Press Release

Here's the press release that was issued by the Universities Media Department for the project....


Local youngsters design classroom of the future

Students from the University of Sheffield are working with local school pupils to design an innovative classroom of the future, as part of an outreach architecture project.

Year 8 pupils from Parkwood Academy in Sheffield are working with students from the University to look at a number of factors including colour, comfort and flexibility, to design a room that promotes creative thinking and uses the pupil’s talents to help them learn.

This has included looking at a range of designs, including a classroom that could cater for both cooking lessons and maths classes to see whether combining these subjects helps pupils learn more effectively. The pupils have also looked at recent examples of school design, including the Hellerup School in Denmark, which innovatively creates a range of learning environments and let the pupils chooses how they would like to use them.

Parkwood Academy, formerly Parkwood High School in Shirecliffe, became an Academy on 1st September 2009 and is sponsored by the Edutrust Academies Charitable Trust (EACT). As part of the new direction the school has taken, pupils are involved in designing a new experimental learning environment to help the school test out innovative ideas before they move into a new building in 2012. In addition to involving pupils in decisions about their future learning space, the project also aims to encourage pupils to aspire to Higher Education by raising awareness of what it has to offer.

The collaboration is part of the University students’ ‘Live Project’, which sees them working with charities, community groups and schools, on real life architecture projects.

Alan Macdonald, from the University’s Department of Architecture, said: "We are excited to be working with the pupils to test and develop new ways in which they could learn. It's really interesting to be helping them to discover how they would like to learn and challenging the preconception of what a classroom could be. By getting their ideas and putting them into a design format, we can create a productive learning environment that future pupils at the school will really benefit from.”

Suggestive images for the childrens feedback...

What we learnt from the WonderWall...

Lesson 4: Prototyping

Arriving slightly late due to traffic and other distractions, I arrived at the school yesterday morning to find the group hard at work striping back parts of the wall for the day's lesson.

After three lessons working with the students introducing them to new ideas and exploring what they knew, we were set to physically transform the classroom allowing them and others at the school to experience different spaces. Using a variety of everyday items ranging from fabrics, sand bags, cushions, lamps to washing lines and bulldog clips, we split into three groups, each group looking at a different scale space and idea.

Group one focused on performance and cat walks, exploring large scale spaces with the students and ways that lessons could be presented. The second group took on the theme of 'an artisit's garden', focusing on light and ways to work. Group three went for a small scale space entitled 'star gazing' and was interested in creating a space in which you could escape and undertake activities such as reading and quiet group work.

Despite a slightly manic start, the students were excited and quickly went through a series of self-led processes exploring their ideas. Working in group three, Tim and myself watched as the students changed the direction dramatically within a few minutes. Starting with a large space surrounded by hanging fabric, the idea quickly evolved into a small scale space using the traditional tables as a cave like environment until finally they settled on a den type structure, explaining that they liked the fact that you could come into the space and escape the classroom environment, not being distracted by the others around.

One Mock Up

We had arranged a double period with the some of the students and spent the second lesson evolving the topics the students had raised into a usable space for a class.

Since the creation of this prototype space, three class have taken place and we are now working with the feedback, or own observations and the ideas raised to create a workable space which can be implemented within the next few weeks.

The future of Learning

Short video on the possibilities that technology offers us in learning:

Lesson 3: Becoming a Designer

This morning we had our third lesson with the class and after a couple of internal group meetings last week, we adapted our approach to the lesson by breaking away from working in groups.

We started by removing all the furniture from the classroom, enabling everyone to sit on the floor in a circle during the lesson and undertake an informal discussion about the project. After spending a short time introducing the role of an architect to the class (part of this involving presenting a selection of our past work so they could see our different ways of working and communicating), we went through a series of short discussions regarding our client, Mr. Mallaband and his role; the brief and what this entailed; and a timeline for the project allowing the students to better understand the limits.

Making a Timeline

We then expanded upon this, the students formulating questions regarding how the staff body would prefer their teaching spaces and what could be done to make them better. Soon the class was excited and the DT teacher, Miss Bovis, kindly allowed the students to pick their favourite teacher and quickly run and ask them the questions they had come up with. Whilst we were doing this, some of the teaching staff also popped in to see how we were getting on, some having a brief chat with us about their classrooms.

Though slightly skeptical about how this was going to work in the short time we had available, some of the answers the students returned with were very exciting and encouraging. Hopefully after we have managed to sift through these we will have some examples up.

New Line Academy

This was suggested as precedent by one of the teachers during our pupil/teacher consultation lesson today:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/schools/lessons-without-walls-inside-the-school-of-the-future-1049793.html

Themes

After the success of the cool wall we have settled upon three key areas of the classroom environment to develop...

Colour/light is very important to the students and seems to be the main thing they want us to change.

Comfort has also been highlighted, so we will look at furniture design and what we could do with their current furniture. What could also be brought/bought in?

Variety/Activity will look at how the room could be used to teach lessons in different ways to suit different pupils. We will look at create a range of learning spaces within the room that are also flexible. This will also tie the other two categories together.

We'll introduce this to the class on Tuesday and hopefully they can help us to develop these ideas.

Precedent Lesson 8/10/09

"If we had all of these things in our school we would be a reet school..." (Nicky, Yr 8)
Our second lesson with the pupils went well. This week we started the lesson by presenting them with a slideshow of examples of what could be achieved in a classroom. We asked them to order them on our "cool wall" (renamed the wonderwall) into categories we had defined based on what came out of the last lesson. These categories were: Colour/light, Variety, Activity, Comfort, Crazy and Everything else. This part of the class went really well with the pupils responding really well to it. There was a real air of disappointment around the room when we came to the end of the slideshow! We also got some really useful feedback from them about each slide and what they thought was important in each image and what they liked and didn't like.


The cool wall was then assembled onto boards ready to be put up in the school, along with comments cards. Hopefully the rest of the school and staff will get involved and let us know what they want and don't want. We've placed the responsibility on our class to start spreading the word, getting their friends and family involved. Hopefully the word will spread from there.

Next we split into our seperate groups, focusing on colour, position and places that make us feel certain things.

Lesson 2: What do you like?...'BLUE'

After spending the previous day planning and organising, we were back at the school this morning for the second lesson. The students seemed happy to see us back, one proclaiming "...this should be a fun lesson. I told my Maths teacher about the last lesson and was asked if I found Maths as interesting. I told him 'No! Maths is well boring!" Davina.

After a brief summary of the previous lesson's work and a quick slide show of some inspirational precedents, we settled back into three groups, with a slight mix up of the students this time to keep things interesting.

We had decided to keep the groups under a common heading of 'Activities' this time, with each group concentrating on a different focus around this subject. Our group concentrated on colours for a second week, looking at how different colours could influence different activities and emotions, discussing this more in-depth as we went.

After a quick introduction looking at the same room in different colours as a visual aid, we moved onto a quick exercise of 'Shoe Box Classrooms'. For this we combined two different activities in a shoe box (my group worked on sports and reading) and looked at different possibilities for colours, layouts, furniture etc, discussing how the students felt this best worked as we went and what else they would like to see.

Group Work - Looking at Colours

The students seemed to respond well to the activities, and despite one forever showing her love for blue (every question was answered by the 'blue'...and not just questions about colours) the exercise was very productive and the class appears very excited by the work they are undertaking. It also seems that the inspirational images we presented to them has further inspired them and they seem excited by the possibilities of what could be achieved.

1/10/09 School Tour

Jack and Amy gave us a guided tour of Parkwood Academy. They told us what they liked and disliked about the building, corridors and classrooms; plus the teachers!

The current school does a few things right but both pupils thought that different colours for different areas of the school would be good. Not just the same old boring blue. They would also like more little seating areas outside classrooms to sit in while they are waiting for lessons. Their favourite classroom was the media suite because it looked cool and had a nice colour.

The tour gave us a really good feel for the school and how it ticks...

The First Lesson - Back to School

The time had finally come, I found myself pacing around my bedroom at 10 o'clock at night feeling those first day nerves of what school was going to be like. Finally after a couple of rehearsals of my name, packing my lunch box and picking out some clothes for the next day I collapsed in bed awaiting the early morning alarm for the school bus the next day.

Soon we found ourselves at Parkwood Academy, standing in the classroom with the school bell ringing in our ears. Memories from past lives flashed before our eyes and the students appeared as if by magic. After the initial quick introductions we separated into our three groups and proceeded with our individual group work we were set for the lesson.

Lean and I explored colours with the students, using 'colour associations' and collages as a medium for expression. Finding the 'colour associations' feeling too 'fixed' as an idea and one not understood fully by the students we quickly moved onto the next activity; to collage a sketch of a school area allowing us to explore not only colour but touch upon some of the areas covered by the other groups (mainly comfort and teaching styles).

One Of Our Example Collage

Colour Association Activity

Student Room Collages

After showing a couple of examples of our own work, we set off with the students to collage these different areas. Initially the start was slow, but soon we were off with the students helping each other, encouraging and spurring each other on.

Now looking back the nerves have once again subsided for another day, and the first day seemed on whole a success. Despite the initial activity not working as we anticipated, the collages were much more successful, with the students highlighting a few areas we had not covered and helped confirm some of the issues raised by the previous work done by the University of Sheffield.

Now we return back to our homework and start the count down till our second day on Thursday.

"Fusion" Learning Collages

Taking inspiration from the previous work undertaken by the University at Parkwood Academy, Marc and Alan focused on what a classroom might look like if two different lessons were fused together. Pupils involved with the previous work successfully fused Maths and PE together, we wanted to see if this could be applied to other subjects.

We hoped that this would get the pupils thinking in their teachers shoes and also to generate ideas of how classrooms could be made more varied.

Our group of 5 first picked two subject areas each from our envelopes. These ranged from History & Drama to German & PE. We then asked them to collage onto a pre-drawn classroom, being as imaginative as possible, showing them an example of what we hoped they would achieve first. Several of the group were horrified at this prospect but once they got started they produced some of the best collages.

We tried to remain as participants ourselves, producing collages alongside the pupils and trying not to offer ideas unless they were very stuck. We suggested to some of the pupils that if they were stuck they should start with what colour the room should be but this meant that the task turned into a colouring in session and they ran out of time to put down all their ideas. It was very difficult to keep them working and generating ideas if they got stuck without influencing them with our ideas too.

Whilst this was going on we chatted informally to the group about what they liked and didn't like and this proved equally informative. All the group remained focused on the task and once they got into it produced some really good ideas.

General themes that came out of the workshop were: colour, comfort, chill out areas and variety of learning activies.

About this blog

Live Projects:

Live projects are a leading educational initiative at the University of Sheffield School of Architecture. Architecture students work in groups on a 6 week Live Project with a range of clients including local community groups, charities, health organisations and regional authorities. In some cases the projects involve actual building, in others design of urban master plans, in others consultation exercises. In every case, the project is real, happening in real time with real people.

Our Initial Brief:

Parkwood school relaunched itself this September as an Academy, sponsored by Edutrust Academies Charitable Trust (EACT). Parkwood is one of the many schools across the country that will be moving into a new school in the near future. There is an eagerness in the school to explore the relationship between learning and the spatial design. Explorations now will inform the way that the new school is used and leave something physical to be part of the new school environment.

In particular the new school will demand quick changes of use of the classrooms and spaces to accommodate different styles of teaching and learning. The headteacher, the client for this project, has asked that this be the focus of the project. Following on from previous student engagement work, this project will work with year 8 students to develop and implement physical changes and additions to a classroom within the school to enable a wide range of learning styles and activities to take place.