Bundle: Use the Lessons of Retail to Improve your Classroom Layout.

A few years into my teaching career, a friend who managed a grocery store recommended a book called Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping. The premise of the book caught my attention; it hadn’t occurred to me that the layout of stores might be purposely set up—often with the help of high-priced consulting companies—to pull me in farther, keep me there longer, and make me more likely to walk out with items that I hadn’t thought I needed. But there was an unexpected side benefit to reading the book. I kept having aha moments about how my classroom was set up. The book also contained so many cool insights that seemed worth sharing with my students, who I hoped to shape into critical thinkers and wise consumers. But there was so much. I had no idea how to begin making this book into a useable classroom activity.

Fast forward about fifteen years: I recently reread the book.

My hope was to harvest some of those initial classroom-layout aha moments and share them in a form that could help teachers make their classrooms more user friendly—both for them and for their students. I also hoped that I’d be able to give teachers an easy-to-teach-in-class form of some of the lessons taught by this book.

And. . . there’s still so much. In fact, after spending a while trying to turn this into one big mega activity, I’ve divided everything into a three different options. You can get just the thing you need or buy the whole set as a discounted bundle here.

Option one: You want one cool lesson to teach your students about the science of shopping. And you want this lesson to be curated by the type of nerd who would reread a 250-page book, hunt down additional resources, and think about this whole thing possibly a little too much.

Science of Shopping lesson, reading passage, and writing prompts.

• A one-and-a-half page condensation of primary sources on this topic that you can read in class with students.

• Links to informational videos and comedy clips that illustrate some of the points in the lesson.

• Classroom discussion questions

• Writing prompts and other suggestions for student writing activities based on the article.

Option two: You’d like to use the concept of the science of shopping to reflect on your classroom design and make some changes. But you’re not quite ready to read a 250-page book that was written in the 1990’s and gives advice about how to lay out a Blockbuster video store.

Teacher-Focused summary of “Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping” with reflection questions

• A teacher-focused summary of the space-design principles in the book that most apply to a classroom environment.

• A set of reflection questions that you can use to apply these principles to your classroom layout.

• A bit of oversharing about my own aha moments related to this book, including the story of the first shoving match I had to break up in my teaching career, which was my first day in charge of a classroom and probably could have been avoided by better classroom design.

Option three: You want to do an activity where your students use the science of shopping to participate in a classroom redesign. You want to encourage students to think critically about their physical environment and its effects on their behavior. But also—sure, why not—you’d like them to help you straighten up your classroom in the process. In an educational way.

This resource includes:

• A student-friendly summary of store-design principles that might apply to the classroom.

• A student survey based on these store design principles.

• Tips for adding educational value as your students help you rearrange your classroom.