Uncluttered Environment
Overview
Spaces that are structured, organized, and clean provide increased room for collaboration and active learning. Decreasing visual stimuli and disorder also supports learners who have difficulty regulating sensory input and allows all learners to concentrate on classwork.
Example: Use This Strategy in the Classroom
Starting at 2:32, watch this high school teacher give a tour of her uncluttered classroom, sharing how the design of her classroom impacts student learning.
Design It into Your Product
Videos are chosen as examples of strategies in action. These choices are not endorsements of the products or evidence of use of research to develop the feature.
See how Kahoot!, a mobile polling product, has a very simple interface that allows learners to focus on consistent shapes and colors with few distracting visual stimuli.
Additional Resources
Additional examples, research, and professional development. These resources are possible representations of this strategy, not endorsements.
Factors Supported by this Strategy
More Physical Space Strategies
When classrooms are intentionally designed to promote inclusion, belonging, and accessibility, they positively influence key learner factors, including Attention, Self-Regulation, Learner Mindset, and Sense of Belonging.
Dim or natural lighting provides a calming environment.
Having spaces where students can go supports self-regulation and individual deliberate practice.
Multiple tables and chairs on wheels allow for setting up the classroom to support the desired learning outcomes of each classroom activity.
Multiple display spaces promote collaboration by allowing groups to share information easily as they work.
Multiple writing surfaces promote collaboration by allowing groups to share information easily as they work.
Decreasing extra audio input provides a focused learning environment.
Books for vision differences support reading development for learners with visual needs.
Reading materials of varying complexity and levels are necessary for all students to experience success.
Providing varied types of resources that align with interests of individual students supports overall literacy development.
With figurative language and creative sentence structure, poetry supports the development of a deeper understanding of the different ways language makes meaning.
Books on social and emotional learning (SEL) topics, such as developing empathy and productive persistence, help teach these skills.
Providing ways for students to adjust sound level supports individual auditory needs.
Providing ways for students to meet their individual temperature needs supports Attention and Inhibition & Self-Regulation.
