How Dry-Erase Painted Walls Benefit Teachers

Top-quality ReMARKable Dry-Erase Paint is a natural fit as an instructional tool for teachers from the kindergarten to the university level. The huge open writing and drawing canvas provided by a dry-erase painted wall makes teaching much easier and more enjoyable for students and teachers alike. Some of the many advantages that dry-erase painted surfaces provide for teachers are presented in this article.

Promote Retention of Lesson Material through “Meta-cognitive Modelling”

The real-time creation of text and visual images that occurs when teachers use dry-erase painted walls strengthens information retention among students studying math, science, English, history, and other subjects. Also, when teachers speak while going through a series of steps in a process like solving a math problem or interpreting a story on a dry-erase wall, they engage in “meta-cognitive modeling.” In this approach, teachers talk through the various stages of their thought process with students while writing on the wall, thus demonstrating how to reason in lessons that involve interpreting information, analyzing statements, solving problems, or drawing conclusions. The meta-cognitive modeling or thinking-out-loud technique is especially applicable in math classes, where teachers plan and then explicitly describe their underlying thinking process during problem-solving.

In fact, this activity should be the main focus of so-called “teacher talk” during all types of lessons. Teacher talk includes everything said to students while they’re working in the classroom, and when teachers think out loud, students pay closer attention than they otherwise would. The meta-cognitive modeling strategy can also be practiced in reading classes, as teachers ask rhetorical questions while reading a story or make comments about how to anticipate what’s coming up next in the plot while writing down the key aspects of their thought process on a dry erase wall as they go.

In this way, students can more actively participate in learning by bringing together all of their mental resources and so have more profitable learning experiences. In order to do this, a dry-erase painted wall can function as a centerpiece for the learning process as teachers write out and speak about the sequence of steps involved in solving or understanding given academic material like the math problems or story plots mentioned above. When children “think about thinking” like this, they come to understand how they learn and become conscious of the steps followed and the
means used to gain knowledge, solve problems and perform other academic tasks.

Enhance Collaboration among Students and between Teachers and Students

By promoting lively interaction between teachers and students and among groups of students working together on lessons, dry-erase walls are ideal media for real-time collaborative learning. According to studies by educational psychologists, students using dry-erase boards instead of flip charts or other media are better at collaborating and encouraging others to work with them in sharing ideas.

For instance, in comparing flip charts to dry-erase boards, the researchers found that geometry students who worked out problems on flip charts did most of their talking before any writing or drawing began, possibly because marker ink is not erasable from flip chart paper. Therefore, much of the reasoning about what should be presented on the charts stopped before much content was written down. This occurred even though the students had been told they could start over on a fresh sheet of paper as often as they liked. In addition, the writer was almost always the same student – the one who drew the best, wrote most legibly or was the most aggressive in snatching the marker. This caused the final product that appeared on the flip charts to be the writers’ versions of the groups’ ideas.

However, with dry-erase boards, instead of waiting until the group’s reasoning process was completed, students began writing immediately, then stopped, started, and erased and rewrote constantly, so what appeared on the board evolved as the conversation developed. While some of the students didn’t write anything, it was much more common to have several students writing or drawing on the board at the same time. Additionally, students who avoided writing did occasionally erase what others had written or suggested that what had been done should be erased and redone.

These findings show that dry-erase boards stimulate group collaboration in a much more dynamic and democratic way than do flip charts or other non-erasable media. The students working on dry-erase surfaces avoided stopping to think about what they were going to write down but instead jumped in and started writing and erasing, so their work evolved dynamically as they collaborated during the problem-solving process. And, with the vast surfaces offered by dry-erase painted walls, such collaborative work would have been even more creative and free-flowing, with many students being able to write at the same time and interacting as a group to solve the assigned geometry problem.

Stimulate Interactivity in the Classroom

Who needs the hassle and high price tag of a complicated electronic interactive whiteboard when a dry-erase painted wall can serve the same purpose for a fraction of the cost? A dry-erase-painted surface turns a classroom wall into a giant interactive whiteboard that teachers can use jointly with multiple students throughout the school day for lessons in any subject area and for any length of time needed.

Provide Freedom to Teach with Abandon

Dry-erase painted walls give teachers the freedom to teach without the constraints caused by the limited writing surfaces of traditional framed dry-erase boards, flip charts, tiny computer screens, and other small media used for instructional purposes. Open-ended and vast, dry-erase walls are attractive blank canvases that inspire a sense of freedom and creativity in teachers and students alike.

Captivate Students and Hold their Attention

The large, open-ended writing and drawing spaces offered by dry-erase painted walls hold kids’ attention extremely well. Children enjoy writing and drawing on vertical surfaces, and with dry-erase painted walls, they have the freedom to cover a vast area in the process. When classwork is done on a dry-erase painted wall, the surface is close to children’s eyes, thus helping them to focus on the task they’re doing, and in turn, improving their ability to concentrate and pay attention. This close proximity, along with the wall’s vertical surface, also allows children to maintain an upright posture, which is another aspect that helps with maintaining attention. Without a chair to rely on for support, children constantly use their back muscles to keep themselves standing straight, so they can easily access the wall’s surface. This helps to foster good posture, which in turn can improve kids’ self-image and desire to learn.

Provide Efficiency in Doing Classroom Teaching

Being large and easy to access at any time throughout the day, dry-erase painted walls are excellent tools for helping teachers to teach efficiently. The fact that dry-erase surfaces are also extremely easy to write on and erase makes changing from math to English to history and other subjects during the day quick and time-saving.

Roominess Provides Enough Space for Multiple Subjects and Users at Once

Dry-erase painted walls allow much more room for teaching lessons than do traditional framed whiteboards or other surfaces, and they also have a lower cost per square foot. The vast open canvas of a dry-erase coated wall lets multiple students write and draw at the same time with the freedom to quickly erase and create something new over and over again. This quality is especially useful in-class brainstorming sessions for essay topics, science project ideas, and the like, as the walls’ roominess encourages students to come up with an endless stream of ideas, record them, and then erase and write again in a continuous flow of creativity. In this way, the walls invite naturalness of thinking and the constant discovery of original concepts in both individual students and groups. Then, after a brainstorming session is over, the results of a team’s collective thinking can be gradually erased and whittled down to those ideas that are most achievable or appropriate for the assignment. Finally, the wall can be used to delineate the steps required to put the ideas obtained through brainstorming into action.

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