Creating a Positive Learning Environment
Strategies for Intermediate / Senior Divisions
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Have positive rapport with your students: Provide all your students with your help, attention and feedback. It’s important to have positive expectations for your students because it can affect how they perform. Ensure that all students feel welcomed and valued and accept diversity. Help encourage nonparticipating students with questions you know they can answer.
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Communication and state of mind: I strongly believe that part of job is to care, to stay attentive and provide equitable opportunities for students to learn so they can achieve their very best. A well, engaging dialogue with the students will show them we want to understand what they are going through and make they feel respected and listened to.
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Start the day in a positive way: Always greet your students as they come in the door (smile and make eye-contact), talk about what they did on the weekend/night before, do a fun icebreaker activity to get the students motivated.
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Classroom rules: Students have to realize the classroom is a learning environment and apprehend it as such. Simple routines can be implemented to help them adjust their attitude when entering this space.
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Classroom layouts: Different layouts may alter the way we teach. Offering a comfortable environment will encourage the students in their learning. We can manage the space and organize the classroom in order to facilitate the circulation, to enable students to work in team as well as individually and/or to offer them spaces where they can talk, listen or write.
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Classroom embellishment: As a Visual Arts teacher, I always make sure to promote their works by exhibiting them on the walls. This helps them build self-confidence and make the space of the room theirs. Students will often volunteer to help whenever they have some free time.
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Reinforce positive behaviours: Of course we must respond to and report incidents if they occur. We must remind the students to do better if they are not making good choices or to work harder if their grades are too low. But noticing, encouraging and rewarding good behavior and achievements will incite students to continue in that direction.
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Classroom Website: This can help make parents feel more included in the classroom because it can keep them up to date on what is going on the classroom, they can see what the students are learning, and have access to different learning resources. You can post pictures, and have a discussion post for parents to comment.
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Make learning relevant: At least but not last, keeping our student engaged in the curriculum through our enthusiasm for the subject we teach and interactive courses will help creating a positive learning environment.
Classroom Layout Ideas
“We need to think about creating classroom environments that give children
the opportunity for wonder, mystery and discovery; an environment that speaks
to young children’s inherent curiosity and innate yearning for exploration is a classroom
where children are passionate about learning and love school.”
Heard & McDonough, 2009, in The third teacher, p.2
This point is crucial to me as different layouts might alter the way we teach. We as teacher must offer a comfortable environment that will encourage the students in their learning. We must manage the space and organize the classroom in order to facilitate the circulation, to enable students to work in team as well as individually and/or to offer them spaces where they can talk, listen or write. If we succeed in designing a good learning environment, it will become a social environment and our work with the students will be made easier as they will be more focused and less prompt to disturb the class.
As occasional teachers, we have to make the environment we find ourselves in work! This can be achieve simply by circulating among students to ensure they are all engaged or make sure we give weight to their voice through dialogue. As a Visual Arts teacher, I always make sure to promote their works by exhibiting them on the walls. This helps them build self-confidence and make the space of the room theirs.
Creating a safe learning and teaching environment