Eight Creative Ways to Use Whiteboard Walls in STEM Classrooms

The ways teachers can use classroom whiteboard walls in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are limitless. Nowadays, educators feel a strong drive to revamp the teaching of STEM. Whiteboard walls can be powerful instructional tools to help reverse the decline of learning in these areas. Adopting them can help strengthen a school’s commitment to project-based or collaborative learning. In this way, STEM classrooms undergo rapid change, transforming students’ interest, engagement, and achievement in STEM courses.

With their large, convenient, and easy-to-use surfaces, walls coated with whiteboard paint make STEM teaching and learning more enjoyable and stimulating for teachers and students. In the blog post below, we’ll investigate some strategies to boost the learning of STEM subjects through whiteboard walls. Doing so can help to bridge the achievement gap between learners of various income levels, and allow them to gain skills sought after in today’s highly competitive, tech-driven job market.

1. Visualizing Complex Science Concepts with Whiteboard Wall Paint

Whiteboard wall paint applied in the classroom greatly enhances STEM learning. Teaching STEM with whiteboard walls improves students’ ability to visualize complex scientific concepts. On broad whiteboard canvases, teachers can draw countless models, diagrams, and simulations that help students to grasp abstract theories. The walls are large enough to accommodate extensive, complex graphics with many details that traditional framed whiteboards can’t contain.

In this way, whiteboard walls become essential parts of research-based teaching strategies, such as modeling instruction. In modeling instruction, teachers promote classroom discussion in which students produce a diagram, a graph, and an equation for a model they’ve created. They then make use of the model in a series of related tasks.

This method supplies a structure for science teaching that mimics how scientists actually “do science” in the real world. Students build, test, and create conceptual models of physical relationships involving the models that comprise the core content of the scientific disciplines. Alternatively, the whiteboard surfaces can be used in a stand-alone pedagogical approach without adopting such a method.

2. Interactive Math Problem-Solving

The vast surfaces of whiteboard painted walls are ideal for doing interactive math problem-solving with an entire classroom of students. One effective approach is to arrange students in pairs and write an equation on the whiteboard wall. Then, ask one student in each pair to teach the other how to solve the equation while the other writes down the steps and solutions to the problem.

Next, present a new equation and have the students exchange roles. This gives learners a chance to teach one another and reinforce what they recall about solving linear equations.  You can move around and listen to the students’ interactions during the activity. Such STEM classroom whiteboard wall ideas are simple to execute and make each learner explain their thinking.

3. Engineering Prototypes and Diagrams on Whiteboard Painted Walls

Brainstorming is a natural preparatory step before planning an investigation or coming up with an engineering design. Brainstorming helps to get students’ ideas out in the open for everyone to see before they begin working with physical materials.

By using large walls covered with whiteboard coating for engineering projects, students are able to present many ideas at once while engaged in brainstorming. Also, in an engineering class challenge, students can make numerous rough sketches or plans for their designs on the vast whiteboard canvas. In a STEM lab design with whiteboard paint, they can generate engineering prototypes and diagrams on the walls. Finally, they can refine their designs and begin using materials to create a project.

4. Technology Design and Coding Using Whiteboard Painted Walls

For programmers, the writable whiteboard surface is one of the most excellent, simplest productivity tools available. However, the cramped surfaces of traditional framed whiteboards tend to stifle the flow of creative ideas that programmers produce. Whiteboard walls, on the other hand, offer vast writable surfaces where creativity has free rein to expand and develop.

Also, when using whiteboard walls collaboratively, programmers can get instant feedback from their colleagues. As soon as a programmer writes down a line on a wall, their team members can either approve it or object to it and offer suggestions for changes. Although this approach requires extra programmers and may take longer than working alone, the immediate feedback is worth the effort. This is especially true when it comes to more complex components of an application or to ones that are critical to a mission.

5. Collaborative Physics Problem-Solving

Using walls coated with whiteboard paint for physics instruction is a natural option for today’s forward-thinking science teachers. Among STEM classroom whiteboard wall ideas, using the surfaces to teach physics is one of the best. That’s because whiteboard surfaces are indispensable tools professional physicists use to generate creative ideas individually and collectively.

And the same can be said for students in the physics classroom. There, they can generate tentative ideas, present them for discussion, and finally share their fully developed ideas with the class. Students are able to follow all of these steps by writing and drawing on the broad, convenient canvas of a whiteboard painted wall. Like this, whiteboard walls in the classroom become invaluable learning media for physics students.

6. Group Brainstorming for STEM Projects

In business offices, companies around the world use whiteboard painted walls during group brainstorming to generate ideas for new projects and products. In the high school or middle school STEM classroom, brainstorming about projects with whiteboard walls is equally effective. Students can work together on the walls’ vast canvases to come up with rough ideas for a science investigation.

At first, they might use the surfaces to write down quick, unorganized plans for experiments and data collection. They can then refine their plans by going through various iterations, writing, erasing, and rewriting with low-odor dry erase markers until they reach a final version that meets with everyone’s approval.

7. Real-Time Data Visualization with Whiteboard Walls

Collecting data is an essential part of scientific practice. Collecting and then disseminating the data is equally important. However, in a science classroom, collecting, disseminating, and then discussing data should be the standard sequence of actions. Whiteboard walls make the discussion part of this process infinitely easier.

In science classes, students often record data from their experiments on a paper lab report. However, this practice fails to make the information readily visible to their instructors and other students. Generating data that an entire lab group easily sees on a surface coated with whiteboard wall paint transforms discussions. It also positively impacts how students think about and use the data they gather.

Changing from a paper lab sheet to dry erase walls saves data for several days. Doing so alters students’ conversations in the classroom. This helps the learners in the lab group and other lab groups and teachers to see and talk about the data. What’s more, instructors who switch to teaching STEM with whiteboard walls are able to make corrections in real time. This is possible because the data are visible to everyone and are easily modified by erasing and revising with low-odor dry erase markers.  

8. STEM Lab Design Using Whiteboard Wall Paint

STEM labs are at the forefront of educational innovation in today’s rapidly changing society. A well-designed STEM lab offers students a dynamic, engaging learning space that sparks curiosity and creativity. Its central purpose is to empower the next generation of science and technology pioneers.

Key components of such an environment are writable surfaces that facilitate visual learning, group presentations, and collaborative brainstorming sessions. Consequently, STEM lab design with whiteboard paint is a natural option for educators. Whiteboard walls in STEM classrooms and labs should be used to promote group effort, experiential learning, and engagement.  By their nature, the walls foster a learning environment that’s student-centered, adaptable, and accessible to all learners.

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Eight Creative Ways to Use Whiteboard Walls in STEM Classrooms

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Discover 8 ways to transform STEM classrooms with whiteboard walls, enhancing creativity, engagement, and interactive learning experiences.

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Susan Anspach

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ReMARKable Whiteboard Paint

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