Eight strategies for emotional and mental health practitioners: creating a safe space that works in your school

  According to The Children’s Society (2021)* 1 in 6 children aged between 5 and 16 are likely to have … More

Setting up a book corner for the new school year in your classroom

When you are considering how and where to create a book corner for your classroom, some of your design choices … More

Intimate, relatable and protective: what we can learn from the design of reading spaces for expert readers

Alberto Manguel, the director of the National Library of Argentina once commissioned his own library to house his extensive private … More

Are all young readers well-served by the design of schools?

If you are involved in any aspect of the design or refurbishment of schools for young children, you will inevitably … More

Reading and the body: the unacknowledged physical challenges of learning to read in school

In the 2010s, while working as a Reading Recovery1 teacher, I witnessed the daily challenges that young children face when … More

Of tides and rock pools: a growing awareness of the school building beyond the classroom

The first time I came to understand the design of a school to be of any significance to its staff … More

How to break eggs: consciously disrupting our habituation to school buildings

Why is it important to address the phenomenon of habituation to spaces in schools? A surprisingly large amount of effort … More

Possibility blindness: habituation to school buildings

The classrooms, corridors and hallways of primary and nursery schools in the UK are almost uniformly furnished with plentiful display … More

Voices from precarious spaces: dedicated spaces for therapeutic practitioners in schools

In this post, I draw on the voices of therapeutic practitioners working in schools to consider why it might be … More

A place of greater safety: an exercise

In Reflecting on the core values of therapeutic spaces I proposed an initial exercise to prompt reflections on some of … More