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Inquiry based learning

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Inquiry-Based Learning: The Ultimate Guide

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What you put on your classroom walls can affect your students' ability to learn.

The walls in Kenita Sutherland's classroom are lively but not overwhelming.

Heavily decorated classrooms can bombard students with too much visual information, interfering with their memory and ability to focus, a new study finds.

This is just the latest study to examine the relationship between classroom environment and students' executive functions, which include skills like memory, attention, and self-regulation. While teachers have good intentions when decorating, many classrooms end up being "sensory-rich" in a way that "could hamper children's learning gains rather than help," according to psychologists Pedro Rodrigues and Josefa Pandeirada, who coauthored the study.

To understand how decorations affect learning, Rodrigues and Pandeirada recruited 64 children between 8 and 12 years old to perform attention and memory tasks in two groups. For the high-decoration group, the walls of the room were covered with numerous pictures of ordinary objects and scenes, such as cars, musical instruments, and trees. Walls in the control group's room, on the other hand, were bare.
© Kendra Caralis
The children performed a series of tasks designed to test their attention and memory. In one attention test, for example, they observed a laptop screen, pressing a button if an X appeared and doing nothing if a K appeared. In a memory test reminiscent of the electronic game Simon Says, the children observed nine blue squares that changed to yellow in varying sequences, which the children attempted to repeat. A total of four tests were given-two for memory and two for attention.

Compared to children in the bare-wall room, children in the high-decoration room performed worse on all tests, which suggests that too much visual stimulus can be a distraction.

"Overall, the results from these studies indicate that children could have difficulty in ignoring visual distractors when these are embedded in the surrounding environment," the study authors explain.

Classrooms Should Be Engaging, Not Distracting

That's not to say that every wall must be bare. In 2015, a team of researchers in the U.K. analyzed 153 classrooms and found that students benefited most when the walls had some decorations. "The displays on the walls should be designed to provide a lively sense to the classroom, but without becoming chaotic in feel. As a rule of thumb, 20 to 50 percent of the available wall space should be kept clear," the researchers wrote.

Display student work. Students not only feel a greater sense of responsibility for their learning but are also more likely to remember the material (Barrett et al., 2015).

Feature inspiring role models. Putting up images-and short stories or quotes-featuring heroes and leaders can help students gain a greater sense of belonging and aspiration, especially when their backgrounds and interests are represented. Strive for inclusion, but avoid token or stereotypical representations-they can be damaging to students' self-esteem (Cheryan et al., 2014).

Avoid clutter. Keep at least 20 percent of your wall space clear, and leave ample space between displays so they don't look disorganized. Resist the temptation to keep adding decorations-it's better to swap them out than to keep adding more (Barrett et al., 2015).

Visual aids-like anchor charts, maps, and diagrams-are OK. Posters that reinforce a lesson, rather than distract from it, can boost student learning. But don't forget to take down ones that are no longer helpful (Carney & Levin, 2002; Bui & McDaniel, 2015).

Avoid displays of student scores or grades. Many teachers use data walls to motivate students, and while they can work for high performers, they can backfire for struggling students, leading to feelings of shame and demoralization (Marsh et al., 2014).

Let in natural light. Don't cover up your windows with decorations unless you have a problem with glare or outside distractions. Students who are exposed to more natural light in their classrooms outperform peers who get less natural light in math and reading (Cheryan et al., 2014). If you don't have windows, making sure the room is well lit can boost achievement (Barrett et al., 2015).

Balance wall colors. You don't have to stick with four white walls-try having a single feature wall painted a bright color, with the rest being muted (Barrett et al., 2015).

So what do researchers say teachers should do?

Developing Brains

While decorating walls is a favorite pastime for many teachers, young children may not respond as teachers hope.
Courtesy of Amy Mileham
"Our findings could be related to the fact that children's cognitive capacities are still under development, including executive functions responsible for the filtering of irrelevant information for a given task," explain the study authors. A teacher may have little difficulty ignoring a wall full of decorations, but young students may find themselves unable to look away and focus on a lesson.

Children aren't born with fully developed executive functions-they have to develop these skills over time, according to Harvard's Center on the Developing Child. Children who have adverse experiences-such as neglect, abuse, or violence-or learning disabilities are at greater risk of impaired attention and self-regulation skills. So classroom distractions may be harming the students who need the most help.

The Third Teacher
© Nichole Murray
This study is the latest in an emerging field looking at classrooms as the third teacher-after parents and the teacher-which views the environment as essential to supporting learning. The idea is hardly new; approaches such as Reggio Emilia and Montessori put it at the forefront of pedagogy, giving classrooms a prominent role in shaping how students learn. Recent studies have shown evidence for the role that classrooms play in learning: A 2014 study, for example, found that young students spent more time off-task when classroom walls were highly decorated, while research on flexible classrooms shows that optimizing physical characteristics of classrooms such as light, color, and seating options can improve academic performance by as much as 16 percent.

The takeaway: Classroom walls should feel warm and lively but not overcrowded-keep 20 to 50 percent of the wall space clear, and fill the rest with student work, inspiring pictures, and learning aids.

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What you put on your classroom walls can affect your students' ability to learn.

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Provides an overview of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences including how to teach anything eight different ways. Key MI resources are included.

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Really. In a reversal of fortune that seems lifted from fantasy, the once stigmatized refuge of the antisocial is now the new social, and it has returned from exile with a vengeance. No longer played in the shameful obscurity of closed dorms and basements, Dungeons & Dragons groups are claiming public spaces, and campaigns are proudly streamed on Twitch, YouTube and featured in dozens of popular podcasts. And, perhaps most remarkably, the fear that immersive role-play might damage vulnerable adolescents has been replaced with the radical notion that D&D might actually be saving lives and, according to educator and filmmaker Maria Laura Ruggiero, even the world.
The Return of the King
Despite its early commercial success in the late '70s and early '80s, Dungeons & Dragons occupied a dubious place in the popular imagination. It was widely ridiculed as escapist fantasy for socially awkward adolescents, and sparked a few eruptions of the moral panic that seems to greet all new cultural phenomena that captivate our youth. It reached its zenith when it was memorably featured in the opening scene of Steven Spielberg's beloved E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, marking the start of a slow decline until 1997 when, faced with bankruptcy, the original publisher sold the game to the franchise's current owner, Wizards of the Coast.

Meanwhile, in the decades that D&D receded, the spell it cast on popular culture seemed to spread inversely to its decline. Its influence enchanted every corner of the entertainment industry and, in the process, conjured the conditions for its own resurrection.

"RPGs are a very flexible form and, as the popularity of computer games exploded in the last decades, the digital RPG has been right there enjoying the ride," said Trent Hergenrader, a professor from the Rochester Institute of Technology who uses role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons to teach creative writing. "Game series like Final Fantasy¸ Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout and Elder Scrolls have enormous followings, and it's no secret that they grow out of D&D and other tabletop RPGs."

Besides video games, D&D's sword and sorcery ethos pervades hundreds of novels, board games, films and TV shows, including global media behemoths like Game of Thrones and Harry Potter. It was also a major plot element in the Netflix nostalgic megahit Stranger Things.

But its tendrils run much deeper than influencing the fantasy genre.

Born in a time where entertainment was largely passive and spectatorial, Dungeons & Dragons was a bellwether for our current modes of interactive and participatory culture. Many of the geeky kids who played at collaborative and interactive storytelling while earning loot, levels and experience points have gone on to shape the modern world. Its legacy directly or indirectly accounts for social media profiles, video games, interactive theater, loyalty points, the gamification of anything, and the burgeoning array of board game cafes and escape rooms that are cropping up in cities around the world.

"The first D&D generation has grown up," said Hergenrader. "We're writers, publishers, professors, artists and journalists now. We're old enough to be nostalgic for our youth. As a 40-something child of the '80s myself, I can look back at my time playing tabletop RPGs, and understand how important they were for my budding imagination. Far from being an embarrassing hobby, playing RPGs turns out to be one of the formative experiences for many of my generation."

D&D may have anticipated the interactivity of the digital age but, in a twist of irony, York University professor and professional Dungeon Master for hire Ian Slater partially credits the games resurgence to a growing desire to socialize away from screens.

"Between our phones and our computers we do so many things on screen, and although we don't want to give it up, there is something refreshing and kind of subversive about playing a pen and paper tabletop game," said Slater.

The explosive return of Dungeons & Dragons speaks to its relevance in a society now willing to embrace what it was once so eager to cast away, which is one of many paradoxes raised by its resurgence: It's both old and new; it offers digital interactivity in an analog format; it is steeped in fantasy, but has (as will be seen) real-world impact; it was reviled for being antisocial and is now celebrated for its sociability; it was once accused of being immoral, and is now used for moral instruction.
Hacking the Education Narrative
Maria Laura Ruggiero is an award-winning filmmaker, narrative designer and self-styled storyhacker who believes that Dungeons & Dragons can save the world, her topic in a recent session at SXSW EDU. It sounds like a stretch, but she backs up her provocative claim with some persuasive logic.

Stories and narratives not only shape individual identity, but also set the template for culture and society. "Understanding that the world is made of stories, and we are nothing but the stories we tell ourselves, can be a very powerful experience," said Ruggiero.

She believes that "hacking" social and personal narratives with new and improved stories can imaginatively re-envision reality to produce a better self and, by extension, a better world. As a collaborative, dynamic storytelling system that demands sustained role-play, Dungeons & Dragons acts as a sort of crucible to deconstruct and recast new identities and new worlds.

" D&D gives us a powerful tool to explore new realities and how those realities are built: through action, choices, community, negotiation, resilience and responsibility," said Ruggiero. "It's not a novelty that stories change the world, but by exercising all those characteristics in a game, it becomes an obvious lesson: If you want to make any change, change the narrative first. Changing your own narrative as a character affects not only you, but your group. Group narratives affect community narratives and it all becomes an empowering cycle that is key for humanity."

This plays into a theoretical strain in the humanities, known as the " narrative turn, " which frames most human knowledge production, including science, as an amplification of the fundamental human impulse to make sense of and organize the world with stories. In preliterate societies, stories contained collective histories and memories, defined cultural identity, instructed on social norms and morality, explained where the world originated and how it works and, of course, they entertained. Today, these functions have extended to a variety of institutions and technologies, all of which can still be understood in a narrative context.

Consequently, education is a dominant and influential narrative with an often predictable plotline and a broad but familiar cast of characters, including bullies, jocks, dropouts, keeners, inspiring teachers and bad teachers, to name a few. Of course there is much to celebrate but, in too many cases, the education story is about pain, injustice, exclusion, coercion, insecurity and unhealthy competition. And it's a story that fails many of our youth and ultimately society.

Educators like Kade Wells who have hacked the education narrative with D&D anecdotally report significant emotional and cognitive transformations in the lives of their students. In a research paper on his experience, Wells echoes Ruggiero when he writes: "My D&D kids are changed forever and they, in turn, will change others with what they have learned. From what I, and others just like me are witnessing, these strategies need to be a primary focus for the future of teaching."

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Hacking the Education Narrative with Dungeons & Dragons

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Really. In a reversal of fortune that seems lifted from fantasy, the once stigmatized refuge of the antisocial is now the new social, and it has returned from exile with a vengeance. No longer played in the shameful obscurity of closed dorms and basements, Dungeons & Dragons groups are claiming public spaces, and campaigns are proudly streamed on Twitch, YouTube and featured in dozens of popular podcasts.

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Graphic Organizers are useful educational tools in any subject area. They help students organize their thoughts and ideas for answering questions, function as a pre-writing tool for essays, and provide a visual display of information. They can be an easy way to differentiate instruction for a variety of learning styles as well.

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how to use graphic organizer in teaching and learning?

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how to use graphic organizer in teaching and learning?

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Graphic organizers help your students visualize and understand concepts more effectively. Print the free examples in this gallery of our Top 10 Most Popular Graphic Organizers, or browse our entire collection of Graphic Organizers to find ones that meet your class's needs.

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Top 10 Most Popular Graphic Organizers (Free Examples)

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Looking for free examples of graphic organizers? Check out our 10 most popular graphic organizers to help your students visualize and understand concepts more effectively.

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EFFECTIVE LESSON PLANNING, DELIVERY TECHNIQUES

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It is also important to realize that the best planned lesson is worthless if interesting delivery procedures, along with good classroom management techniques, are not in evidence.There is a large body of research available pertaining to lesson development and delivery and the significance of classroom management.They are skills that must be researched, structured to your individual style, implemented in a teacher/learning situation, and constantly evaluated and revamped when necessary.Consistency is of the utmost importance in the implementation of a classroom management plan.

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What is Action Research? A Visual Explanation.

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How to Organize Your Classroom, from Instructor Magazine

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Instructor Magazine visited two elementary schools-Town Center and Millstone River-in Plainsboro, New Jersey to see how real teachers organize their classrooms. The teachers we met had gorgeous, exciting classrooms, brimming with creative solutions to common problems. They invited us in, video camera in tow, and shared their best ideas.

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The best tool for classroom management and flipped classroom. Start buliding a happy classroom community!

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Self-Assessment: Reflections from Students and Teachers

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Peer Assessment: Reflections from Students and Teachers

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Bloom's Taxonomy: Why, How, & Top Examples

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Summative Assessment: Overview & Examples

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Formative Assessments: Why, When & Top 5 Examples