BFG, originally uploaded by LindaH.

Multi-purpose classroom displays are often the most useful. Year 5 studied the BFG and made their own dream catchers. The glass jar contain children’s bad dreams. Each child filled a jar with things to represent their worst nightmares. The jars are named and have a list of ingredients on the front.
This was a really powerful way of getting them to connect with the book. Everyone tried to have the most awful things in their jar and in the course of doing this there were lots of great opportunities for talking and listening, and for creative problem solving.
The children had to work out how to represent their worst fears in a concrete form that could go inside a jar. Strong stuff, as children tried to work out what to use for war, poverty, famine and death. Of course there were a fair number of spiders and other more nameless monsters too
This work showed a lovely integration of literacy with emotional literacy. It stayed fresh and interesting for a long time too as children read the contents of each jar and discussed issues that would not have been easily raised any other way. Classroom displays that continue being a talking point for weeks like this are worth their weight in gold!

Here’s a good idea for a classroom display that promotes ownership and involvement. Sally says:

Each week someone is the Special Person. They get to embellish the board with whatever they want, do extra jobs for me and have their picture taken to be added to the hall of fame photoalbum I’ve made!…… another thing the special person gets to do…select the joke of the day from my joke book. The jokes are so cheesy it is unbelievable but they find them hilarious!

I’ve worked in lots of classes where variations of this idea have been used but I like the way this one has been linked to the information about what’s happening this week. It draws the rest of the class in more. It made me wonder if there could be room for ‘ what we are learning this week’ on the board as well? If that could be documented, say with a few quick pictures and captions as the week went on, then the photo album could become a record of the year’s work too. What do you think?

Feelings, originally uploaded by angela_oxon.

I wonder if these are stock photos or photos of children in the school? I like the general idea of the display but I wonder if it might have more impact for SEN if these were familiar faces. This display is based in the SEN classroom.
There are some good, free, on-line resources for face reading including Rubberface That uses drawings or this one The Feelings game . I’ve used them with children with syntatic pragmatic disorder or just general speech and language difficulties.
On another note I wonder how much the border adds to this display. I’m assuming it is a pre-cut bought one. Personally I think it’s too busy and will distract children from the thrust of the display.
I like the interactive elements though. It might be fun to have 2 feelings wheels - then the person working with the children could express theirs as well!