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

Christmas angels - Peace on earth, originally uploaded by perfect_circle80.

I am about to vanish for a couple of days holiday but I couldn’t resist this one before I go. Amazing what you can do with shiny paints, sequin waste, old wrapping paper and paper doilies! These angels would brighten up any classroom and couldn’t be simpler.

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.

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?

This is another winter display with a speaking and listening focus. It comes from the same teacher as the Red, Red Robin display. Click on play to hear what she has to say about this display and how she used it. Don’t be shy If you have a mike on your computer why not click record and leave a comment about this display or winter classroom displays in general?

You can see a larger version of this photo in my Flickr photos or just click on the image here to zoom in. I’m using a service called Voicethreads for this post. If you have any problems viewing it, you love it or you hate it please leave a message in the comments on the blog. Thanks