Many schools, especially in bigger towns and cities, are accessed through the basement since in most of these buildings cloakrooms are located under ground. What is the first impression of a person entering the school? Is it a huge organisational challenge for the school to have a welcoming
main entrance (for visitors) and an entrance to cloakrooms (for students)? The image of the school nowadays depends mainly on the opinion
expressed by the parents and students online, but if we want to get to know the school better, we must visit it ourselves. The main entrance to the school is its calling card, and says a lot about it.
Download THE FIRST IMPRESSION – ENTRANCE and read the stories of Berlin (Denmark), Wrocław (Poland) and Książenice (Poland) schools concerning changes.
Corridors are an important part of the school buildings. These are usually empty spaces that need to be made more useful. Are these places that also fulfill educational purposes? How to include them in school life?
Download SCHOOL CORRIDORS AND YARDS and find out about the school in Sopot (Poland).
A popular saying goes that we learn best when we don’t know that we’re learning. When it happens as an addition to some other activity, as a byproduct. In most schools students have to climb numerous stairs on their way to class. Actually, you don’t have to do much to change the stairs into an educational tool.
How did the schools in Ostrów Wielkopolski, Płock and Łódź do it? Download and read STAIRS TO KNOWLEDGE.
Reading books, either in the traditional form or in the form of e-books, has a positive impact on the child’s intellectual development. It expands general knowledge of the ‘adult’ world a lot better than textbooks. It also develops imagination, enriches the student’s vocabulary and encourages to reflect on the world. Unfortunately, the number of children and young people who read is falling steadily. The school should support reading from the very beginning of the children’s educational path. Teachers and library staff have a great role to play here, but the school’s educational space is also important and should be organised properly.
How to find and use some space for reading? Download and read NEW SPACES FOR READING.
Your school corridors are dark and boring? Take the initiative! Engage students, teachers, the management and the parents’ board in your undertaking. Start small: some changes can be introduced in class. Students can design a star constellation to decorate the ceiling, mathematical formulas to be put by the entrance to the maths lab… Why not ask the students to design ‘educational stairs’? What would you like to put on them? Let’s decide together!
Reading books in the digital age requires a lot of determination on the part of the student. Books have very strong competitors in the form of smartphones, tablets or laptops. For this reason, if you want to promote reading, it is worth paying attention to places that might function as ‘reading caves’ – spaces in which one can hide with a book and forget about the school noise. Such areas do not have to be part of the library or the media centre in which too many people may be present at once and disturb the readers.
Walk around your school building and locate some nooks and crannies in which you can organise reading corners.
