How Learning Environment Affects Kids
Kids at a young age get affected so easily by their surroundings and the people they interact with on a daily basis. That is why nowadays the schools and the parents try their best to make the perfect atmosphere that can help the kids to learn and grow their experiences. This is why we thought we could make this article to help you to figure out how to tailor this experience to the students and kids you have in your school.
Environment and kids:
Environment affects the different abilities of the kids. It affects the kids so much that it is called the kids’ third teacher and sometimes it is even called their first teacher. The way the environment changes the kids’ future life shows how much the environment is important and how much controlling it is important. The surrounding environment affects the academic, cognitive, emotional, and mental development of children.
This goes into all the aspects of kids’ environment like their family, friends, neighborhood, culture, and much more. For instance, kids who are constantly exposed to noise or live in crowded houses usually suffer from the after effects of this environment such as withdrawal behavior, hearing loss, and inability to focus. Kids who suffer from these conditions do have many behavioral difficulties and psychological stress.
Hence, the environment gets to leave its mark on children for the rest of their life. This indicates how controlling such an environment can lead to a child’s favor.
The learning experience:
The next thing that leaves a mark on kids forever is the learning experience. The experience that kids experience in school can make or break their learning journey as a whole. Learning experience affects kids’ willingness to learn and even the comprehension itself.
Kids’ ability to learn is affected by these previous elements leaving us with little to no choice but to care more about the life that kids have and the overall experience that they live through in order to not let them withdraw from education and learning and to help brighten up their future.
Tips and tricks to guide kids to love learning:
- Make it cozy
- Encourage participation
- Active learning
- Real life applications
- Giving Opportunities
- Motivation
- Feedback, feedback, feedback
- Ask for feedback
- Classroom, how?
Make it cozy:
The classroom environment is just like any environment that affects the kids’ ability to interact with you (as a teacher) and their peers. So, you need to make sure that the environment is suitable and it is friendly enough so they get the opportunity and ability to open up and be active. This is especially important for the more shy and introverted kids. As this will help them to socialize more with their peers and ht teachers.
Encourage participation:
Participation makes or breaks the classroom experience. If there is no participation by the kids and students, students will lose interest and the classroom overall becomes boring. So, make sure to divide some time into some participation time.
Active learning:
Active learning doesn’t mean that the students need to move around although this might be one of the ways that active learning could be implemented but it isn’t always the case and it isn’t even the core of active learning. Active learning means you should engage kids in the learning process and not just let them sit in silence while you are teaching or explaining the subject. This will help them to interact with each other and with the subject they are studying. You can do this by having discussions, asking questions, and allowing them to ask and answer questions.
Real life applications:
Real life applications are one of the ways you can apply active learning in the class. You can use this to engage students in the subject of matter. You can also use this to help understand abstract materials that can be hard to process on their own. The real life applications will encourage the students to partake in discussion about the subject they are studying and ask and answer questions that overall work their minds more in the subject.
Giving opportunities:
Give kids the time and space to ask questions, answer questions, and suggest ideas. Giving such opportunities for kids to express themselves and their opinions in the class, helps to make the overall learning experience more fun and even more loveable. It also could add a lot to the class by applying some of these new ideas in the class which will increase the students’ confidence and encourage them to participate more.
Motivation:
Motivating kids to participate, and interact with their peers in class and even through their learning journey, in general, is very important to their learning experience. But this is not everything when it comes to motivating kids. You need to motivate them in their study and to overcome the hardships they face in their learning process. Just like anything, you need to motivate kids to learn more but also to make more mistakes and own these mistakes as mistakes help them to learn by experience.
Feedback, feedback, feedback:
Feedback is essential to many kids; it helps them grow and learn more about themselves and what might be expected from them. But you need to make sure the feedback you give is positive feedback. Positive feedback doesn’t mean to only speak about the good qualities that the kids and students have but to look positively into things. For instance, if the kid has a weakness point you could look into it as a place of improvement rather than a weakness point. This will give kids and students the confidence to show their true selves and even learn and improve more.
Ask for feedback:
This time around we are not talking about feedback for the students. We are talking about feedback for you. Yes, every good teacher needs feedback for themselves, not just to keep themselves on track but also to know their students’ preferences. As well as to help them communicate their concerns. This will allow your students to have a sense of equality which will help them to trust you and love the whole learning process.
Classroom, how?
Just like you need to make the atmosphere of the classroom cozy. It would be best if you also made the classroom physical environment suitable for the learning process. For example, you need to design your class in a way that fits all of what we have mentioned “the discussions, presentations and other activities they might participate in”, you also need to make sure that the furniture is movable enough so the students can move it around to fit the task on hand like discussions and presentations and other activities. The classroom shouldn’t be crowded as well so each kid can have enough attention and space to participate and engage in the activities in class.
This may be a scratch on active learning and how to apply it. You can still do more research and add elements to our list but this should help you to put your foot on the first step on the long ladder of the education system and how to improve it.
