Classroom Displays

How do you do your lettering for classroom displays?

Are you a traditionalist with hand cut double lettering or are you happy to use printed titles? Perhaps you prefer to buy ready made titles or download free ones.

Whatever you choose there are resources available online to make your life easier. I thought I’d do a list of a few of my favourites and perhaps you can add some of your own if I miss any out.

Hand Cut Lettering Resources

The old fashioned way - wooden templates and coloured paper . You can buy a range of wooden templates from a number of UK suppliers.

Brightideasteaching is a good place to start looking as they have good quality wooden Sassoon font templates.

Occasionally shops like The Works have sets of lower case wooden letters and numbers. These are much lower quality but they can be useful.

Have a good look on ebay as retiring teachers sometimes sell their unwanted stuff.

Of course you could make your own. They won’t be wooden but they’ll still work. Just print out a set of Sassoon font letters the size you want, cut them out and laminate them yourself.

You can also buy sets of pre-cut and laminated display letters but they are not ideal. Never enough high frequency letters unless you are madly extravagant and buy several sets!

Free Lettering to Download and Print

Sites with free sets of letters to download and print are another solution. If you do this remember they aren’t really free. You should take into account the cost of printing them, especially in colour. When you’ve printed them out don’t forget to laminate them.

Newest site for this (and quite a few other free resources) is Mrs Pancake. Some of these letter sets are great fun but don’t forget the lettering isn’t meant to overwhelm the children’s work. Use some of the patterned lettering with caution!

Making Your Own Banner Headers - using Word

• Open Word
• Change to layout to landscape
• Change font - either use something plain like Ariel, or choose a fancy font. Some schools have handwriting fonts like Sassoon.
• Change the font size by typing in the number you want. You can type in 200 and press enter to create massive text.
• Change the colour of the text
• Use print preview to check how it will look. It cost nothing to check but ink is expensive!
• Make any changes and re-check in pre-view
• Make sure landscape is selected in ‘print preferences’

Using Novel Materials - a note of caution

You can use all kinds of materials for your lettering. Wrapping paper or wallpaper can look effective. It will usually need to be laminated to prevent curling. Even plain brown paper or fabric can work. Just be sure that you can see your titles clearly from a distance and always choose a font suitable for your class. Year 1 might have been happier with a less distracting font.

What is a friend, originally uploaded by LindaH.

It’s Anti-bullying week at the moment and I thought as a change from previous years I’d pick out some more positive displays. Rather than being against something these displays promote things that will help to create a whole school culture where bullying is less acceptable. Let’s face it bullying isn’t an issue we can make a fuss about for one week a year and in many ways it’s much more important to change the ethos of the school.

I’m particularly fond of the next one as the idea for this hall display came from a child with some special needs who knew exactly the kind of school he needed, one where bullying just wasn’t tolerated.

There’s an excellent article in this month’s Learning Support magazine about bullying and SEN which I wish every TA and teacher would read.
Of course there are also excellent resources on the Bullying UK site.

I love global participation projects and this one is pretty straight forward. I’ll let Liz, a member of the Classroom Displays flickr group, explain:

My kids have had a great time working on the monster project this year. I really enjoyed how easy it was to make the project multidisplinary. You write the descriptions of the body part and read other children’s descriptions. You incorporate science in discussing the different body parts, and math and measuring them. We involved geography in finding the other participants’ locations. Not to mention the art skills and co-operation involved in building the monster itself. Whew!

I asked Liz to tell us in more detail how the project worked in her class:

Here are the steps we followed to build our monster and participate in the project:
1. We wrote a class description. (We did this orally with me typing and the kids offering suggestions.)
2. We voted for which part we’d like to describe.
3. Each child drew a possibility for the monster’s neck (our chosen part), and we voted for our favorite.
4. We decided on a written description for the neck and submitted it.
5. I made slips with each monster part and description and had the kids select one. Then we discussed at length what the description meant. This was by far the hardest part for them– some of the vocabulary was very challenging, and I had already edited the descriptions some already to make them more age-appropriate!
6. The kids drew what they thought their finished part would look like, and then made a mini-model with construction paper.
7. The kids filled out and order form for the various materials they would need. (Also very challenging, hard for them to conceptualize what their part would look like when done, even with the mini models.)
8. We began to build the parts themselves. Some got very hung up on the size of the part, and really struggled with this. Others forged ahead and lost sight of the description entirely. Oops. I will have to keep a closer watch during this phase if I do the project again.
9. We laid the parts out on the floor and assembled everything. I loved doing this with them and especially loved how none of us knew what it would look like when done.

I asked Liz what had worked well about the project and what didn’t work quite so well:

I teach 2nd grade (7 and 8 year olds) and knew this would be a challenging project for them. It certainly was! However, they love seeing the monster out in the hall now. I think they feel a real sense of accomplishment about it. My favorite part of the project was seeing the photos of the other classes and learning about their schools. This made much less of an impact on my class than I would have liked– too abstract for kids their age, perhaps.

Overall, fun! I will restructure the building next year by adding more oversight and maybe more planning as well. On the whole I feel like the kids did quite well, though, and I am very proud of them.

Liz mentioned the originator or the project, another member of the Classroom Displays flickr group, smithtk or Mr Smith as he’s better known His monster display from last year is great fun too:

He says:

This monster is one representation of the work of kids from 5 different nations, and 10 different states.
Each class selects a Monster part such as body, head, ears, tail, horns, etc. Then, each class writes a description of that part and sends it to the project web. When all of the descriptions are in, each class builds a single monster using the descriptions from everyone.

In this photo, the body came from Japan, hair from Taiwan, ears from Michigan,belt from Nebraska, knees from England, nose from Pakistan and so forth.

When all of the descriptions are in, each class builds a single MONSTER using the descriptions from the table below. Students discover that designing and building a monster together is a very big job. It is a major lesson in working together and learning to compromise in a group decision process. For example, the kid responsible for the head has to plan with the kids doing the eyes, nose, neck, mouth, ears and hair. So kids must collaborate to construct their class MONSTER . The result is satisfying proof that a team of kids can accomplish anything!!

Other activities include a wiki, monster videos, writing, teacher sharing, and a whole project vote at the end on the most appropriate monster name.

I think this project is a lovely example of global co-operation. You can find many more details on how to get involved on Mr Smith’s Monsters web site. The project isn’t new. It’s been running since at least 2000 but what is changing is that by using groups (like the Classroom Displays flickr group) and blogs to promote the project and display children’s work even more classes are getting involved. Have a look at this Our First Monster blog explaining one class’ monster project and see if it inspires you!

Some people have had less fruitful experiences with global projects and there certainly are some pitfalls. It’s a good idea to research your chosen project quite carefully before you get involved. The impact on children’s learning from participating in a successful project can be huge so it’s worth getting it right. If you want more ideas and advice for using global projects have a look at Jayne Krauss and Suzie Boss’ book Reinventing Project-Based Learning: Your Field Guide to Real-World Projects in the Digital Age (Paperback).

Disclaimer - you just might find a reminder to celebrate your class’ work by sharing your photos in the Classroom Displays Flickr group in the book

Classroom displays advice to students

I am occasionally contacted by students, teachers or TAs, who want to read about some of the theories that underpin our use of classroom displays in schools. These are books that explore the reasons behind our use of displays rather than give us ideas for making them. There isn’t a massive amount of current research available but I have some standard advice I hand out to students and I thought the start of the new academic year might be a good moment to share it.

Classroom Displays Books

First, great, but you could struggle to find it as it’s out of print:
Display in the Classroom: Principles, Practice and Learning Theory (Paperback)
by Hilary Cooper (Author), Phil Hegarty (Author), Penny Hegarty (Author), Neil Simco (Author)
Publisher: David Fulton Publishers Ltd (23 May 1996)ISBN-10: 185346404 ISBN-13: 978-1853464041
This one actually looks at the theories but be aware it’s 10 years out of date!

Also:

Primary Practicals for CPD: Rules of Display - The Essential Guide to Nursery and Primary Classroom Displays (The Completely Practical Development Series)
By Lynn Taylor

These mention displays in passing:

Chambers, A (1995). The reading environment: How adults help children enjoy books.. York: Stenhouse.

Johnstone (1994). Teaching Modern Languages at Primary School Approaches and Implications . Scotland: SCRE.
Pgs 34-6
Smith, A & Call, N (2002) The ALPS Approach, Bodmin, MPG Books LTD.
Pgs 194 -199

Anything by Reggio Emilia
but you’ll have to really root around to find some direct relevance.

Lella Gandini, just about anything she’s written - she is cited in Tarr’s paper but she’s really talking about the Reggio approach.

Papers
Tarr,P (2004). Consider the Walls. Journal of the National Association for the Education of Young Children
Theory Into Practice
2007, Vol. 46, No. 1, Pages 40-47
(doi:10.1207/s15430421tip4601_6)

66/365 - 9/26/2008, originally uploaded by snelly23.

I couldn’t resist this great quick display for Autumn! The maker says:

I was looking for real fall leaves to photograph on Monday, the first day of fall, and I failed. Our class used “glue paint” over and under tissue squares on construction paper to make these shiny fall leaves.

I love the tree with its ‘glue paint’ leaves and it’s wonderful affirmative messages. I’d love to add some photos of class members caught doing and being all of these great things, and to add some affirmations of their own, perhaps on more leaves building up at the base of the display, over this term.
People are always looking for 3d tree displays and I think this is a simple but excellent example.