A four-foot wall of neo-cortex greets you as you take your first steps into the brain; its undulating surface of grey sulci and gyri invites you to feel the texture. As you venture further in, there’s a screen on your right flashing up photos from Spain and examples of the country’s vocabulary with colour and graphics to reinforce understanding. Turn the corner and you are standing on the corpus callosum, which connects the two hemispheres of a room that curves and bends, mixes hard and soft, dim and bright. All around you are the young minds of a Year 5 class engaged in a range of tasks within designated areas of this scaled up version of their thinking apparatus. Welcome to St Kentigern’s Brain Zone.

Paul Jackson is Head of St Kentigern’s RC Primary School and it’s his imagination that’s behind their innovative new classroom. Modestly, he’ll tell you that it all started with the children themselves less than five years ago. “I should have been teaching a literacy lesson, but we got onto something much more interesting – the kind of environment that would really make them want to learn.” The school had recently opened a computer suite and the children were enthused by the new ways in which they could learn. The ideas raised in that lesson’s discussion were later incorporated into the Brain Zone. Reflecting on his attention to pupil voice that day reinforced some of Paul’s own thoughts and beliefs about learning. As a school they had never subscribed to what he calls the 8 x 4 x 2 model. “That’s the eight corners of the room, its four walls and the two pages of a book with the children sitting passively waiting to be filled with knowledge. This can stifle their love of learning.” Brain-based learning was already underpinning what was happening in the school. Now he wanted to reflect it in the physical structure of the classroom. “As one boy pointed out after being inspired by Gaudi’s architecture in Barcelona, ‘Why are classrooms square?’”name in the practical application of modern learning methods. Our mission is 'to expand the horizons of possibility' for all those with whom we work."
 

Seeking funding to make the vision a reality was a challenge. Perched on the edge of Manchester’s Moss Side, St Kentigern’s serves a ward that is in the 2% most deprived nationally; approximately 50% of its children are entitled to free school meals. But through school fundraising activities and approaches to charities and educational trusts money slowly began to build. “For about every 100 letters I sent, if I had one positive reply that was about the norm,” confides Paul. The diocese was enthusiastic and continued to lobby the DfES on the school’s behalf, but when the school enlisted the help of the MP Sir Gerald Kaufman things really began to move. On a visit to the school he had been impressed with the children’s work, particularly their philosophical thinking. Paul took the opportunity to share his own thoughts on the next step for the school and the MP agreed to patronise the project. On 23rd June this year he officially opened the Brain Zone.

Back in the Brain Zone itself, you are aware that there is nothing random about the layout. Many of the separate activity areas, or ‘pods’, are positioned in the hemisphere where their centres normally lay in the human brain. For example, in many people Broca and Wernicke’s areas (for speech production and language comprehension respectively) are in the left hemisphere. Look to your left in the Brain Zone and you will see a pod specifically designed for speaking (or singing) and listening, which includes headphones and recording equipment. Lea Kane, the Brain Zone's co-ordinator (or ‘Pod Meister’, as the Head calls her), enjoys sharing some of the pupils’ learning experiences with visitors. She recounts a recent example of an activity in this area during a lesson on the Tudors, which included learners listening to Henry VIII’s Greensleeves whilst comparing Tudor dress worn by the rich to that of the poor and contrasting both to the clothes worn in modern Britain. The Head values the work done by his co-ordinator in maintaining the momentum of his dream. According to him, it is Lea’s enthusiasm and intuitive understanding of the Brain Zone's learning potential that ensures its success on a daily basis. Visitors would witness for themselves her passion and belief of what can be achieved in these surroundings.

At a given signal, this lesson’s Year 5 Spanish learners complete their tasks and move across the central connecting pathway – the corpus callosum where you are now standing – to begin a new activity in a different pod.
 

As with the left hemisphere, the right also has three pods, each designed to seat about half a dozen children on cushions or moveable seating and equipped with state of the art technology, like wireless laptops, simulation software, conferencing facilities and video editing. In the Spanish lesson, the first pod on the right contains a group learning independently using computers; the second pod emits a soothing lilac glow from a doorway surrounded by more of the enlarged brain tissue. A peep inside reveals the teacher using colourful images to introduce her learners to some new Spanish vocabulary. This pod has cushions on the floor and contains an interactive whiteboard and lighting that can be set to create a mood. The pastel colours can be fixed, set to change colour slowly, or even switched to react to sound. The teacher finishes her input and now the children take turns at the whiteboard, dragging and dropping images.

Further along the right hemisphere, in the third pod, a group is playing bingo using the target language, whilst at the far end of the room, spanning its entire width, is a bank of retractable stepped seating with a mobile interactive whiteboard. This class-sized ampitheatre had been used earlier during the connection phase of the lesson and, with the help of a few willing assistants, could soon be transformed into an open space for dance or drama. And the Brain Zone’s flexibility doesn’t just extend to the various uses of its ampitheatre either. The content of what is learned there is sometimes led by the children’s own interests, both within and without the national curriculum. Some recent example topics include issues concerning the environment and space.

Another signal a few minutes later sees the pupils once again moving to their next activity to demonstrate their learning. “It’s fun because we’re learning in lots of ways,” says one girl shyly when asked about the Brain Zone.

St Kentigern’s RC Primary School had already adopted brain-based learning as its way of helping learning fit the individual, rather than the other way around. In its search to find the best learning experience for its pupils it followed that by constructing its own brain base for learning. In an area where the bus shelters have sheet metal instead of glass and windows have bars, Paul Jackson and his staff have envisaged much more than a safe haven for their pupils; they have listened to the children’s thoughts and persevered in providing them with a unique classroom experience. Never has creating the right environment for learning been so innovative.