Noise

When I tell people I work in an open learning space, usually their first reaction is something about "the noise".

I have always had a noisy classroom. Part of my philosophy is that learning is social and that children love to talk about about their learning (and everything else too....). However, I do believe it has to be a good working noise for the task given. 

I thought going into a Modern Learning Environment, that noise would not be a bother for me. Generally it is not...

There are those times though when you have your group doing a nice, reasonably quiet activity and there's another group who are creating dramatic plays, or practising their music, even watching a short film can distract other groups. (Have you noticed children have amazing ability to pick up computer/TV noise, no matter how quiet, and immediately be distracted from whatever they are doing!)

How do I cope? The best I can - sometimes it's me that's being the noisy one, or has a noisy group. It comes back to the learning mentors making sure we are setting those expectations, having those conversations, developing a plan to ensure our learners can stay focussed. Some of it will come down to timetabling or making sure a quiet space is available. And I'm sure once our school facilities expand, some of those noisier lessons can be taken elsewhere!