividly, you might also want to customize your organization. For instance, you could label some of these items with colorful personalized name labels instead of option for old-school stickers. These name labels can also be used for a parent-teacher conference.
Keep it clean
One of the biggest challenges with running an efficient classroom lies in making an effort to keep it clean. Why? Well, because you have so many kids acting… well, like children and organizing all the mess that they create on a daily basis is far from simple. This is why you need to have everyone on board. Start instilling in them this responsibility because it is another major lesson that they have to acquire. In other words, you have the privilege of turning the organization of space into an important didactic tool.
Different seating options
On the one hand, you can just go the old-school way and organize everything with traditional desks and chairs, however, there are many other options that you also need to consider and discuss. Namely, working on the floor, using stools, bean bags or even exercise balls are all interesting and compelling alternatives that might be worth your while. Just bear in mind that not having enough seating for each type for everyone might be a problem. So, either get just one of these alternatives like a place of honor (a reward of some sorts) or just get enough for everyone.
Designated smartphone place
The next thing you need to take into consideration is the fact that more and more kids get smartphones and tablets at a very young age and that some of them might even take them to school with them. Keep in mind that running a class while everyone is using their phone tends to be something completely ineffective and counterproductive. To get ahead of this problem, what you want is to make a designated smartphone place, where all of your students can place these devices until the class is over. By making this mandatory, the peer pressure alone would be enough to make everyone comply.
Conclusion
The very last thing worth bearing in mind is the fact that your classroom deserves an improvement that will benefit everyone (both teachers and learners). Fortunately, with the above-listed five methods on your side, you’ll have a lot easier time keeping everything in check. The list goes on and on and there’s nothing wrong with the idea of expanding it on your own.
