What does learning sound like?

When you are next visiting a live classroom, or standing in your own, I want you to take a moment and close your eyes. Take in all the auditory information around you, and note the kinds of sounds in the space.

Can you hear the discussion of students? Can you clearly hear the teacher from any of the students’ places at desks or on the mat? When one person is speaking, is it otherwise silent, or is there a hum of other voices? What other background noises are present? Are students loudly taking out materials or is this done with care? How loud are they? Do you ever hear moments of silence in between the noise of activity?

I may have chosen an obvious focus for the blog this week, but in my work with fellow teachers, the issue of noise is still sometimes the elephant in the room. Can your students hear you? Can they comfortably attend to what you or their peers are saying? Never stop asking these questions.

Why think about noise?

At his keynote at last Saturday’s What Works Series Mathematics Conference, an international guest and friend Bruno Reddy OBE shared a soundscape activity with the teacher audience. It was eventually revealed that the task was a demonstration showing different opportunities for us as the faux-students to respond and for the teacher to check for understanding.

But, initially, I was thinking the soundscape game could have been a demonstration of the ambient noise present in the ‘modern’ classroom. This (euphemistic) hum of a group of students is often framed as a positive sign of engagement and activity. But such ambient noise can often be present even when students are working on a task individually or actively trying to hear the teacher. What’s concerning is that research shows this is a problem.

Background noise affects learning

Background noise has sometimes been justified as promoting creativity. And as above, you might see a noisy classroom as a sign of students getting involved in the learning. However, in a 2019 study of the relationship between noise and creativity, researchers found that there were “no conditions in which classroom noise promoted children’s creativity.” They also noted that “…some negative effects of noise were observed” especially among students with attentional control difficulties.

The authors concluded that, despite the hypothesised benefit of classroom noise for creative thinking, “contrary to our expectations, older children did not benefit from noise” when attempting a task measuring their creativity.

Growing research actually demonstrates that constant background noise actually reduces learning growth for students. A local acoustic research project measuring the effect of a sound-proof divider between two open-plan classrooms showed that in the open condition the classes’ achievement slowed significantly. There was a significant drop in their reading fluency growth. Negative impacts were more marked for those with hearing or attentional challenges, but ALL students were adversely impacted by the additional background noise. When the divider was closed, on the other hand, students actually made more reading progress in those months.

The team at the Grattan Institute have summarised more on this, so I direct you to their accessible articles on this topic. This is not new, but I know many teachers are still grappling with challenging spaces that may not be as conducive to focussed learning.

This is obvious when reflecting on my experiences teaching foundation/prep in an open plan classroom. Once I had moved to a four-walled space (with just my class in there) I actually felt an overwhelming sense of calm and ease. This is not how I felt in the open plan, shared space. It was full on.

So why should we be accepting of constant background noise as ‘normalised’ in our classrooms? I think, instead, we should expect plenty of moments of quiet, and perhaps even silence when the need arises. It’s beneficial for learning, and for our wellbeing as teachers.

Orchestrate quiet in your classrooms

Notwithstanding the importance of student talk, when ambient classroom noise is constant, it can wear you down, and your students. Perhaps one or two of your students are speaking quietly whilst you are speaking; Perhaps there is background noise coming from your colleague’s class across the way. Not having time for quiet and even silence in your classroom can really grate and wear you out.

When I had the opportunity to move from an open-plan shared classroom space, with my same group of students to a four-walls single classroom, I cannot put into words the sense of peace and calm when teaching in that space. My students were better behaved and we actually got through more learning in each session.

So I’ll leave you with some thoughts of how to manage noise in your classrooms; and I hope at least some of these are implementable in your setting.

Close the door

If you have a door, close it. If there’s noise outside your windows, close them. The visual and auditory distractions of an open door or window can significantly disrupt your learners’ attention.

Sort out the background noise

Is there anything you could do to reduce the competing audio in your space? Any reduction in background noise could improve the sense of calm and focus in your classroom.

Wait for 100% focus

Other ways to ensure you have quiet when needed is to wait for 100% focus from students BEFORE you start your explanation or answering a question. I like Sherrington’s signal pause insist which can empower you to literally hold up the show until you get every one of your students attending. A reliable, brief attention signal (e.g. Eyes on me - 1, 2, 3) can ensure you have a go-to way of ensuring you have all students with you.

Tighten your routines and expectations

To make it easy for your students to concentrate, orchestrate strong expectations and routines so that you do achieve quiet (or actual silence) when it’s time to focus.

When you are speaking, do not allow students to speak over you, or add comments to their peers. This creates unnecessary noise which is then normalised if you let it slide. Yes we want students to use their voice, but ideally when it’s the right moment. They can put up their hand to ask a question, or else wait for the next task or activity which is highly likely to involve their talking (e.g. pair share, or cold call).

I really like the intentional use of Silent Teacher described by Craig Barton, which is a technique used briefly to model a process with complete focus from students.

Another routine is from Teach Like a Champion: Silent Solo is an excellent technique that you can use to ensure bouts of concentrated silent work. This enables focus and high expectations for thinking and written expression. These silent periods are interspersed with passionate discussion and pair work, as the class ‘crackles back into life’ (Lemov).

Manage your environment so students can hear

Do you have your classroom arranged as clearly and equitably as possible to ensure all students can hear and see you? Check out a brief discussion on different desk arrangements to get some of my thinking on this. Spoiler: Our job is to choose a layout which enables all students to hear and see the teacher/board at any time.

Not quiet all the time.

Disclaimer: In case I have any readers worried, I am not advocating silence for the sake of it. I am passionate about lively and involved contributions from students. I just want you to have the tools be able to settle your class down into quiet or silence if it serves a pedagogical purpose.

From my readers

I want to thank Marita who nudged me into writing on this topic this week. Do get in contact if you need any further clarification!

I talk about extraneous load and classroom distractions in the book Harnessing the science of learning.

You can secure your pre-order a copy now. For example: Amazon Australia, Amazon US, Amazon UK.