Display for Learning

Guest Post from @Mrs_Hampshire

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.