Originally posted by supersonic_ibu

Year 5 Design & Technology

This year 5 class worked on another aspect of Greek art for a Design & Technology project:

Using RM Colour Magic the Y5 children designed a picture to go with their myths they had written and we printed them onto t-shirts as part of ‘Talking Textiles.’

I expect they were really proud and excited to have t-shirts they had designed themselves! This display is a very authentic celebration of their hard work and an interesting way of combining Literacy, History and DT, not to mention integrating ICT! A real cross curricular project.

More Displays about Ancient Greece

Lots of people seem to be looking for displays about Ancient Greece at the moment so this is the second of a number that I will be highlighting over the next week or so.

Originally uploaded by Angela
This simple but effective display comes from a Year 3 class. These are just a few of the vases, the rest were placed on the walls around the classroom.

The vases for this Ancient Greece display were made from black sugar paper, the designs were painted on in orange and once dry fine details were added with black pen. Angela said they were very easy to make but tricky to cut out.

More Displays about Ancient Greece

Lots of people seem to be looking for displays about Ancient Greece at the moment so this is the first of a number that I will be highlighting over the next week or so.

Just look at the wonderful things this school in Amsterdam have been getting up to!
Nienke says:

Our entire school just finished a project around the theme “I Live In… Amsterdam”. Every class examined a different subject.

The youngest kids (Group 1/2) made pieces of art and placed them around the school, they also examined animals that live around the school.

Group 3/4 (Grade 1/2) looked at buildings/roofs in Amsterdam.

Group 5 (Grade 3) went to the film museum, made a movie of grade 1/2 working and also did research of animals in the city.

Group 6 (my class, Grade 4), did the project “Pimp My Neighborhood” (‘pimp mijn buurt’). They had a workshop in making photos, they made photos of ugly places in the neighborhood, made drawings of how to improve these place, they made statues of LEGO and K’NEX and they crafted items to pimp up the hood….

Group 7 (Grade 5) looked into the VOC (East-Indies Trading Compagny), did a VOC-walk in Amsterdam and made a radio play.

Group 8 (Grade 6) looked at the streetnames in the neigborhood, which are all names of people that died in World War II, and wrote about their lives. They also made sculptures about peace.

In the end, all the children of the school gave a presentation to (grand)parents, friends, classmates and kids from other grades.

Have a look at the slideshow of everything else they did too.

Shelters Display (2), originally uploaded by kardon.

I love this set of displays for a design technology topic. Click though to the original and see the annotations.
Tom Barret says:

This is a set of photographs of my Design and Technology display on shelters. It is in a Year 6 class and is a unit that we teach alongside our World War 2 work in history. The final piece of work that the children produce is a model bomb shelter. Take a look at the notes on each photograph for more details as to what makes up the display.
What you currently see is the final, finished display – we had the display up throughout the unit and we slowly added to it as our knowledge and skills progressed. So it truly acted as a learning display for us.

In his excellent blog ICT In My Classroom he encourages others to add their photos of displays to the Classroom Displays group on Flickr:

why not take a photo of one of your good displays and contribute to the growing pool of pics. This would also be a great professional development opportunity and helps contribute to portfolios of work. I have started my own School Displays set in my Flickr account to keep such evidence.

Quite right

Women’s History Month, originally uploaded by Girl Least Likely To.

1st (Year 2) grade students wrote what they wanted to be when they grew up and they used these great women’s stories of their own achievements as an inspiration. The teacher posted pictures and information on great women like Amelia Earhart,Toni Morrison,& Madame C.J.Walker to name a few

I like the way this display has mixed the stories of the famous women with the children’s aspirations for the future. It changes the board from being about ‘people from long ago’ to something the children can feel they are a part of .
I’d like to think the teacher had included work from both genders but I believe it was a ‘girls only’ display. How do other people feel about this? Is it justified to exclude the work of part of a class from a display?
Why shouldn’t the boys too have learned about and been inspired by these famous women?

I like this display from Clare The use of a black background with the red mounting and border emphasises the dramatic nature of the subject. I think the flame shaped ‘fast facts’ work well too. I’d like to have seen the children’s work mounted onto red too and perhaps even shaped like the facts. It might be petty of me but I’d also like the work to be either lined up straight or deliberately skewed – just off square grates on my visual senses

The Great Fire of London is an important topic for Year 2 history. The QCA guidelines give a good framework for dealing with what could be a difficult subject for Keystage 1 and seem to have the level about right.

With more TAs finding themselves teaching classes like History to cover PPA time I think we’ll see lessons sticking even closer to the QCA. It would be a shame though if they didn’t take the chance to explore some of the more interesting web based resources for the topic.

• The Museum of London has a Day by Day guide to the fire which is a bit like a blog.
• Samuel Pepys is an interesting site but it’s going to need a lot of interpreting for Year 2

Martin Luther King Jr., originally uploaded by ppv918.

Today is MLK Day in the USA. It’s a day of service and giving to the community. There are lots of related resouces at ActivityVillage (a UK site) which might also be useful for Black History Month in the UK.

Patricia writes:

Our bulletin board for Martin Luther King, Jr. The children wrote down their dreams on the wings of the doves. I think it came out beautiful. Let me know what you think.

I like it very much and I think the simple design works well. What do others think?

Last January this Roman display won a competition for the best display at in a thread at the TA Chat Forum. I was pleased to have won the right to put a nice image in my sig for a while and the children involved in creating the display were excited to hear that their display was voted the winner.
This competition, however, is for a rather more substantial reward!
Belair publishes a vast range of books about display. (See the books page in my sidebar for some examples.)

Belair Display of the Year Competition 2006

A WINNING DISPLAY!
Belair and Junior Education are delighted to give you the opportunity to WIN ALL THE BELAIR COLLECTIONS!We are looking for the best displays of 2006, illustrating the real passion and talent that goes into exhibiting pupils’ work in the classroom and around the school.

Have you and your pupils created a masterpiece that deserves greater recognition? If so, you could be our 2006 winner!

Winning displays will be featured in Junior Education and on the Folens website. The competition is open to both teachers and teaching assistants and the only limitation is your own ingenuity!

EASY TO ENTER
Simply photograph a display you have put up in your school and email it to: belair@folens.com or post your photo to

Belair
Unit 20 Apex Business Centre
Boscombe Road
Dunstable
Beds
LU5 4RL

Entries will be judged by a panel of Belair authors and Junior Education. Closing date for entries is 17th November 2006.

They then go on to list a quite extensive criteria set which is worth a read in it’s own right as a bench mark for judging the quality of your displays.

So if you’ve got a suitable display or you can get one up by then why not have a go? Your school stands to win a spectacular and inspiring resource library and it might just inspire you to come up with your most impressive displays ever

I’m thinking what to do for our Viking display in year3. This longship might be a good starting point. I’ve done it before, when I was working in year 3 last, the year before this one was made, but I don’t seem to have a photo of it. The shields are paper plates than the sail is a painted sheet. Making the prow was great fun the year we did it and I know someone in year 3 who draws great dragons! I’ll post the photo in a few weeks when we move back to our old classroom.

Update: 2007. I’ve moved on but my replacement will be starting this display soon. (These are for you Janet!) So here are a few photos to show the display in progress.

The prow is made with crumpled brown tissue paper soaked in diluted PVA (1:3) stuck onto card – we had a good chat about why Vikings had a beast at the front of the ship whilst we did this:

The boat is painted paper and the sail is painted cloth. (I kept our sail – try the store cupboard)

The 3d effect is enhanced by making a card support to attach the boat to the board. It involved some creative use of the staple gun and a cunningly hidden cardboard box stapled to the middle of the board