Images

The Pittsburgh-area Woodland Hills Academy will be receiving extensive renovations over the 2014-15 school year, according to a May 26 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article. The renovation work, to cost around $15 million total, will require the school's more than 500 students and teachers to relocate for at least one academic year to the Word of God School in nearby Swissvale, the article states. The renovations will use about 80% of remaining funds left from a bond that the Woodland Hills School District took out in 2005. The Woodland Hills Academy Building, approximately a century old, is expected to receive a number of updates and upgrades during the renovation. Some of the district's planned changes include increasing lighting panels throughout the building, an elevator and lowered water ...

Colorful artwork, maps and shapes often cover the walls in a typical elementary school classroom. Are these displays encouraging learning, or could they actually be a distraction? In a new study by Carnegie Mellon, researchers found that busy decorations correlated to distracted behaviors.The research, published in Psychological Science, details how highly decorated classrooms impact children in more ways than one. When exposed to these classrooms, instead of a more bare classroom, children were more likely to spend time off-task, experience smaller learning gains, and be more distracted. Though children are not usually actively examining the walls, the results are in line with earlier studies on how children are impacted by the physical setup of learning environments. "Young children s...