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How FrontRow Helps with Student Improvement
A FrontRow sound system lets students throughout the classroom hear without undue effort — leaving them mentally more ready and able to learn. Numerous studies have reported tremendous benefits from FrontRow implementations, including greater student achievement, easier classroom management, and improved teacher energy.
If you're concerned about student achievement, attentiveness, and equity — equal access to the teacher's voice — you'll want to have a look at our detailed sections on these topics below.
In a five-month study of first-grade students, the FrontRow classrooms had twice as many children achieving significant literacy gains.
Students in FrontRow classrooms are twice as likely to have high-level reading growth
A number of studies show that students perform better academically in classrooms with a FrontRow sound system. For example, in a five-month study of 85 research and 81 control first-graders in the Broward County (Florida) Public School System, students in classrooms using FrontRow achieved significantly greater (p<.027) IRI-measured literacy gains. In fact, they were twice as likely to jump seven or more reading levels.
Similarly, in research from five schools in Rotorua (New Zealand) nearly 630 Kindergarten through fifth-grade students were studied in classrooms with and without FrontRow sound systems. Children in FrontRow classrooms showed significantly better listening comprehension, reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, and even math scores on Progressive Achievement Tests.
FURTHER READING
Why FrontRow improves literacy
Phonemic awareness — the ability to distinguish individual speech sounds — is a basic requirement for developing young skillful readers. It’s hard to be aware of phonemes if you’re not consistently and clearly hearing them. Because FrontRow sound systems increase speech clarity and phonemic awareness, they can significantly enhance the effectiveness of reading and spelling instruction.
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"Attentiveness like no other I've seen in my career"
— Guy Sconzo, Ph.D.
Superintendent, Humble ISD (Texas)
The average student misses 25%
of what the teacher says
Kids with completely normal ears — your kids — are missing large portions of what the teacher is saying every day. Children in the back rows can be missing up to 40%, and on average about a quarter of the instructional content is just not getting through.
It's due to several factors, including seating position, background noise, and the fact that children lack vocabulary and fully-developed auditory pathways in the brain. Children can hear the teacher — just not as clearly as an adult can. Over the course of the day, kids have to spend more and more energy just trying to pay attention. And eventually, they won’t.
Improving attentiveness and on-task behavior with a FrontRow sound system
FURTHER READING
In a three-year project involving 55 kindergarten-through-second-grade classrooms in Escambia, Orange, Pinellas, and Sarasota (Florida) public schools, 96% of teachers found that student attentiveness, listening, and comprehension improved when using FrontRow.
If we remove barriers to focusing, kids surprise us by paying attention. By clearly and evenly distributing the teacher's voice throughout the entire classroom, students are no longer victims of their seat assignment. Principals and teachers are typically amazed by the almost immediate improvement in student attentiveness when using a FrontRow sound system. And because it’s so much easier to manage a focused classroom, teachers can be much more efficient and productive.
Get a quote today
We're happy to provide literature, pricing, or a visit from a FrontRow representative. Just ask!
Studies have shown that students in the back row may miss up to 40% of what the teacher is saying.
Why are the 'problem kids' usually in the back row?
Seating position is a strong predictor of student performance. Most of us assume that children who are not academically strong gravitate toward the back row if given a choice — and then take advantage of that position to misbehave. The evidence suggests, however, that the seating position itself is the problem.
For example, researchers investigating the impact of teacher-student distance on the performance of 5- to 7-year olds found tremendous disadvantages to sitting in the middle or rear of the classroom. In the study, lists of simple sentences were read to the students in a room with a typical background noise level of 59dB and a reverberation time of 0.46 seconds. All of the students had normal hearing, yet while children seated 6 feet from the teacher correctly understood the sentences 82% of the time, students sitting 12 feet away only got 55% correct on average. More disturbing, children at the back of the classroom (24 feet away) only scored 36% correct on average.
Mean speech recognition scores (in % correct) of children with normal hearing in a "typical" classroom environment.
Because students seated far from the teacher do not have equal access to verbal instruction, they are generally more likely to exhibit poorer academic performance, and more frequent behavior problems. When less than half of the instructional content is arriving to a student intact, it takes far greater effort for her to succeed than for her peers sitting in front. This concentration effort understandably leads to exhaustion, distraction, and acting out.
Teacher movement throughout the classroom is not ultimately a solution, either, since at any given moment some students will still be far from the teacher.
Give every child a front row seat
In order to give students equal access to verbal instruction, we need to keep the teacher's voice consistently close to each student's ears. This is easily done with a FrontRow sound system — speakers are placed in the classroom to ensure even coverage and clarity throughout the student seating area. In this way, schools can essentially give every child a front row seat.
