I promised something more practical for my next post, so inspired by last night’s #ukedchat, here are 6 ideas for classroom displays
1. Giant mind map
I wanted a way for all my year 12 students to work together to create an overview of their first module.
9 sheets of flipchart paper and some sellotape later, we had the canvas for a giant mind map!
We pushed some tables together to make a work space, I drew in the centre and the main branches,and the students then filled in the rest.
As this particular class got a bit stuck on the thing they were filling in, after a certain amount of time we slowly circled the whole thing, fixing any problems we saw.
Next time I do this, I’m going to leave enough time to go over everything in black pen to help it stand out a bit, but on the whole a great activity. Revision (check), Conversation about different ways of learning (check), Great visual reminder for the wall (check). Job’s a good’un!
2. Timeline
No history classroom is complete without a timeline. This is one I created a few years ago, with links to some of the topics we teach. In addition to the timeline, all the events are on cards as well, so we can do various chronology exercises with them, particularly at the start of the year.
This is version 3, and I’m still not 100% happy with it, but feel free to download it from the history shareforum and change it to suit your needs (Publisher needed I’m afriad :0( )
3. .If … had Facebook
A great idea from various people on the internets, use this template to have students create the facebook pages of various historical chartacters. Can be simplified for KS3 / 4.
And if you want to do the same thing online, you can now use @Russeltarr’s latest creation – Fakebook
4. Blooms taxonomy / key learning words
Great to be able to refer to when talking about what kind of tasks people are doing and why. Can’t find the poster I use right now, but will add it when I do.
5. The ceiling
My comment that I use my ceiling for more permanent displays raised a few comments last night! It houses the best of the homework projects from the last couple of years, as well as a series of quote posters hanging down. Just gone to find the links for those and I can’t, so I’ll add them to the historyshareforum tonight and update this post when I do!
6. Corridor competitions
As part of their 20th century decades topic, each year 9 class I teach is divided into 10 groups, each with one decade. They compete with the groups with my other year 9 classes to be the one that produces the best poster for that decade. Only one from each of my four classes can make the wall!