Benefits of Dry Erase Walls for Enhancing Learning

Top-quality dry erase painted walls have been shown to enhance communication, group interaction, and enthusiasm levels in many settings, such as business offices, classrooms, and retail establishments. In the classroom, dry erase walls can boost learning by making children more engaged and willing to collaborate and participate in their lessons, among other benefits. The huge, easy-to-use, and versatile nature of a dry erase wall is ideal for getting students’ mental juices flowing. The feeling of independence that dry erase surfaces inspire can spark so-called “right brain” activity in both teachers and students, leading to new, creative ideas for class projects and enhanced learning in all subject areas.

Here are some ways in which classroom teaching can be significantly enhanced through the use of dry erase painted walls.

Encourage More Engagement in Class Activities

Students naturally feel more engaged in their school work when they have access to the immense, inviting surface of a dry erase wall for solving math problems, brainstorming essay topics, planning science projects, and doing other tasks. The sheer size of a dry erase wall makes kids feel more excited about expressing themselves and trying to master content in math, language arts, history, and other subjects.

This feeling is further developed when students are allowed to work in groups on the wall. Their interactions are intensified by being able to write and draw freely on the dry erase wall and then easily erase their work and start over again until the correct solution or objective is reached. No other learning tool available today offers such a large surface area for doing school work without boundaries and with absolute freedom of expression.

Allow Students to Collaborate and Participate More Effectively

Class participation and collaboration are two key factors in academic success at all grade levels, and there’s no medium that can foster these activities better than a dry erase painted wall. Writing on walls, known as epigraphy, has been practiced for millennia around the globe, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Research shows that epigraphy on vertical surfaces such as walls serves a different function than writing with pen and paper or typing on a computer, laptop, or tablet. This is so because writing on a vertical surface like a wall promotes improved hand-eye coordination, visual attention, pencil grip, and other essential skills that children need to gain in order to achieve academic success.

A so-called “broad wall view,” which involves multiple views of words or images made with a single glance, is ideal for fostering collaborative thinking and participation in the learning process. And the most economical, eco-friendly, and useful form of broad-view display is a large top-quality dry erase painted wall. Also, when it comes to dry erase walls, you can never make them too big, so coating all four walls in your classroom with premium dry erase paint is a wise move for educators. Doing so will have countless benefits for you and your students in terms of enhanced participation and group collaboration.

Make Learning Fun and Interactive

Dry erase walls in the classroom also offer endless opportunities for making the learning process more fun and interactive for students. For example, the playing of instructional games is made much easier when you and your class have access to the vast expanse of a dry erase pained wall. There you can engage in games related to various subjects such as math, language arts, and science.

In math class, students of various levels can practice their skills by participating in games involving multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, word problems, geometry, and more. The large surface area and easy erasability of a dry erase wall make writing numbers, doing calculations, and correcting errors effortlessly.

One favorite math game among teachers and students alike is “Back 2 Back.” This game is ideal for indoor recess sessions because an entire class can play at once, and the group energy adds to the excitement. The game requires some mental energy and works well for students in grades two to five. The only requirements are a dry erase wall, a set of low-odor dry erase markers, and a student who is sharp with math facts to act as the “caller.”

The game’s object is to guess the other player’s number before he or she guesses yours. To play, two students come up to the dry erase wall and stand back to back. This allows them to write on the wall but blocks them from seeing the other student’s numbers.

The caller first says, “Numbers Up,” signaling the students to write a number of their choice on the wall. The students can play with numbers as high or as low as necessary based on the size of the class. The caller then states the sum (for second graders) or product (for third to fifth graders) of the two numbers. Next, the students use their knowledge of math to decipher what the other player’s number is when it’s added to or multiplied by their number. The first player to correctly state the other player’s number wins the round and the “loser” gets the chance to pick the next student to come up to the wall. Back 2 Back is a lot of fun and is much more enjoyable than doing practice drills with flashcards.

Foster Independence

Teachers can offer students greater independence in the classroom setting by making use of innovative instructional tools like dry erase painted walls. The ability to present content on the large open surface of a dry erase wall fosters children’s ability to independently work on complex lessons and learn facts. Having vast amounts of space for learning activities like brainstorming for essays and planning science projects frees up students’ minds and enhances their sense of personal freedom.

Top-quality dry erase painted walls offer teachers and students alike a brilliant alternative to the more limited surfaces of traditional whiteboards and chalkboards. With a huge dry erase wall available all during the school day, students can work on large-scale writing and drawing activities that far exceed their normal way of functioning in the classroom.

Increase Student Retention Levels

One way dry erase painted walls help students to retain lesson material is when teachers use “meta-cognitive modeling” to create text and graphics. In any subject such as math, science, or language arts, when teachers explain lesson content verbally while at the same time going through a sequence of actions in solving a math problem or interpreting a short story on a dry-erase wall, they do this type of modeling. As teachers talk through the various stages of their thought process with students while writing on the wall, they demonstrate how to reason when interpreting data, evaluating comments, solving problems, or reaching conclusions. Meta-cognitive modeling or thinking out loud is especially helpful in math classes, where teachers plan then clearly explain the basic mental steps they go through during the problem-solving process.

Actually, this kind of activity should be the major focus of “teacher talk” during all types of lessons. Teacher talk involves all lesson-related comments teachers make while in the classroom, and when teachers think out loud in this way, students are more likely to stay focused than they normally would.

Meta-cognitive modeling can also be done in language arts classes when teachers ask rhetorical questions while reading a short story with a class or give insights about how to anticipate what’s coming next in the plot. As they proceed, teachers write down the key aspects of their thought processes on a dry erase wall so that students can grasp how to better analyze works of fiction.

Through this strategy, students actively engage in their learning by harnessing all of their mental resources and so get more beneficial educational outcomes. To do this, a dry erase painted wall can serve as a focal point as teachers write out and discuss the series of stages involved in solving or understanding specific academic material. As students “think about their thinking” in this way, they gain insights into how they learn and become aware of the steps they follow and the methods they use to gain information and solve problems.