On his regular learning walks around the school Chris notices how all the teachers use the writable walls differently: “A maths teacher may have an area for rough jottings and a more formal area for an examstyle question; an English teacher may share vocab and buzzwords. There is so much space these thoughts can be left up there, they don’t have to be rubbed out straightaway.” “I love it when I see multiple kids writing on the wall,” enthuses Chris. “You might have six kids writing ideas on the wall all at the same time, and then stepping back and sharing them.
“That’s six kids working with five others – so that’s 30 interactions in the space of a minute, whereas a smartboard would only enable one. That’s great to see. “And the configuration in these rooms looks different every day, depending on what they are using the spaces for,” he continued. “Also, when not in use, we can flip up the tops on the tables, move them away and turn it into a conference centre so the building earns money when the athletes aren’t there. The furniture is so agile, it ticks all the boxes in terms of what we wanted it to do.”
The Apex athletes are, naturally, active learners, rather than “sit-down-foran-hour” people and the learning spaces take this into account
