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

This is an interesting numeracy display which a 4th grade (Year 3) class have done. It’s obviously been the result of a whole class activity and I think using the children’s own hand prints makes quite a strong impact.

I do think it could have been more clearly labelled though. It’s not always obvious what operation has been performed and that could have been used to advantage. Had it been a classroom display a bit more interactivity could have been added with questions and cards on string to turn over to see if you were right.

Although I like the idea of the display I think it’s a bit messy. The layout spills over the edge of the board in a slightly random way which I don’t think works. I would have preferred to see it within a frame and with more even spacing. But then I’m a bit fussy like that Actually, classroom displays that aren’t mounted absolutely straight and evenly spaced drive me nuts!

It can be hard to get creative with numeracy classroom displays. Here’s a lovely interactive numeracy idea to challenge early finishers. It’s also great use of the, slightly grim, brick corners many classrooms have. Rosa says:

Children have various questions to answer. This is used at the beginning of the lesson and the end, for those ‘what do I do now ?’ times.

This display could be adapted for any age just by varying the questions based on their current targets. The questions are colour coded and differentiated so they give a great opportunity for independent work.

The laminated digits and posters make this an almost instant display and, by varying the questions over the year, it can have a permanent place in the classroom. If you look closely you’ll see there is even a space underneath the questions for the children to post their solutions:

Quick to make, easy to copy with an element of interaction and space for children’s voice. All together a really great use of classroom displays as learning objects.

Maths Words, originally uploaded by angela_oxon.

Continuing the theme of quick classroom displays I noticed that quite a few people were searching for numeracy ones this week. This one is simple enough. I think if I’d been doing it I would have grouped the words ‘add’ ’subtract’ ‘multiply’ and ‘divide’ into the centre next to the symbols. I might also have colour coded each group.
This displays is only a quick one if you already have the letters cut out or are lucky enough to have a school alphabet die cutter. I have done a similar one with the words hand written (large) in vivid marker pen colours and then cut out and laminated. This gives you the opportunity to use them as a class or group sorting activity.
Top Tip
Once you have cut out the letters, laminate them and store in a plastic envelope. Ideally each word should be held together with a paperclip. Saves ages sorting them out next time you want to use the display!

I like this numeracy display. It can be hard to get numeracy displays that engage the children. Too often maths displays are made ‘fun’ by using cartoon characters or they are totally made from bought resources. I’m sure the children enjoyed making this one. Once it was on the wall it must have provided a strong visual reminder not just of the multiplication facts but also of the underlying concept.

By the way this image came from an unidentified visiter to a new site from Mark at Teaching Ideas called DisplayPhotos . Rather like a small scale Classroom Displays Flickr Group the site allows people to register and upload their own images, tag them and add descriptions and comments. I joined and had a look round and there are some interesting ideas and images there. The site is fairly easy to navigate and could prove useful, especially if you can’t access Flickr from school.