DISPLAYS FOR
LEARNING
Display play a vital role in the classroom, not just to
promote a positive and inviting learning environment but also to develop
individual’s learning. Displays should
be interactive and be incorporated into students’ day to day learning
experience.
Interactive
displays: Some examples
1) Climbing the level ladder
This works by monitoring student progress
throughout the academic year.
Students design their own counter (in this
case I asked students to design their own flag). This is then given a code (for teacher
reference) and placed at the stage students are working at after the first data
capture. Throughout the year students
take responsibility for moving their counters as they progress throughout the
level. This allows students to get a
deeper satisfaction from their achievement and allows them to track where they
are in relation to others in their year (each flag is backed to illustrate year
group), adding an element of competition.
2) Have you hit your target grade?
This works in a similar way to the level
ladder, although aimed at KS4 students.
If students are on or above their target grade they should be on the bullseye. For every grade below their target students
are moved a ring out. This can take the
same format as the level ladder (with students having counters) or names can be
used.
3) How successful were you in achieving your
objective?
This works as part of a self-evaluation
task at the end of lessons. Students
should evaluate their learning in the lesson by considering WWW and EBI. They should then relate this to their
objective and decide how successful they were in achieving their personal
objective. On the way out of the room
they place their name on the target to illustrate their success (e.g. place on
the bullseye if they feel their objective has been fully achieved)
4) Short thoughts
This works by giving students a resource to
provoke their thought on a topic related to the lesson (this could be an image,
graph, question, key term etc) and students are to write their initial ideas
onto a post-it note. This post-it is
placed on the short thought board (can be discussed as a class) and then
returned to at the end of the lesson.
Students are, at the end of the lesson/activity, to reflect on whether
their initial thoughts were correct and can use ‘purple pens of progress’
(previously discussed) to improve their work.
This is an excellent way to illustrate progress throughout the course of
a lesson.
5) Student of the month
This is designed to praise student
achievement. Names are clearly displayed
in the classroom for the month with an explanation for choice. This promotes a positive attitude to learning
and increases student aspirations.
6) Word wall
Try having a wall of subject specific key
terms or connective words. These can
either be as a visual aid to refer to at different points in a lesson or can be
a resource from which students can go and select words which are relevant to
the task and their target level. These
words, sentence starters etc can then be taken back to their desks and be used
to aid the development of written pieces.
Displays don’t have to be where work completed is
evidenced. Yes it is important to show
exemplar work but it is equally important that it stands out (try making 3-D
displays) and is a tool for student development.
