Kenyan Mat Display December 5, 2007
Posted by Linda in : Art, KS2, quick display , add a comment 
Kenyan mat display, originally uploaded by norirelibjk.
This is a very effective classroom wall display that could be created in a single lesson.
First we folded the card in half and made cuts from the folded edge. We didn’t just do straight cuts but used patterns too. We then wove strips of coloured paper through, (using Kenyan Flag colours). (the final shot shows )A finished woven paper mat ready to be laminated.
This is a lovely project and using the limited colour range of the flag makes it a better and more meaningful display. I really like this project and I think it and the accompanying Masai necklace classroom display work very well.
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 Anti-Bullying Week November 17, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS2, Seasonal, project based learning, pshe, quick display , add a comment
Anti-Bullying Week (Nov 19th-23rd) classroom displays can be done very quickly and without much fuss. This one was done by Year 3 in one morning as a cross curricular activity. It combined literacy, art and PSHE with lots of emotional intelligence and project based learning along the way. (Oh, and handwriting practice) The teacher and I provided anti-bullying leaflets and literature, access to the web, and lots of support and advice.
I already had the sun and the cloud. Actually, I made them with a year 1 class as props for an assembly about 7 years ago!
Children worked with talk partners, each pair produced a tear drop with a short poem about the feeling of being bullied, an example of bullying behaviour to go on the cloud and a strategy to use if someone tries to bully you to go on the sun.
Work was added to the display as soon as it was made so it developed over the course of the morning. By 12:15 we had a fine display and a room full of contented Year 3s who were feeling very pleased with themselves. (Not to mention three tired but happy adults.)
It was a great morning’s work and the room buzzed with that happy noise that classrooms full of happy learners make.
If you are interested in displays for Anti Bullying week you may want to look at these posts too - Classroom Displays - Anti-Bullying
There are some good resources for Anti-Bullying Week on these sites:
Classroom Displays for International Human Rights Day November 15, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS2, Seasonal, pshe, quick display , 3comments 
Children’s Rights, originally uploaded by LindaH.
Alice is blogging about Human Rights Day which is on December 10th. The focus for the last 3 years has been on education :
.. focus on primary and secondary education, through integrating human rights issues into curricula, changing educational processes and teaching methods and, most importantly, improving the environment in which education takes place.
OHCHR
In my last school we tried to help the children think beyond their own situation and to consider children’s needs, rights and responsibilities.
It was done as a whole school initiative, integrated into PSHE, circle time and some of the geography units. This display was from Year 3 and might not be as ‘perfect’ as some. It’s backed on sugar paper, which fades and doesn’t last, it has no border and the spacing is quite random. To me it looks a bit scrappy but, and it’s an important but, this was very much the children’s display. They were deeply touched and quite shocked by some of the things we covered. This was their response and in some ways that makes it much more powerful than a ‘perfect’ display.
