blog #8 my edu experience

I attended K-12 in the medium sized, middle class, suburban town of Brighton MI. I went to kindergarten in an independent building and then moved to the elementary school for grades 1-5. One thing that really stuck out in my mind about the elementary school was that it did not have closed off classrooms. The school had an open floor plan consisting of pods which was a large space that was separated into four classrooms buy items such as storage, drawers, cupboards, chalk boards, along with some permanent walling. Each classroom in the pod had an opening to the two classes next to them, but no doors. This open air floor plan with minimal permanent dividers allowed teachers to pull the walls apart on a regular basis for multiple classrooms to come together for collective activities. Looking back, I can see how this arrangement was conducive to large group activities, but I remember it being hard to pay attention/stay on task with the noise from the other classrooms. Excess noise present in the classroom environment can be detrimental to all learners, particularly the students that are distracted easily, especially when a neighboring class is doing loud interactive activities. http://www.acousticsbydesign.com/acoustics-blog/distractions-in-the-classroom.htm
After 5th grade, I moved to the middle school building consisting of grades 6-8. There, students had lockers and rotated to different classes throughout the day. The middle school experience was extremely helpful with the transition to high school. By the time I was a freshmen, I was organized and used to switching class from my three years experience. Currently, I am a freshmen teacher serving students that come directly to high school from there self-contained grammar school classrooms. I was amazed at how extremely disorganized and unprepared they were, constantly forgetting books and papers in other classrooms and lockers, showing up late to class, going to the wrong rooms, lockers piled up with junk etc… The freshmen here come into high school so disadvantaged due to their lack of organizational skills. I think that they would benefit greatly from a middle school transitional period as I did. http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=2157