Information Intensive Classroom Sage Thebo
Building an information intensive environment for students is essential not only for their growth as a young student, but also for their success as an older student leading into adulthood. Creating an environment that allows for multiple avenues and areas for the learning gives students the opportunities to learn in different ways, including those that may have a learning disability as well.
Once students reach fourth grade, most of the information they need is given to them in textual format where the focus changes from learning to read, to reading to learn (Higgins, Boone, and Lovitt, 2002). That is why as a teacher that will be working with students in the third grade, I believe that it is vital to create an environment that enables a constant state of learning for students.
One way that I believe that information intensive classrooms will benefit students learning is that many times students will be able to connect what they see in the real world and the classroom into what they are learning in their lessons. One example of this could be a teacher placing vocabulary terms next to items in the classroom so students can make the connections constantly as they are using/seeing them. For myself as a PE teacher, having vocabulary around all of the items that are used in a gym is a great way to have students consistently see and use the words that they would see on a daily basis. (Ex: Basketball, soccer goal, dodgeball, bases, etc.)
Another way that a information intensive classroom will benefit students is that they will feel motivated to learn when they have multiple avenues or opportunities to learn information. For a student that doesn’t like to read, having the opportunity to listen to audio tapes or have the teacher read with the class and pair it along with their reading, it will give them more motivation to learn. You can pair this along with a positive culture by creating separate places for students to learn the materials. Areas that are designated for particular learning: reading stations, audio stations, presentation stations, all of these will allow students choice and empower them to learn more.
Information intensive classrooms I believe are vital in providing students the necessary needs to ensure their personal and academic growth. The most important factor to me is that they are constantly being stimulated through various means throughout the day. Through that, they will soak in the information on different levels. Some may be more effective than others, but students will be learning throughout the day, and sometimes without even realizing it. When students receive more success, then they are more apt to want to continue learning. I think that is one of the biggest rewards from this, is that students will become more confident in the classroom and feel encouraged to engage with other students and the teacher because they are learning in a way that is comfortable to them. Creating a classroom that is information intensive can be difficult and time consuming at times for the teachers, but the effects of it are incredibly rewarding.
