, originally uploaded by hello megan.

A vibrant window display is just the thing to cheer up a ’spring’ classroom. I love the effect Megan has achieved with this one.
As you can see in this detail it’s collaged from magazines

Megan says:

Before class, I cut the rainbow shape out of a roll of white paper and marked the 7 color divisions. I had my class (2nd) mark which colors went where and gave them magazines to cut out any great examples of each color. Each table was assigned a color, and put their cutouts into a bowl. From there any class that had a free minute of two dug into those bowls and glued the pics on in their spot.

So you can see it’s pretty straight-forward. It really does count as a quick and easy classroom display!
I’ve done rainbows on windows before particularly with Key Stage 1 groups. The groups each did a colour. We painted the window with the following mixture:

Washable Window Paint

Tempera Paints (powdered or premixed)
Clear washing-up liquid (lemon ones work ok, green ones can make colours a bit off)

Mix powdered paint with the liquid till it is about as thick as house paint. With premixed paints just mix in a smallamount of washing-up liquid. Do not make it too runny or it will drip!

Mark out your colour areas with a dry wipe marker pen.

Let each colour dry before adding the next one.

Use masking tape to protect the window frame and be sure to spread newspaper around to protect the area.

To remove paint or touch up mistakes just wipe it off with a dry paper towel. Do not try using a wet towel or it will be a real mess!!

I think I like Megan’s way better anyway!

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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Fruit and Veg - A taste of Spain 1, originally uploaded by LindaH.

This stunning classroom display from Mrs Littman’s Year 5 class at Kingston Primary in Benfleet, Essex won a first prize of £2000 in the Taste of Spain collage competition for UK Primary schools. I strongly suspect a Teaching Assistant might have been very busy with this display I hope she had a group helping. It’s amazing what you can do with crepe paper and it’s not nearly as time consuming as you might think.
My own favourite came from Mrs Greisens’ Year 3 class at Warren Road Primary, Orpington in Kent. This came second and won £1000 for the school. It had slightly more obvious pupil involvement I think. Some of the fruit is cut from magazines, other bits have been painted and cut out, then dried stuff has been stuck on top. I love the pictures round the edge of this one of the kids trying all the different fruit.

There was whole pack of resources to go with this competition. They looked great and would be just the thing to go with Healthy Eating week. I hope they put them online again next year as they are running the competition again in 2008. The standard of displays was not impossibly high and I hope many more schools enter classroom displays next year .

Pirate Pop-Ups, originally uploaded by LindaH.

Pneumatics were used to make these pop-up toys by Year 3. You can see how they work from the back here:

The basic design used a cereal box. One side was covered in blue funky foam (neoprene) and simple shapes were cut out to make the scene. Children then made a pirate, jolly roger, shark or other monster and stuck it onto a lolly pop stick. The pnuematic system was then attached using masking tape.
This formed part of the Treasure Island themed work for the Telling into Writing project. More details about Telling into Writing on usefulwiki

Originally uploaded by Vikellis

A collage designed and made by a Yr8 form, from used plastic bags. It was part of an environmental issues unit, and was displayed in the Hall, in an attempt to raise awareness of “the plastic bag problem”.

It can be hard to make meaningful displays in shared areas - especially in High School. There’s a tendency to go for the “Wow!” factor rather than to engage with the pupils. They are often seen as spaces for the school to showcase work to visitors rather than somewhere for classes to share learning and connect with the wider school community.

This one however, is a really good example of using the space to tackle a topical issue. The display itself may be a little messy but that suits the subject and it is obviously the work of the students rather than that of a TA. I think that’s one of it’s major strengths. This display sets out to engage and educate the school community rather than to impress visitors.

It’s good to see that there’s a regular flow of senior school work starting to appear in the Classroom Displays Group and I hope to feature it more regularly on the blog.