Back to the future: Bringing the buzz back to the classroom

Written by Hannah Thomas, Training Manager, Seven Steps to Writing Success

Ask a student what classrooms of the future will look like and they’ll immediately teleport you into a world of robot teachers, hovering learning zones, multi-touch moving furniture and hologram principals. Sound familiar?

There are lots of exciting things to think about when we imagine classrooms of the future but maybe, just maybe, the classroom of the future should look a bit more like a classroom of the past … the pre-COVID classroom.

Remember the buzz, the group work and the collaboration? The classroom that was a hive of activity; students were confident, engaged and on task. It was noisy and students spoke with excitement, crossing the room to consult each other. They were learning and working together and loving it.

How’s that for nostalgia?

Now picture the post-COVID classroom of today. How’s the vibe? For many, it’s far from the buzzing classroom of before. Students are still readjusting after so many years of interrupted learning.

Yet we need our classrooms to be buzzing – a place where we nurture students to become great communicators with literacy skills for life. In fact, perhaps we need to do this now – and in the future – more than ever. A society of people with well-developed emotional intelligence skills, leaders who are critical and creative thinkers, and collaborative and considerate colleagues are a must for the future.

What are universities and employers telling us they need? Problem solvers, critical reasoners, creative thinkers and inspirational leaders.

What does a post-lockdown society need? Emotionally intelligent communicators who can navigate changing and challenging situations and relationships with resilience, innovation and compassion.

There will be a huge increase in jobs requiring all these skills. Jobs that don’t yet exist.

There will be new and exciting ways of learning and sharing, and there will be a need for digital literacy skills and augmented and virtual ways of working. But there will also be a need for bedrock life skills to be integral and integrated. These skills still need to be taught and developed to prepare students for a future we can’t predict.

So where do you begin? Start in your writing classroom!

Seven Steps to Writing Success empowers teachers to transform students into great writers – that’s been proven across Australia and beyond for the last 15 years. But it’s how it does this that is so important.

Seven Steps focuses on authorial skills (rather than spelling and grammar) and promotes skills that students will need not just for writing but throughout their work and personal lives too. The Seven Steps approach gives students plenty of practice in things like negotiation, creative problem solving and teamwork.

Seven Steps puts these essential life skills front and centre of today and tomorrow’s learning … to shape our students into future global citizens.  

So, there may not be floating workstations or robot aides in your classroom’s future … but you don’t need a crystal ball to know that good, old-fashioned creativity, collaboration, communication and problem solving are the future-proof skills your students will need to thrive in the classroom of the future and beyond.

And, no matter if your classroom is high tech or low tech, these are the lifelong skills that lie at the very heart of Seven Steps to Writing Success

Discover more tips from Seven Steps, with Deb Larmer, Year 3/4 teacher, Our Lady of the Pines Catholic Primary School, Donvale and Seven Steps presenter  as she presents: Sizzling Starts - the easiest way to improve students’ writing. Register FREE to attend.