Uncluttered Environment
Overview
Spaces that are structured, organized, and clean provide increased room for collaboration and active learning. While it is useful to have student work, word walls, and anchor charts displayed in the classroom, having too much clutter can distract students and impact their Attention. 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
Exposure to natural light is beneficial to the students' health and can increase their alertness and Attention.
Having private or semi-private spaces where students can go to support Self-regulation and individual deliberate practice.
Creating student-driven, flexible learning spaces involves setting up the classroom to support the desired learning outcomes for each 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.
Providing texts in braille, large font, and with text-to-speech allows learners with visual needs to access content.
Reading materials of varying complexity and levels are necessary for all students to experience success.
Providing access to a variety of multimodal texts that align with the interests of learners allows them to practice digital, information, and Critical Literacy.
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 Self-regulation.
