Offers suggestions for selecting appropriate classroom materials and designing an early-childhood classroom in which children learn through play. Focuses on the decisions a beginning teacher needs to make, such as selecting the curriculum, identifying appropriate learning areas, finding intriguing learning materials, selecting comfortable…

How technology and changes in instructional techniques has altered the classrooms are examined. Issues concerning classroom space, interior lighting, ventilation, computers in the classroom are discussed. Concluding comments address outfitting a classroom to accommodate audiovisual presentations. (GR)

Discusses why and how child care practitioners should emphasize process over product in early childhood settings. Uses painting as an example while outlining eight reasons for emphasizing process over product. Discusses how the process emphasis influences room arrangement, contact with parents, and how teachers approach children. (KB)

What does the future hold for educators and facilities professionals when it comes to planning, building, funding, and operating school facilities? No one can absolutely know beforehand. However, there are many, many indicators of where public education in the United States may well be destined. These indicators take the form of already occurring…

This study was a joint undertaking of interior environmental designers and a child developmentalist. The goal of the study was to increase peer interation between children in two classes held in one classroom. Children were observed for 7 weeks, in three periods: weeks 2 and 3 (time 1); weeks 4 and 5 (time 2); and weeks 6 and 7 (time 3). Observers…

A picture-essay describing the effectiveness of a "structured" open plan child care center which contains a variety of kinds and sizes of spaces interconnected by various controllable surfaces. (Author/ED)

A recent reevaluation of physical teaching arrangements at New Mexico State University has produced a new program attuned to the "new" home economics and has altered some faculty teaching styles. (Author)

Educational spaces should change with the program and include differentiation of scale, a sense of turf, a focal point, differentiation of mood, directionality, furnishings, and equipment. (Author/DW)

A literate classroom environment immerses a student in a rich, stimulating, interactive, and purposeful print and language environment which is designed to provide for success in reading, writing, listening, and speaking and the needs of individuals responsible for their own learning in a natural, non-competitive, non-threatening, risk-taking…

This teacher's guide from the New York City public schools is designed to help teachers implement an all-day kindergarten program. Planning for the all-day kindergarten is developed and demonstrated through a thematic approach which integrates all curriculum areas. Six themes are presented, each of which includes both direct instruction activities…

All 100 general assignment classrooms at a major university were evaluated by faculty and students, using faculty and student questionnaires. Respondents rated the classrooms they were currently occupying on a number of specific features and indicated what they liked the most and the least about the classroom. Thirty percent of the faculty found…

Attractive, informal, multipurpose areas invite students to learn while they are sitting or sprawling in comfort. (Author)

The data discussed in this speech are taken from a large, three-year study that investigated the whole process of open-plan schooling. The study included a national survey of schools in Britain and a series of onsite observations. The analyses reported here derived from the observation of 552 pupils in grades 2 and 4 using the Pupil Behavior…

California state facility and program requirements for educationally handicapped pupils in California are detailed. Contained is a step by step outline of procedures to be followed for establishing such facilities as well as some background information for relating classroom size standards to three general categories of educationally handicapped.…

Procedures are described in which economies can be effected through careful planning of school buildings and particularly through the consolidation of spaces that are used intermittently throughout the school day. The paper introduces a "use-factor" as a measure, not of the amount of usable space but of the time for which usable space is…