Classroom

It's hard to concentrate when there's lots of talking in the background. That's a problem for adults in open-plan offices, but it's an even worse one for ...

Instead of forcing kids to spend hours each day in the equivalent of a three-ring circus, let’s give them classrooms that are actually conducive to learning. Rather than having kids independently practice the comprehension “skill of the week” on simple texts, we need a fundamentally different approach: a coherent, content-focused curriculum that spends at least two or three weeks digging into meaty topics, with the teacher reading aloud to the whole class from complex texts and leading thoughtful discussions. An increasing number of schools are adopting that type of curriculum, but it’s still far from the norm. In any event, given the well-established finding that reading ability varies with the text and how much the reader knows about the topic, the very concept of fixed reading levels rests on shaky ground. And, says Shanahan, the overall benefits get canceled out if you take into account that for most of the “reading block,” kids will be learning—or supposedly learning—on their own. Other studies have found that even low levels of background noise can interfere with memory and learning and cause students to experience stress. Noise doesn’t just make it hard for kids to hear the sounds in words, important as that is. Fortunately, the educational counterpart to the open-plan office— the “open classroom”—is no longer with us. Background noise can interfere with their ability to hear the individual sounds in words, a key skill in learning to read. A few years ago, while researching a book, I was observing a first-grade class of about 20 students that was in its usual state of hubbub: children working (or pretending to work) in small groups at tables, some talking while collaborating on worksheets, others arguing loudly. But humans are hard-wired to pay attention to unexpected sounds, especially speech and social interactions, making the open-plan office a recipe for continual distraction and decreased productivity. It’s hard to concentrate when there’s lots of talking in the background.