3 Ways to Reimagine Your Learning Wall

During a recent work trip to Massachusetts, I had a little extra time before my flight home, so I decided to visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. This world-famous museum is known not just for its extensive collection of European, Asian, and American art, but also for being the site of one of the most famous art heists in world history.

While I was there, I made a point of observing the patrons as much as I observed the art. I saw people reading the museum labels and then discussing art as they continued on to the next piece. I saw exhibits that included questions to prompt thinking and discussion, provided strategies and suggestions for improving observation, and provided additional sources you could access in order to learn more. What I saw reminded me a lot of how learning walls are sometimes utilized by classroom teachers.

Learning walls (sometimes called focus walls) are a common educational tool that helps teachers make learning processes more accessible to students. By posting objectives, assessments, and resources, teachers are able to leverage their environment in the same way that they might use a textbook or website. This approach is valuable, but there is even more learning value in variations such as creating visual rubrics or using them to create gallery walks that support student-led discussions.

Learning Walls Help Ensure Learning Outcomes

It occurred to me that the exhibits and galleries in museums like the one I visited are also learning walls—they’re just presented and used in slightly different ways. And their effectiveness is very clear once you dig into the research regarding the learning outcome associated with their design:

• Learning walls provide opportunities for free-choice learning because they allow learners to self-differentiate timing as they acquire new information. If students need to spend more time on one concept and less time on another, they can do that without interrupting their peers’ learning.

• Museum exhibits are designed with multiple layers of information embedded into them, so that the more time you spend in one, the more you learn about the subject or concept.

• Multimedia features like audio or video embedded into QR codes result in more engagement, enable retention of greater amounts of information, and make abstract concepts more accessible and understandable.

• Have you ever paced back and forth across a room to help you remember where you left your car keys? Research suggests that integrating walking or physical movement into a learning activity increases recall, memory, and retention. As you move between galleries and exhibits, you’re locking away more information in your brain.

The impressive approach to design used in museums can also be applied to a classroom learning wall.

How to Redesign Your Classroom Learning Wall

The good news is that there are ways that teachers can redesign their learning walls that integrate features connected to the outcomes shared above without dedicating dozens of hours to the process.

Here are three ways to get started.

1. Integrate layers of information. Museums embed information into their exhibits in layers that provide multiple means of building understanding. These different layers include things like titles, labels, and images that provide quick and easy ways to access facts and get oriented with what is being shared. Additionally, interactives, stories, and scholarly texts help learners build understanding. There’s always a balance between the two.

When you design a learning wall, include elements that help learners go deeper. Provide some resources that are more visual that integrate labels, diagrams, and charts alongside ones that are more text-dense. This way, there are multiple, mixed media layers that can be analyzed. If you’re confident with AI, using it as a way of analyzing the layers of information can help you improve access.

2. End with a discussion question. If you look at most museum signs and interpretive panels, you’ll see that they end with a question. The idea is that these questions prompt reflection or discussion among learners—two things that facilitate deeper learning and retention. Integrating prompts or suggestions that support these two activities is very helpful for supporting students’ agency.

When designing a learning wall for a gallery walk, consider doing the same thing so that students are prompted to work together to build their knowledge collaboratively, similar to the way they would when doing a think-pair-share.

3. Use the 3-30-3 rule to scaffold information. When you approach an exhibit at a museum, you may not realize that it has been designed with self-scaffolding in mind. Designers and curators who create signs and exhibits use a powerful design strategy borrowed from the world of advertising, called the 3-30-3 rule. Essentially, it works like this:

Within three seconds, a learner should understand the subject of the exhibit (usually comes in the form of a title).

Within 30 seconds, a learner should be able to understand the core concept underpinning the exhibit (a short summary, quote, or image can provide this information).

Within three minutes, the learner should have significantly expanded their knowledge (thanks to reading text or interacting with other multimedia features).

Using this strategy can help you create effective and self-scaffolding texts that gradually increase understanding and rigor without requiring additional scaffolding. It incorporates some of the elements of layering information mentioned earlier, but focuses more on accessing texts and helping to build literacy. Start with less complex sentences and language, and then, as you add more information into your learning walls, increase the density and rigor by incorporating academic vocabulary, including quotes, or even providing a way to self-assess. Tools like Canva or Google Draw are helpful for designing expertly crafted learning resources as well.