Have you ever put together an interactive classroom display?
Classroom wall displays that are fun and engage your students are a must for any classroom! Not only do they create a welcoming, mentally-stimulating classroom environment, but they can be educational too!
Transforming your classroom with an interactive display takes a little time and care, but it’s well worth the effort.
An interactive classroom display can:
- capture student interest about a particular teaching topic
- mentally challenge students
- help students practise skills related to their learning
- be used to help students calm down and refocus when they need a break from learning.
How to Make an Interactive Classroom Display
There’s really only one rule you need to follow to create an interactive display – it needs to be accessible to your students! The level of interaction that your display allows is up to you, but it needs to have an element that can be changed or manipulated in order to encourage student involvement.
We’ve downloaded some of our most engaging teaching resources to show you just how easy it is to create an interactive classroom display and immerse your students in their learning.
(1) “I Wonder?” Wall
Engage your students at the beginning of a new unit of work by creating an “I Wonder…?” Wall!
Simply create a space for your students to jot down their questions and thoughts as you introduce a new topic to your lessons. This can be used at the beginning of any unit of work and is a great way to encourage higher-order thinking and inquiry-based learning.
For more information on the power of asking questions in the classroom, read Holly’s blog 10 Ways to Encourage Students to Ask Questions in Class.
(2) Measuring Madness
The thing about teaching maths is that there are so many concepts to cover in a year. You often teach something for a few weeks and then move on without a great chance to consolidate your students’ learning.
Putting together a manipulative wall such as our measuring madness wall can help draw your students into a topic and then review and revise their understanding for weeks to come!
For this cool wall, we used our Measurement Classroom Decoration Pack and Units of Measurement Word Wall Vocabulary. Then, we just put as many random things on the wall as we could find!
Why not provide the students with some rulers or tape measures to actually measure the objects? It would make a great station in any maths rotation. Happy measuring, class!
(3) Morning Brainstorm
Get your class’s brains fired up with a morning brainstorming wall!
Simply place a new ‘answer’ onto your brainstorm wall each morning. What the answer is, is up to you!
Your answers can be as simple as a number (The answer is 42…what’s the question?) or an answer specific to a unit of work you are doing. Your students’ brains will be buzzing with all the possibilities, and their questions may surprise you!
As your students come into the classroom each morning, give them the task of being a ‘brainstorm detective’! Ask them to read the answer and formulate a possible question. Once they’ve come up with a question, they can add their question to the morning brainstorm wall.
So that you can easily add this interactive classroom display to your morning routine, we’ve added a What’s the Question? Wall Display – Lower Years and What’s the Question? Wall Display – Upper Years to our resources! Just simply print out the PDF display which comes with over 40 ready-to-use answers. Once you’ve used them all up, you can create your own answer cards using the Word Doc version!
(4) Giant Colouring Fun
Have you heard of mindful colouring?
Well, that can extend to your interactive classroom display!
Placing a printout of our Giant Colouring Sheet onto your wall can create a station in your room where students can go when they need a bit of a mindful brain break or calm down area.
The best thing is that you can also print out this resource on single A4 size paper so each student can have their own copy
(5) Make a Nonsense Word
If your students are up for some nonsense-word fun, then this is the interactive classroom display for you!
Nonsense words are a great way to teach students about word decoding, syllables and sounds.
To make this wall, simply print off some word parts, place them in easily accessible envelopes, and let the fun begin! Students pull out and combine word parts to create some crazy, mixed-up words to read!
Depending on your students’ abilities, you can either print off whole word parts or single phonemes. I’ve chosen to use our Suffixes Puzzles Match Up Cards and Prefixes Puzzles Match Up Cards to create some easy word beginnings, middles and endings.
For an extra bit of learning, have your students add their nonsense word creations to a class list for the whole class to read! They can also try to figure out how many letters, sounds, and syllables each nonsense word has.
(6) Search-a-Rooney Wall
What on Earth is a search-a-rooney, you may be asking yourself!?
Well, it’s simple! A search-a-rooney is an amazing visual display that challenges students to use their powers of observation and deduction to find interesting items! If students need a moment to focus, send them to the search-a-rooney.
You can create a search-a-rooney from anything you can attach to a wall!
- Can you find 5 things beginning with the letter ‘p’?
- How many crayons are on the display?
- What are some things you would use outside?
- Can you find the words ‘Find Me’?
You can even change the visual challenge to suit your lesson topic or theme for the term so it can be as interchangeable as you want. I loved using the Bright Chevron Themed Display Banner to theme mine, but let your imagination run wild!
(7) Count Down Calendar
This last interactive classroom display is sure to get your class excited!
Create a countdown calendar to an event or occasion that your class is working towards! Are you looking forward to a celebration? Are you going on an excursion? Count down to the day with fun activities and resources linked to that occasion. Reveal a new surprise activity to your class each day.
I’ve created an excitement-building countdown display for a class excursion to the planetarium using our Classroom Decoration Pack – Space Theme!
Then, I put together my decorations with 10 envelopes with activities related to outer space!
Why stop at 10 days to countdown? The limit is up to you and your imagination.
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