3 Reasons You Need to Clear Your Whiteboard Today

I’ve noticed a worrying phenomenon in classrooms lately: Whiteboards are becoming noticeboards.

You see, the white on these boards is disappearing in place of coloured posters, laminated sheets, anchor charts, checklists, behavioural systems and any other number of visual distractions.

Space has become a premium on these decades-old teaching tools and it’s time to call a stop to it.

I’m campaigning to return the humble whiteboard to its clear and shiny white roots.

Picture this:

You’re collaboratively brainstorming story writing ideas with your students. You want to record these ideas on the board so your students can refer back to them later. You turn and face your whiteboard and realise you have nowhere to record the ideas. You have to quickly clear off a small corner of the board to make space for the brainstorm and end up having to write in a smaller font than you’d normally use, due to lack of space.

While you’re recording your students’ ideas, one student raises their hand and asks a question about when they’ll be getting their behaviour reward (because they’ve filled up all the ticks on their card *points their card on the whiteboard*). A minute later, another student asks when the note is due back for the upcoming excursion. You think to yourself, ‘What has that got to do with writing!? Why aren’t these kids focusing on my lesson?’

When your students return to their desks to start writing you notice that a large number of them are stuck and/or confused. You wonder why they aren’t using the brainstorm you recorded on the whiteboard. Once you eventually walk to the back of the classroom you realise how hard it is for your students to see the writing you did on the whiteboard…

Does any of this sound familiar?

Here are 3 reasons you need to clear off your whiteboard this week.

1) It will help your students to focus

In my Dyslexia For Teachers course I explain that classrooms are full of things (people, objects, events etc.) that are each competing for your students’ attention. They’re all enticing your students to focus on them, rather than you (or the learning at hand).

Your job as a teacher is to make it as easy possible for your students to focus on you / the learning. To do this, you need to remove as many unnecessary distractions as possible- starting with your whiteboard.

Scrutinize every single item on your whiteboard. Ask yourself: Is it really worthy of the prime visual real estate it’s occupying, or could it be stored somewhere else in the room?

Sit where your students sit and look at your whiteboard. How many items on the board are enticing your students’ eyes to take a wander from the focus area?

To make it as easy as possible for your students to give their full attention to you, you need to remove all these competing distractions.

Stripping your whiteboard back to its bare essentials will help your students to focus their attention on the things that will serve them best: you and your explicit teaching.

2) It will entice you to model more writing

Explicit teacher modelling is the most potent form of instruction in the writing classroom. Unfortunately, too many teachers opt out of this teaching practice in favour of less potent (and less challenging) strategies instead.  

The last thing a teacher worried about engaging in modelled writing needs is another hurdle placed in front of them. A cluttered whiteboard with no space to write is a clear enticement to skip the modelling and take the ‘easier’ option of explaining the writing task instead.

It happens all the time.

Remember though, every time you bypass explicit teacher modelling your students lose out on clarity and understanding.

You need to make it easier for yourself to have a go at this challenging practice.

Control the controllables.

Remove the obstacles.

Do the modelling.

(I promise it does get easier with practice!)

Setting yourself up with a permanently clear whiteboard, with plenty of space to write, is the first step to setting yourself up for successful teacher modelling.  

3) It will set the tone for the rest of your room.

Don’t stop your decluttering at the whiteboard. Keep going!

If your students sit on the floor in front of your whiteboard you should consider that space too. Sit on the floor yourself and look at your room through your students’ eyes. Are there any alluring objects vying for their attention? Perhaps you have a table with shiny objects directly in front of your whiteboard? A tub of sports equipment? Even more unnecessary clutter?

Holding yourself to high expectations around presenting a clear and clean whiteboard acts sets and example for what you expect with the rest of your room. Your students, for example, should replicate this same clutter-free approach. (Student desks are a whole other topic- do they really need all those pencil cases, teddies, laptops, bookboxes etc. on their desks in every lesson? 😵)

Asking your students to keep a tidy workspace is a hard sell when your own space is in desperate need of some Marie Kondoing.

When you model a clutter-free approach on your whiteboard, you set a positive tone for the rest of the room. Your board is saying: In this classroom, we have high standards around personal responsibility and presentation.

One final note: I’m asking for whiteboards to return to their clear and shiny-white roots. I need to highlight the ‘shiny-white’ part to remind schools that some boards do need replacing. If it doesn’t rub off anymore, if it’s damaged, if it has permanent marks all over it- it’s time to go! (Let’s toss all the dead whiteboard markers out too!)

 Clearing your whiteboard may seem like a trivial, unimportant action to focus on, but I consider it one of what I call the ‘1%ers’ in a classroom. These 1%ers are a collection of small individual tasks/actions that - although seemingly insignificant by themselves- combine together to make a large impact.

So, will you be joining the movement? I’d love to hear about what difference your decluttered whiteboard makes for you and your students.

Join in the conversation over on the Oz Lit Teacher Facebook group.

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