On safari through the jungle - in the classroom, originally uploaded by LindaH.

Transformational classroom displays are particularly popular in early years and key stage 1 settings. This reading area has become a jungle, complete with an elephant,lion and tiger. Most of the animals have been made and painted by the children, with some adult assistance. The result is a high interest area with lots to talk about.

Making displays like this can be a huge stimulus for speaking and listening but once the display is up staff often need to make an effort to remember to keep referring to elements in the display. Adding labels and other text can re-vitalise a display. A favourite addition is laminated speech bubbles so that asking questions like “How does the elephant feel today?” can give the children even more opportunity for expression and contribute to a text rich environment.

Once children and staff get used to the display and it looses its “wow” factor it has to go. There’s a great temptation with displays like this to forget their purpose and treat them like pretty wallpaper.

Displays like this need to be treated with a little caution. Whilst it can be great fun to transform a whole classroom too much stimulation can be very challenging for some children. Keeping some areas visually quiet and uncluttered is also a consideration.

Our word wall, originally uploaded by Glazgow.

Several people have asked for phonics classroom displays. I’m not surprised as they are hard to do well. One approach, that produces a really interactive display, is to go for a word wall.
Glazgow did this one with a Primary 3 (7 year olds) class in Scotland. He says

Our word wall (window actually). Has all the phonemes, the alphabet, common words (tricky words) and punctuation. It also has 6 lines which can be used to make sentences when working with the children.

This is a great working display that can be brought out year after year. It can be used by individuals, groups or for whole class teaching. All that needs to be done is to laminate everything and use lots of sticky putty.
It’s important that it is placed at child height so that it can be used easily.
I’m in two minds about using window space this way. There are good arguments both for and against. What do you think?

aaar!, originally uploaded by Sunflower Lily.

Pirates are a great theme for classroom displays and this ship is a particularly lively one. Lots of super vocabulary words and phrases, dastardly pirates and a rather good sea really make this an excellent learning and reference resource.
I think this may be a Year 2 class, as they are working on speech bubbles. Year 3 and 4 are also ideal for pirate topics. It fits very well with the literacy target of writing a story in chapters and working with the adventure story genre. It’s much more fun though if you can bring in some cross curricular elements.
Some of these ideas have been adapted from the Belair display books, which are a great source of inspiration. You’ll find a range of them in the book store

Captain Capacity

Pirate Role Play Area

See Also:

Pirate Pop-Ups - moving toys in Year 3

Group 6 - Pimp My Neigborhood, originally uploaded by Red Colander.

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.

Animals display, originally uploaded by loulrc.

This is a delightful Key Stage 1 wall display on the topic of animals. The children have been provided with some basic templates for each animal and a limited range of colours and simple patterns. In this case stripes and spots.

Organisation

It’s easy to set up a classroom to do this sort of lesson either as a whole class activity or, my favourite, for rotating groups. If you go for groups you just need to set up one table for painting. A TA can cover this while the teacher works with the rest of the class on related work, perhaps a writing task. Each group or table works on one animal. Six to eight children is ideal.

You need:

A newspaper covered table
Aprons
Paint brushes
A limited toning paint palate (3 tones of one colour + white) for each animal. Aim to have one between two. (Egg boxes work well as paint containers if you don’t have enough)
Pre-cut animal templates. Simple shapes work best. (I’ve got some of these tucked away somewhere as pdfs. I’ll add them soon- watch out for updates)

Talk About It

Before you start any painting talk about patterns. Demonstrate the effect you want them to use and get them to tell what sort of pattern you are making. Lots of opportunity for vocabulary extension and speaking and listening here.
Keep up the good work once they start painting by providing a commentary and encouraging a dialogue about what they are doing. Draw attention to children who are really concentrating and working well.

The Background

The background could be made from painted strips. If you have more groups than you have animals this works quite well. Otherwise the whole class can help you collage strips of tissue or crepe paper. Tear them rather than cut for a more interesting effect.

The 3d Effect

One of the best things about this display is the way the monkeys are leaning out of it. This gives a really strong 3d effect. Doing it this way does mean a little extra work. The monkeys will need to be painted on one side, left to dry and then painted on the other. Attach them at the top of the display to avoid them being torn by over-enthusiastic viewers