Just before the school holidays, most of our school spent the afternoon shifting furniture out of eight classrooms to the Cybrary, as over the holidays our classes were going to be re-carpeted and painted.
This included our class, 7G, and when we came back ready for a new term, we found our class and stairwell smelling like drying paint, and very blue.
All of the year 7 & 8 classes had all the furniture stacked in the middle of the rooms, waiting to be pushed back into place. But the furniture certainly didn’t get put back in the same place! Our teachers decided to let us redesign our classrooms, and we kicked this off by going into the corridor armed with vivids, and we looked at pictures of interesting classrooms, and wrote on them what we liked and didn’t like.
Then we went back to our class, and Miss Glubb decided the best way to brainstorm was to get into small groups and design what we wanted the class to look like. We all spent about an hour on these, and while some of the plans were very messy and others very neat, they were all still well designed and thought out.
Next, we laid out the furniture according to each group’s plan. By the time we had pushed all the furniture into place for around the fourth group, it was quite a hassle changing things round each time, and as everyone was quite taken with the design, we decided to change it around so that it would have some of everyone’s ideas in it. Once this was done, we decided to get rid of nametags, and that each day when we came in we could choose where we sat so long as we were sensible with who we sat with.
We could sit at a large group semicircle of desks, some smaller groups of four, and if you don’t really want to work with anyone, you can sit at the groups of two. There is also the sofa, chairs, beanbag and the spare blue tables, which we can work at as well. This design is a trial, so if it doesn’t work out we will try something different.
This included our class, 7G, and when we came back ready for a new term, we found our class and stairwell smelling like drying paint, and very blue.
All of the year 7 & 8 classes had all the furniture stacked in the middle of the rooms, waiting to be pushed back into place. But the furniture certainly didn’t get put back in the same place! Our teachers decided to let us redesign our classrooms, and we kicked this off by going into the corridor armed with vivids, and we looked at pictures of interesting classrooms, and wrote on them what we liked and didn’t like.
Then we went back to our class, and Miss Glubb decided the best way to brainstorm was to get into small groups and design what we wanted the class to look like. We all spent about an hour on these, and while some of the plans were very messy and others very neat, they were all still well designed and thought out.
Next, we laid out the furniture according to each group’s plan. By the time we had pushed all the furniture into place for around the fourth group, it was quite a hassle changing things round each time, and as everyone was quite taken with the design, we decided to change it around so that it would have some of everyone’s ideas in it. Once this was done, we decided to get rid of nametags, and that each day when we came in we could choose where we sat so long as we were sensible with who we sat with.
We could sit at a large group semicircle of desks, some smaller groups of four, and if you don’t really want to work with anyone, you can sit at the groups of two. There is also the sofa, chairs, beanbag and the spare blue tables, which we can work at as well. This design is a trial, so if it doesn’t work out we will try something different.
Here are some photos of our planning and our finished room:
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| Brainstorming |
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| Looking at interesting classrooms |
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| Looking at interesting classrooms |
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| Brainstorming |
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| Brainstorming in our separate groups |
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| The desks of two in our finished plan |
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| The semicircle of desks in the centre or our class and the mat |
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| The desks of four down the right. |
Do you know a classroom that has a creative setup? Please tell us in the comments below!
By Kathleen
I like the creative setup of 8C!
ReplyDeleteI was sad that I had to miss out on creating the classroom design, but at least I got to spend an extra day with my family!
-Aria, 7G