Children at Richmond Academy are reaping the benefits of a new style of classroom that allows them to break free from being stuck to their desks.
Over the past 10 months, every classroom at Richmond Academy has been re-designed and re-imagined to provide children with a more modern and flexible classroom environment.
Children making the most of flexible seating and collaboration space.
Flexible seating in each classroom allows children the opportunity to move around the class to suit the current learning activity or lesson. A child can decide to sit on the floor on a bean bag, move to the sofa, to a standing desk or maybe even just swap out their regular chair for an exercise ball – whatever they can use to make themselves more comfortable and ready to learn.
Collaboration spaces give children dedicated areas where small groups can go to work together more closely. In collaboration spaces, children are encouraged to talk to each other, swap ideas, and build the essential skills needed to be able to work with others to achieve a task.
Children are naturally curious, energetic and sociable and I don't believe our classrooms should restrict children from these things. We thought very carefully about how we could re-design our classroom environments so that children could further develop their communication, creativity and critical thinking skills and have worked together with the children to provide them with comfortable, flexible furniture and spaces where they feel encouraged to work together. Typical low level disruptive behaviour such as talking, sitting in a different space, fiddling, making a noise, talking etc has been completely eliminated as children are able to regulate their behaviour to suit the learning activity and the expectations of the classroom. It is such a fantastic experience to walk through the corridors and enter classrooms full of children who are fully engaged, on task and showing a love for learning!
