La Primavera, originally uploaded by lisibo.

Here’s a lovely Key Stage 2 Spanish display for Spring based on the the QCA Spanish KS2 Unit La Primavera.
Lisa says:
The pupils were given an extract of the poem La Primavera by Antonio Machado and rewrote it, giving the daisy a different role.
The extract from the poem was adapted by the pupils, replacing the words highlighted with their own place and role for the daisy (la margarita)

Pupils replaced the word for place, une escuella (a school), with their own choices such as una piscina (a pool), un parque (a park) un supermarcado (a supermarket)

Then una maestra ( a teacher) was changed to la salvavidas-the lifeguard, la dependienta - the shopassistant, la recepcionista - the receptionist etc

The children’s work is really delightful and they’ve obviously taken a lot of pride in producing it.

Kites, originally uploaded by LindaH.

Here’s a lovely classroom display idea for a windy March afternoon in Keystage 1:
The background was done onto sheets of A3 white paper with a technique called “bagging”. It’s messy

You need

Music - optional but fun

Instructions

Crumple up a carrier bag to make a ball, dip it in the dark blue paint, push it down on the flat bit of the paint tray (if you’ve used one) or onto some newspaper to remove some of the paint and then print onto the paper by dabbing it quickly. You want the bag fairly dry, not overloaded with paint.

I said it was messy!

When all done and dry select best ones for background. Lettering can either be cut from spare sheets or clouds can be cut to show background through.

The same technique can be used with shades of grey to make clouds.

Or even surf

Sunflower display, originally uploaded by LindaH.

I’m going to do a series of posts highlighting classroom displays for spring over the next week or so. I love this cheery display, it’s an ideal spring display and could be adapted in a number of ways to include class work if used in an older classroom.

All the things on this display were been made by children (oldest is age 4) and their parents. The families worked with the school learning mentors as part of the family learning initiative.

The butterflies and bees can be seen in more detail here:

Julie, a learning mentor said:

The butterflies proved rather addictive and were great fun to make . Originally the learning mentors made them for a craft stall at the school fair.

The butterflies were made from clothes pegs and tissue paper squares. Bee wings were made by drawing round children’s feet on wax paper.

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Classroom dragon, originally uploaded by hale_popoki.

This was the first ever display on the Classroom Displays blog and I thought I’d revive it as it remains one of the best I’ve seen for Chinese New Year.
Tina said this display was:

used in our multicultural performance today.
(After school I removed the grip sticks and hung the dragon up in the classroom.)
The body is made of paper plates all strung together….one plate for each student (and one for me) Each plate has a self-portrait drawing on it

She also adds some important advice:

If you do try it, I’d suggest NOT using tissue paper for the dragon scales. It wrinkles too easily, especially if little ones are handling it.
Our school colors are red and gold, and the quickest way for me to get the red and gold paper on short notice was to go to the gift wrap section of the local Walgreen’s! However, gold was only available in gift wrap tissue. On the plus side, I used the school die-cutter to cut out the dragon scales, and that was done quickly using the thin tissue paper.
I think this school year I will try to shop around for inexpensive red and gold wrapping paper around Christmas time. =)
It took me a lot longer than I thought to string all those plates together (and I crossed my fingers that it wouldn’t fall apart as the students paraded across the stage with it! It didn’t……phew!)

I’d love to have seen it in action! If you do decide to copy it please let me know here. I’d like to see other people’s interpretations of the dragon.

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