IMG_1967, originally uploaded by LMH_.

This hall display was made to represent the diverse nature of the school population.

The background was divided up with masking tape and painted with fabric paint. The hands were made by children drawing round their own hands, cutting them out of felt, and sticking them on. It was made with the help of one of our school’s learning mentors, Julie Lawrence. It’s meant to symbolise the circle of friendship in our school.

I think it looks very effective with the light coming through and it carries an important message. Many of the children who worked on this were troubled in some way and the learning mentors used the making of the display as part of an informal friendship building programme.

Story Starters, originally uploaded by Glazgow.

You can’t have too many ideas for story starter classroom displays. Here’s another gem and this time the phrases have come from the class:

The children did a “Walkabout, Talkabout” and came up with all the ideas for Where, When, Who and What could happen in a story.

They now use the display to help them chose characters, setting etc for their story writing.

I like the use of colour in this display. The colours actually add meaning helping the children to classify the phrases. It’s also not too busy.

Using the class to generate the scenarios and phrases is much more powerful than just providing them.They will feel more ownership of the display if they know it is based on their ideas. It is just vitally important that the staff resist the temptation to just pop up the same words next year, as they’ve got them already laminated This sort of recycling happens too often and when it does engaging classroom displays lose much of their impact.

Andrea from Interim Reports has been to Cathkin Community Nursery this week. She says:

Loved the good news tree, which grows bigger throughout the session - different types of good news - little people who might have managed to sleep in their own bed the whole night, maybe they’ve got a new brother or sister. Huge opportunities for self expression, talking and listening, psd etc etc….

Liz Mercer the Head of the establishment her Depute and staff are inspiring and have a very welcoming ethos and love to share their ideas.

I just love this display! It could be adapted to be used in any school. Wouldn’t it be great to have a huge one in a school entrance or hall?

Here’s some “children’s voice” about their display work in action P6 at Loirston School have been blogging about how they made their display about climates. Good work!

» Coping with Climate Project wall Display Primary 6 at Loirston
Coping with Climate Project wall Display

February 21, 2008

We made a wall display by splitting into groups and making a part of the wall display each. The four climates are the Desert, Rain Forest, Polar and the Woodland.

Anti-Bullying Week (Nov 19th-23rd) classroom displays can be done very quickly and without much fuss. This one was done by Year 3 in one morning as a cross curricular activity. It combined literacy, art and PSHE with lots of emotional intelligence and project based learning along the way. (Oh, and handwriting practice) The teacher and I provided anti-bullying leaflets and literature, access to the web, and lots of support and advice.
I already had the sun and the cloud. Actually, I made them with a year 1 class as props for an assembly about 7 years ago!
Children worked with talk partners, each pair produced a tear drop with a short poem about the feeling of being bullied, an example of bullying behaviour to go on the cloud and a strategy to use if someone tries to bully you to go on the sun.
Work was added to the display as soon as it was made so it developed over the course of the morning. By 12:15 we had a fine display and a room full of contented Year 3s who were feeling very pleased with themselves. (Not to mention three tired but happy adults.)
It was a great morning’s work and the room buzzed with that happy noise that classrooms full of happy learners make.
If you are interested in displays for Anti Bullying week you may want to look at these posts too - Classroom Displays - Anti-Bullying
There are some good resources for Anti-Bullying Week on these sites: