A more innovative classroom can be as easy as one, two, three

This article is designed to discuss innovative ideas to aid teachers as they strive to get their messages of learning across to their students. Since teachers understand that how they teach can often be as important as what they teach, this article helps them explore new and exciting strategies to improve their skills. This article attempts to help teachers understand that by implementing new and innovative lesson plans they can once again bring back a sense of joy and excitement to their classrooms. This excitement will be shared by both students and teachers alike. The educational benefits of such experiences are increased levels of student learning, self esteem, and confidence.

Each day educators strive to find innovative ways to get their messages of learning across to their students. Teachers understand that how they teach can often be as important as what they teach. Therefore, from time to time teachers should reexamine their day to day methodologies for instruction. This article is an attempt to provide fellow educators with three innovative ideas to capture the imagination of their students. Hopefully, these tips will help others create a more innovative and effective classroom.

TIP NUMBER ONE: USE ALTERNATIVE, AND AT TIMES UNCONVENTIONAL, MODELS FOR LEARNING.

For students, the every day classroom serves as their home away from home. It is where they spend time with their friends, where they laugh, where they come to understand responsibilities, and hopefully, where they learn. Therefore, it is important that students work in an environment that is not only comfortable and non threatening, but conductive to learning as well. Teachers should view their classroom environments as conduits for this learning. Classrooms must be more then simply places where teachers go to teach, or where students come to learn. They must be viewed as tools for instruction. Classrooms can be easily transformed into environments of learning with very little effort through the use of logic and common sense.

Maximization and better use of existing space more effectively is an ideal place to begin any classroom transformation. For example, it is quite obvious that teachers attempt to reinforce learning through the use of visual aids. A quick glimpse into just about any elementary classroom in the country will revel many striking similarities in teacher strategies and methodologies. For example, the letters of the alphabet are routinely placed at the front of thousands of elementary classrooms nationwide. These letters have been strategically placed there because it is believed that this is where most students focus their concentration. This is a dubious assumption. Unless the teacher is actually conducting a lesson at the front of the classroom ( and most good teachers do not remain motionless while teaching anyway), or has placed written work on the front boards, most students do not spend the vast majority of their days gazing up front. Instead, students spend a great deal of their time focusing in on other areas within their environment including the computer station, the book shelves, the supply cabinets, the people next to, across from, and behind them, and a hundred and one other little nooks and crannies throughout the room.

The answer to harnessing some of this attention is fairly simple. It can be accomplished through the use of mobiles hung strategically throughout the class. This strategy is in fact a reinforcement of learning patterns begun when the student was but an infant. Parents are quick to adorn children's cribs and beds with hanging mobiles in order to facilitate and stimulate physical and psychological growth. Teachers should piggyback off these early efforts. No longer would visuals then be confined to designated areas within the classroom only. In fact, with a little thought the mobiles can be utilized as developmental tools. Students can even be taught to develop such critical thinking skills as problem solving by rearranging mobiles. Once mastered the alphabet can be rehung out of sequence for example, or living math problems can be suspended from the ceiling to challenge students to think in different ways and to consider alternative means of learning.

Another common sense and effective utilization of classroom space is the strategic placement of important materials in areas that students do focus in on with consistency. For example, in classrooms with a clock mounted on the wall, placing the week's spelling or vocabulary list right next to the clock will very often yield surprising results. Students look at the clock several times a day for everything from pacing work efforts to trying to figure out how long until lunch or dismissal. It only makes sense to use this space to reinforce learning. The clock is but only one such area. Observation on the part of the teacher will reveal several of these wonderful unexplored areas within each and every classroom.

TIP NUMBER TWO: RETHINK HOW TO BEST USE THOSE BULLETIN BOARDS.

The ever present bulletin board has been a mainstay in elementary school classrooms for longer than anyone can remember. While often used as colorful display areas for current event projects, or spaces to transmit cute little life lessons, they are very rarely utilized as effective tools for instruction. This is a mistake since bulletin boards have the potential of providing yet another effective strategical tool for creative educators.

Bulletin boards should not be separate adornments to the modern day classroom. Instead, they should be used as jumping off points for lesson plans. As such they can work to set the stage for instruction, provide an accurate ongoing update of materials being studied, and a summary vehicle for lessons learned.

In addition, since most classrooms are equipped with several bulletin boards, they can be an even more effective means of instruction when the teacher has the foresight to link and interrelated the materials on each board. By intertwining bulletin boards teachers are not transmitting separate, and often unrelated messages, but are instead providing reinforcement of lesson they have taught, and continuity of ideas learned.

Finally, it should be noted that the use of bulletin boards should not be restricted to use exclusively within the elementary classroom environment. They can also be effective tools for instruction on the junior and senior high school levels as well. It is time for secondary educators to explore the possibilities that are possible here.

TIP NUMBER THREE: REIGNITE THE EXCITEMENT AND JOY OF ACCOMPLISHMENT.

Kindergarten teachers are among the first educators to realize how important success is to building student confidence, self esteem, and motivation. In pursuit of these goals they often develop a series of effective lesson plans utilizing construction paper, crayons, glue, clay, and a whole host of other materials. Most importantly though, they use their students' imaginations as their inspiration. Since kindergarten teachers live in a world where they cannot utilize reading and writing as their primary educational sources for instructions, teachers are forced to rely more on innovative hands on activities to accomplish lesson objectives. The net result, as any parent will attest, is a never ending stream of miniature projects that work to slowly but consistently develop student skill levels and abilities. Anyone who has ever shared in the kindergarten experience remembers the wonderful and colorful array of works of art that eventually found their way onto the kitchen refrigerator.

These "Refrigerator Lessons" serve several educational purposes. First, they provide actual physical and visual proof to students that they can indeed successfully accomplish assigned tasks. Secondly, they slowly build skill levels through a series of preplanned lesson objectives. Third, they show parents how their children are progressing. Finally, they serve as a source of personal pride for students. This pride in turn works as an important catalyst for building self esteem and laying the groundwork for future success.

It is interesting and somewhat puzzling though that after students leave this sheltered environment designed to breed success, this important strategy is sacrificed for different, and often not as successful educational goals. It is therefore crucial to the learning process that teachers begin to once again instill the joy of accomplishment that is manifested in such lessons.

Assigning projects that will produce work worthy of once again being displayed within the home can recapture students' imaginations and rekindle their desires for success. Today it is easier than ever before to do so. The explosion of computer technology lends itself readily to the development of such projects.

These "Refrigerators Lessons" can prove to be an invaluable teaching tool.

Since these lessons can be geared to not only subject specific areas, but to student abilities as well, the possibilities are endless. Such lessons establish consistent patterns for future achievement as students come to see visual proof that they can indeed succeed.

When all is said and done though, the greatest benefit of such lessons lies in the fact that they once again bring back the feelings of joy and excitement to the classroom. As a result of these lessons, students will remember how much fun learning can truly be once again. In fact, teachers themselves will recapture this same sense of joy as they design unique and challenging lessons that they would be proud to display on their very own refrigerators.

JOSEPH S.C. SIMPLICIO PO. Box 877

New Monmouth, New Jersey 07748

Copyright Project Innovation Fall 1999
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved