Faster Lesson Delivery: Writable Wall Use Cuts Transition Time by Ten Minutes per Day

Helping students transition from one task to another during the school day becomes much less challenging through the use of whiteboard paint.  Cutting transition times, even for veteran teachers, is often a test of patience and ingenuity that can become stressful. However, if you make strategic use of whiteboard painted surfaces in your classroom, you’ll be able to spend more of your day teaching and less of it trying to get your students back on track.

Schools with wall-to-wall whiteboard spaces experience lesson transitions and board sharing that occur more quickly and smoothly, resulting in savings of up to 50 minutes per week in large classrooms. Thus, using writable whiteboard painted walls and other writable surfaces can significantly cut down on transition times between class activities. In this article, we’ll look at some of the key factors that make this possible.

1. Enhanced real-time engagement and collaboration

When students can quickly write, draw, and interact with the content on whiteboard walls, they feel inspired to engage in spontaneous thinking and exploration. This, in turn, can help them transition from one activity or subject area to the next without the need for teacher intervention.

The walls provide a centralized space for displaying a wide range of information during transitions. Instead of having students wait for you to hand out lesson materials or transfer notes to a separate medium, you can quickly present and update key information on your whiteboard painted wall. In this way, you’ll be able to keep everyone on the same page and minimize delays during transitions.

2. Writable surfaces encourage movement and interaction

Getting up from their seats and going to the whiteboard wall can help students refocus their minds and get ready for the next activity or subject in class. This enhances attentiveness and cognitive functioning, thereby facilitating transitions between different pursuits. By fostering a lively, collaborative learning environment with writable whiteboard walls, you’ll experience smoother, more orderly transitions. This will, in turn, save you a lot of valuable instructional time and reduce your level of stress.

Additionally, studies indicate that students retain information more effectively and stay engaged in lesson content when they stand and work on vertical surfaces.  Vertical writing spaces like whiteboard walls foster problem-solving, visual-motor integration, spatial awareness, and hand-eye coordination. And all of these skills are essential for children’s cognitive development and academic success. Writing on the walls also promotes good posture and improved hand-eye coordination.

By encouraging your students to move around during transitions, you also reduce their feelings of anonymity. Working at a vertical surface like a whiteboard wall can help students feel less anonymous because their work is visible to you and their classmates. This experience can make even introverted learners feel more engaged and participate more actively, thereby facilitating smoother transitions.

3. Specific Ways Using Writable Walls Cuts Transition Times

As discussed above, using writable surfaces, such as whiteboard walls in the classroom, can help reduce transition times between different tasks, activities, or subjects during the school day. Below are more details about how this works.

Integrated writing space – Whiteboard walls allow you to display multiple subjects and pieces of information at the same time. This decreases the need to switch out lesson materials or change locations for different lessons.

Trouble-free updates – You can quickly erase and update the content on the walls at regular intervals, making for smooth transitions between subjects or activities.

Clear-cut visual cues – The graphic nature of whiteboard painted walls makes them ideal for creating memos and visual cues for your students. This quality minimizes confusion for learners and streamlines the transition-making process.

Easy-to-read schedules – You can designate a specific area on your whiteboard painted wall for posting daily or weekly schedules in large script. Doing so will allow you to present syllabus information without difficulty and make it easy for everyone in the classroom to see.

Improved student focus – Whiteboard walls’ huge, highly visible surfaces help students to stay alert, focused, and attentive. This mental clarity leads to more efficient transitions between subjects or tasks.

Enhanced teacher efficiency – With access to whiteboard painted walls, you’ll spend much less time on setting up or cleaning up between classes or activities. The fact that it’s so easy to erase and write new content on the walls allows for quick changeovers throughout the school day.

Improved student engagement – Students are more likely to participate actively in class discussions when lesson content is readily visible and accessible on a whiteboard wall. They’re more able to switch gears to engage with new lesson material when it’s presented on a vast writable surface.

Also, as mistakes can be easily erased, non-permanent writing surfaces like whiteboard walls encourage students to experiment and take risks. This quality fosters a collaborative environment where students are willing to try new ideas and learn from each other’s trial-and-error methods during transitions.

Unambiguous communication – Writable whiteboard walls can facilitate clearer communication between teachers and students, and also among students, thus helping to manage expectations and guarantee smoother transitions. Students will see clearly what to expect during each part of the day and therefore move smoothly from one time period to another.

4. Minimize disruption with whiteboard wall activities

Rather than having students wait idly during transitions, assign them brief, engaging activities to do on the whiteboard wall. For instance, they could model numbers, record their observations about the day’s lessons, or generate questions about lesson content. This approach provides students with a productive activity to engage in while waiting, thereby minimizing disruptive behavior and maintaining their focus. Below are some specific activities you can have your learners engage in on your whiteboard walls to further smooth classroom transitions.

Quick math problems or brain teasers: Write several math problems on your whiteboard wall for students to solve as they transition to a new subject area or task. Alternatively, write some visual brain teasers on the wall, such as the classic Riddle of the Sphinx, which refers to a human being moving through the three stages of life: “What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs in the evening?”

By engaging their minds with such brain teasers, your students can keep themselves occupied during transitions. They can also enhance their cognitive skills and have fun in the process.

Sentence building or word association – Write sets of scrambled words from which they make sentences. Or else write a series of words arranged in two columns for a word association activity to encourage students’ language development skills.

Drawing prompts – Create several simple drawing prompts on your whiteboard wall that students can add details to individually or in small groups during transitions. Alternatively, you can ask them verbally to draw their favorite meal, their dream house or car, an original superhero, or something that they’re afraid of. This strategy stimulates students’ creativity while providing an enjoyable way for them to release energy.

Graphing practice – Use your whiteboard wall to generate several quick graphing exercises to reinforce mathematical concepts taught in class. For example, you could ask the students to check around the classroom and record the frequency of various colors of clothes their classmates are wearing. Then, they can create bar graphs to illustrate the frequency of each color they recorded.

By incorporating whiteboard painted walls into your classroom design and planning, such engaging activities are easy to assign during transitions. In this way, you can create a more dynamic, interactive, and productive environment between lessons that benefits both students and teachers.

In conclusion, the strategic use of vertical surfaces like whiteboard painted walls can significantly improve student behavior and engagement during transitions. By providing structured activities and thought-provoking tasks, you’ll be able to keep students focused and occupied during periods when they might otherwise feel restless or disruptive.

Summary

Article Name

Faster Lesson Delivery: Writable Wall Use Cuts Transition Time by Ten Minutes per Day

Description

Writable walls coated in whiteboard paint speed up lesson transitions, saving up to 10 minutes daily and boosting classroom productivity.

Author

Susan Anspach

Publisher Name

ReMARKable Whiteboard Paint

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