Snow Dudes 2008 - updated January 5, 2008
Posted by Linda in : KS1, Seasonal, literacy, winter , add a comment
I blogged a great version of this Snow Dudes classroom display last January. The new one is a slightly different, darker take on the subject.
Debbie says:
I have some bulletin boards that I do year after year because I love them so much. This is one of them.
My Snow Dudes board is one of my favorites! We read a book called “Snow Dude” and then make our own dudes with mini books. This year I actually had to have a few kids re-do their Snow Dudes because they made theirs full of bloody bullet holes or holding chainsaws. Not really appropriate for 2nd grade, no? You still might see a few scary dudes in there, as I did let some slide.
She tags the wall display
Snow Dudes should not be riddled with bullet holes Some kids play too many video games and it messes with their creativity.
I’m she did them again this year. I loved last year’s. This 2nd grade looked to me like they might be harder work but Debbie quickly corrected me:
just wanted to point out again that this class is not “harder work than last year” as you said and blogged. I would hate to give them a label based on their artwork alone. I don’t think that would be quite fair of anyone to say who has not met them. Yes, their sense of creativity is different than last year’s class, but they are a wonderful group of children and are very strong academically.
She’s right or course. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions. To me the dudes don’t look quite so cute but they are still very creative. I like Debbie’s choice of a darker background for this year’s version.
I’m intrigued by the final tag. The imagery of some of the video games is so powerful it blast its way into the kids imaginations and overwhelms them. Still, I can remember little boys of my long ago school days endlessly drawing soldiers, tanks, guns and dead Germans. It’s a stage I think many kids, especially boys, go through. How we handle that in the classroom is quite a tricky question.
Another point raised by the two displays is the different dynamics at play in classes from year to year. Classes almost seem to have a sort of ‘group personality’ and I sometimes wonder if it relates to their collective learning styles or maybe just the balance of genders. It’s one of the aspects of teaching that keeps it fresh and interesting, and the best teachers modify what they do each year to reflect the needs of that class.
A detailed description of the work that went into these classroom display can be found here : Classroom Displays Blog - Snow Dudes
Classroom Display - Materials, ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ December 28, 2007
Posted by Linda in : Art, DT, KS1, halls and corridor displays, literacy , 2comments 
‘Where the Wild Things Are’, originally uploaded by norirelibjk.
This excellent wall display was made for an assembly hall. Using the book ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ as a starting point this Year 2 class made up their own monsters using different materials.
Assembly hall displays give a great opportunity for classes to share their work with the rest of the school. Hall displays tend not to get changed quite as often as classroom displays but it is important to keep them fairly fresh. I think they should be changed at least once every term. The subject needs to be even clearer than for a classroom wall as the audience will not have been involved with the work and so will not have much context for it.
In my old school hall displays were often put up in conjunction with a Sharing Assembly where the class concerned shared what they’d been doing with the rest of the school. It usually worked well and provided an extra opportunity for the class to reflect on not only what, but also how they had learnt about a topic.
This is such a lovely display and it is based on one of my all time favourite children’s books. I think every child should have a right to meet Max in his wolf suit and travel with him to the wild rumpus and be home in time for supper to be “still warm”.
Classroom Displays for Christmas - the Snowman November 24, 2007
Posted by Linda in : Christmas, KS1, KS2, library, quick display, winter , 1 comment so far
There is a place in school for gorgeous classroom displays like this one, that have a real, magical, ‘Wow factor’. Displays like this don’t have much input from the children, don’t showcase work. However, they can be used as a focus for speaking and listening, just so long as staff make the effort to keep referring to them.
This display would not be hard to copy. You just need some sort of shiny background for the sky area. The figures could be traced from The Snowman big book or even scanned, printed off in grey scale, blown up to A3, then coloured in with good pencil crayons and outlined in black felt pen. This version does have hand cut letters which can be time consuming. It’s always worth laminating them when you do use them and storing them for future use. I usually pop them in a plastic pocket in my folder. Oh, and don’t forget to paper clip the letters for each word. Saves lots of sorting! I think I’d get the children involved in making the houses and the trees. You might end up with a few more, and they might not be quite so similar to the book, but I still couldn’t resist getting them involved 
I think having at most one “wow” display in the classroom, or better yet in shared areas, is quite acceptable. Children can be quite entranced by them and this one graced our library for a whole winter term. When the time came to take it down the children were quite sad and if I’m honest so was I Every time I looked at it my mind supplied the first few notes of “Flying in the Air”.
When I was researching the effectiveness of different types of displays for my degree I found some interesting responses from a group of Year 5 children that slightly took me by surprise. They absolutely loved some of the “wow factor” displays and talked with great fondness of ones they remembered from previous years. Not only that, but where some of those displays had been well integrated with the work the children mixed their memories of the display with their reflections on what they had learnt. Good stuff!
So decorative classroom displays can have a greater impact on learning that you might first suppose.
Handy Santas and Angels - quick Christmas card classroom displays November 23, 2007
Posted by Linda in : Christmas, KS1, Seasonal, classroom display, quick display, winter , add a comment
Perfectcircle says:
These were done with hand prints. the heel and thumb painted red, and the fingers white. Messy, but fun!
I think they are great fun and I’m sure the kids did too. They also provide a jolly, almost instant Christmas display.
Here’s another gem from the same classroom:
These are so simple to do - everyone does one hand print in the middle, washes hands, then both hands into lovely gold paint (I think I’d be tempted to add some glitter ). Leave to dry then decorate as desired. They’d be nice hanging from a washing line too. Talking of washing lines…..
Just to finish off, from the classroom of an old friend, how about these?
Classroom Displays for Thanksgiving or Christmas November 22, 2007
Posted by Linda in : Christmas, KS1, KS2, Seasonal , add a comment
Most classroom displays for Thanksgiving are too specific to be easily adapted for use in the UK classroom. This one, from the usually brilliant MrsF, is an exception. I think the disguised turkeys are great fun. There’s lots of opportunity for text rich learning and creativity.
This display could easily be used for just about any primary age group. This is in a kindergarten classroom but I can imagine it giving Year 6 a great deal of fun! Celebrity turkeys perhaps? The Simpsons as turkeys? The placard writing could be extended as well, the turkeys could write an alternative Christmas recipe book perhaps.
Of course it doesn’t have to be in the classroom. Displays like this work well in the hall and that means that several year groups can combine their work. There’s lots here for creative teachers and classes to work on and it’s a bit more original than some more obvious Christmas classroom displays.
I will be doing a number of posts on classroom displays for Christmas over the next few days.
