Classroom design at St Monica's Primary School in Evatt.

St Monica's Primary School in Evatt Principal, Lisa Harris, discusses classroom design.

Transcript

00:00 You learned how to spell some words that have the sound 'I'.

00:05 The classrooms are set up in rows,

00:08 predominantly for when core learning is going to be taking place.

00:11 So, when we're teaching something explicitly or for the very first time,

00:15 we really want our kids to be engaged and have that attentional focus.

00:19 So, we set them up in rows because we know that the focus is on the teacher

00:23 and there's minimal distractions elsewhere.

00:26 You'll also notice too that on the tables there's pencil pots

00:30 and other bits and pieces they use for their learning are minimal,

00:34 so that the attention is solely on the teacher.

00:37 And that might happen for between 20 and 30 minutes a day,

00:41 several times a day, but they're not always set up in the rows that time.

00:45 We do have opportunities for desks to come together

00:48 and for collaborative learning to take place.

00:51 But the desks are straight

00:53 and we did have other kind of curvy, funky furniture

00:56 that's been moved out into other spaces in the schools

00:59 and is more appropriate for other times.

01:01 But when we want our students to be learning,

01:04 we'd like them to be in the rows

01:06 and there's a specific research behind why all of our classrooms

01:09 are in one single classroom space.

01:11 At times, they might come together for a big group activity

01:15 or where we're wanting to deliver a message,

01:17 but when it's that core learning time,

01:19 they're in those individual classrooms.

01:22 It's rare that we would come together in big groups

01:25 for explicit core learning time.

01:27 Parents have noticed that the children are engaged,

01:30 that they're learning,

01:32 that learning is taking place, that there's structure and expectation.

01:36 The children like it because it's predictable,

01:39 they know where their seat's going to be,

01:41 and they're impressed that the focus is on the teacher.

01:46 And a number of parents have come to me to say that my child is learning

01:50 and they were previously in an open plan space

01:53 and they've actually come into a more structured environment

01:57 and telling their families what they learned.

02:00 [no dialogue]