Owl day 034, originally uploaded by Leeds Lass.

This is a delightful classroom display that uses one of my favourite books. Owl Babies is a wonderful story that children in Year 2 and even Year 3 love to read. There’s something about the story of those three little owls, especially Percy’s constant longing for his Mummy, that really resonates for this age group.
Here it’s been used to show how a story webs and ladders can be used to map out plots. The display also encourages the children to make longer sentences by using connectives and time words. The display has a well thought out mix of visual imagery taken from the book, explanations, vocabulary words (interesting connectives and time words) and children’s work.
The cuddly owls, ivy and 3d tree add a real ‘wow’ factor to the display making it likely to grab children’s attention. Close inspection of the owls suggests that they are commercially made toys. However it wouldn’t be impossible to make something less elaborate from fun fur to achieve a similar effect. On the tree stump and branch wood grain wall paper has been used to great effect and fake ivy round the tree stump adds another attractive 3d element.

Titles and text have all been laminated and the major elements of this display could be stored and brought out again another year making it fairly quick to re-create.
The children’s work has been well integrated into the display. They have used what they’ve learnt about story webs to weave one for another Year 2 favourite, The Lighthouse Keeper’s Catastrophe. All in all I think this is a fine classroom display

Up Dated

Following a request in the comments to this post Michelle has provided us with more details of how the display linked into her literacy activities.

Photographs

Drama activities based on the Owl Babies book:
Freeze frame-owlets at different stages of the story

Hot seating-Babies and Mother

Conscience Alley-child in role of Mummy Owl

Ladder

Set out as

Beginning

Middle

End

Writing

Retell story of Owl Babies as a story ladder.

Display

Time words on the branches.

Connectives are displayed within the web

Story Web

Based on Pig in the Pond-could be any sequential story. Each child wrote part of the story/illustrated it, then displayed within the web. FIRST they had done the frame activity which involved passing a ball of wool round as they each told part of the story, in and back to the middle, thereby weaving a story web.

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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?

Women’s History Month, originally uploaded by Girl Least Likely To.

1st (Year 2) grade students wrote what they wanted to be when they grew up and they used these great women’s stories of their own achievements as an inspiration. The teacher posted pictures and information on great women like Amelia Earhart,Toni Morrison,& Madame C.J.Walker to name a few

I like the way this display has mixed the stories of the famous women with the children’s aspirations for the future. It changes the board from being about ‘people from long ago’ to something the children can feel they are a part of .
I’d like to think the teacher had included work from both genders but I believe it was a ‘girls only’ display. How do other people feel about this? Is it justified to exclude the work of part of a class from a display?
Why shouldn’t the boys too have learned about and been inspired by these famous women?

Handa’s Surprise, originally uploaded by LindaH.

This interesting classroom display is currently one of the most viewed photos in the Classroom Displays group on Flickr and I can see why!
Not all displays have to be for children’s work. This display was created by a Year 2 TA last year and shows how an eye-catching display can be used to carry story prompts.
This can be an effective teaching tool if the display is kept fresh by building up the prompts as the class explores story writing. The display needs to be pointed to as a classroom resource where children can be reminded to look. The same prompts can be used by the children as checklists for editing their own work.
This particular classroom display was so lovely that it transferred to the library after Year 2 had moved on.

I like this display from Clare in the Sparklebox Displays Gallery. The use of a black background with the red mounting and border emphasises the dramatic nature of the subject. I think the flame shaped ‘fast facts’ work well too. I’d like to have seen the children’s work mounted onto red too and perhaps even shaped like the facts. It might be petty of me but I’d also like the work to be either lined up straight or deliberately skewed - just off square grates on my visual senses

The Great Fire of London is an important topic for Year 2 history. The QCA guidelines give a good framework for dealing with what could be a difficult subject for Keystage 1 and seem to have the level about right.

With more TAs finding themselves teaching classes like History to cover PPA time I think we’ll see lessons sticking even closer to the QCA. It would be a shame though if they didn’t take the chance to explore some of the more interesting web based resources for the topic.

• The Museum of London has a Day by Day guide to the fire which is a bit like a blog.
• Samuel Pepys is an interesting site but it’s going to need a lot of interpreting for Year 2
• There are also some basic free downloads relating to the topic to use in displays available on the Sparklebox web site.