Classroom Displays for Anti-Bullying Week November 17, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS2, Seasonal, project based learning, pshe, quick display , add a comment
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:
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 - Connectives and Owl Babies October 20, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS1, literacy , 5comments 
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.
Healthy Eating Display - A taste of Spain October 19, 2007
Posted by Linda in : Science, Spanish, pshe , 4comments 
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 - moving toys in Year 3 September 13, 2007
Posted by Linda in : KS2, project based learning , 1 comment so far 
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
