Classroom Displays

Matisse, originally uploaded by LindaH.

Displays don’t have to be just for the classroom. This one is on a notice board at the entrance to a London Overground train station next to the school.

This display is from a year 3 class who have been studying Matisse collages. There are some very good resources about Matisse’s work The Snail online. My favourites include:

the Tate Modern’s animation of the making of The Snail

the Textease resources on the Lancashire ngfl site. This one is traditionally used for the year 5 graphical modelling ICT unit but could easily be adapted for other years.

The display at the entrance to the station changes very regularly showcasing the work of different classes in the school. I think it connects the school with the surrounding community in a very powerful way and must provide the children with a real sense of authentic audience.

Our word wall, originally uploaded by Glazgow.

Several people have asked for phonics classroom displays. I’m not surprised as they are hard to do well. One approach, that produces a really interactive display, is to go for a word wall.
Glazgow did this one with a Primary 3 (7 year olds) class in Scotland. He says

Our word wall (window actually). Has all the phonemes, the alphabet, common words (tricky words) and punctuation. It also has 6 lines which can be used to make sentences when working with the children.

This is a great working display that can be brought out year after year. It can be used by individuals, groups or for whole class teaching. All that needs to be done is to laminate everything and use lots of sticky putty.
It’s important that it is placed at child height so that it can be used easily.
I’m in two minds about using window space this way. There are good arguments both for and against. What do you think?

Properties of Materials Yr3, originally uploaded by LindaH.

This properties of materials classroom display was done as a small group sorting and vocabulary activity for an able group with lots of discussion.
The property labels are printed off and laminated. The group are split and each half are given a box of identical items, a different assortment of labels and are asked to use the labels to sort them.
The two groups then come together and have to agree which labels are most descriptive of the properties of the materials each item is made from. There’s lots of discussion and an experienced TA can help them make sure they back up their arguments.
Once labels are agreed the items are put on the display with their labels. Just don’t ask how I reached up!
You must use lots of sticky putty or even better velcro sticky pads or they’ll fall off! I have also put stuff in plastic envelopes and pinned them up with drawing pins which I think worked slightly better.

I’ve blogged this display in response to a request in the Skribit box in the sidebar of the blog. Look out for more displays suggested by readers over the next few weeks and don’t forget to add own suggestions or vote for the ones you’d like to see.

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

originally uploaded by fredondopa

These wonderful classroom displays are from the latest member of the Classroom Displays group . It looks like this project produced lots of wonderful displays and what looks like some very high quality learning. Just take a look at this slideshow to see what I mean:

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The slideshow and the related blog El sistema solar are in Spanish Catalan. You might have to use google translate  find a Catalan dictionary but there are some wonderful resources on the blog including more slideshows, presentations, animations and more. Even if you don’t speak Spanish  Catalan there’s lots there to inspire you to explore the Solar System in your classroom