Classroom Displays for International Human Rights Day November 15, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS2, Seasonal, pshe, quick display , 3comments 
Children’s Rights, originally uploaded by LindaH.
Alice is blogging about Human Rights Day which is on December 10th. The focus for the last 3 years has been on education :
.. focus on primary and secondary education, through integrating human rights issues into curricula, changing educational processes and teaching methods and, most importantly, improving the environment in which education takes place.
OHCHR
In my last school we tried to help the children think beyond their own situation and to consider children’s needs, rights and responsibilities.
It was done as a whole school initiative, integrated into PSHE, circle time and some of the geography units. This display was from Year 3 and might not be as ‘perfect’ as some. It’s backed on sugar paper, which fades and doesn’t last, it has no border and the spacing is quite random. To me it looks a bit scrappy but, and it’s an important but, this was very much the children’s display. They were deeply touched and quite shocked by some of the things we covered. This was their response and in some ways that makes it much more powerful than a ‘perfect’ display.
Literacy Display - The BFG October 10, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS2 , add a comment 
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!
Special Person Bulletin Board October 4, 2007
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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?
Target Board September 21, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS1, quick display , comments closed.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }
Our Target Board, originally uploaded by Leeds Lass.
The use of classroom displays for targets is becoming more widespread but often they are quite dull and quickly become ‘wallpaper’. It’s great to see a more innovative approach like this one.
Here you can see the whole effect:
This display is just ‘targets’ the children have chose for themselves to achieve whilst they are in year 2. They range from being kind to others to learning to write in joined up handwriting. The display is only up for a short while and the rockets will be filed in class to remind the children about what they said they would like to achieve.
This idea could be extended with older classes by having a system for them to mark on the display when targets are met. It might be nice to have a visual representation and it might help to keep the display from becoming ‘wallpaper’. If you are using the display over the whole term how about the next set of targets being on different coloured paper? I think there’s a lot more you could do with this classroom display. What do you think?
Behaviour incentives - pizza party points September 6, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS1, KS2, quick display , 2comments 
pizza party points, originally uploaded by quemarropa.
Classroom displays can be a vital part of a behaviour management strategy. Lots of teachers are trying out visual incentives to improve behaviour but it can be hard to keep them positive. This is a fun idea which can easily be adapted to suit your classroom.
each table group is assigned a color, which corresponds to a colored pizza topping. the table group that gets the most points each day (for behavior, responsibility, cooperation, respect, etc) puts their topping on the pizza. once we have 30 toppings total -with each table contributing at least 4- we have a pizza party!
The toppings etc. are stored in the pizza box. I think it’s a lot more fun than traffic lights!
I think you would need to have the criteria for points clearly set out so that pupils knew what to aim for. Sometimes we assume they know what we want and really they don’t. Concepts like respect and responsibility need to be explained. The pupils need to know what that concept looks like, what it sounds like. The ones who really need to won’t catch this stuff by osmosis.
Update: Quemarropa adds:
NOTE: the first week of school, i modeled some of the ways students can get points. sometimes, i’ll do an end-of-day “what did we learn?” quiz and award points to tables. sometimes, the first table that has followed instructions completely gets a point. sometimes, if a table member helps another student with a difficult concept, i’ll give the whole table a point. but i’m quick to point out that i’m looking for a variety of things and not every good act gets a point… because i EXPECT good acts from every table. at this point, they know i’m looking for exceptional behavior and classwork. if i notice one table is slacking, i’ll subtly add tallies to the other tables that are on task and usually the kids pick up on this and get back to work. today i had a meeting and another teacher administered a quiz. my kids were absolutely WONDERFUL… respectful and 100% on-task, so every table added a topping to the pizza for showing exemplary behavior with a guest teacher. it’s working beautifully so far!
Great description of the system in action
