This diorama was produced by a girl in Grade 3 in a US elementary school. It’s featured in a new blog called Re-inventing Project Based Learning
Jane Krauss, the blog’s author has some kind words about the Classroom Displays blog and group and then asks an interesting question:

What do class displays tell us about what goes on in school, and about what we value in student work?

My own feeling is that in this case some of what we are valuing here is that ‘doll’s house’ urge that many little girls go through. There’s a delight in the miniturisation of the world combined with an almost obsessive eye for detail. I have vivid memories of just such a topic that grabbed my attention as an 8 year old. I spent a whole term obsessed with yurts, gers, and all things Mongolian. I built a tiny village of gers with my own handmade felt and willow twigs, made covers, rugs, and saddle bags and generally lost myself in the creation of my own tiny world. I’m not sure how much I actually learned that term, when others were doing maths or writing poems, I remained steadfastly perfecting my village. Long after the project was over I continued my interest and even now I still love yurts.

That was the topic work of the long ago ‘60 and ’70s and it was swept away in England with the introduction of the National Curriculum. But of course it was never really totally swept away. Good teachers always look for ways of introducing themes, it’s just that now they might be called ‘cross curricular integration’. They’ve always looked for ways of providing work that caught children’s interests at a particular stage of development, that channeled children’s skills and built on their existing capabilities. It’s just that now it might be called ‘personalisation of learning’.

I recently asked a teacher who does a great deal of work that could be described as themed how she felt about the latest swing of the pendulum back towards project work. She surprised me by recoiling in horror. With all their faults there was no way she wanted to abandon the Literacy and Numeracy hours and return to “the chaos of the classroom free-for-all.”

So what does this diorama say to you?

Every year we used to invite the planning officer in to explain to Year 5 what was going to be done with the an old swimming baths site. The baths were a 30s listed building but in a bad way.
The children always asked really searching questions and never let him off lightly.
I think children really enjoy working on something real and concrete like this and it shows in the standard of work they produce.

The site has now been re-developed but sadly it didn’t incorporate any of the children’s ideas. A skating rink was usually one of the suggestions, along with play areas and wildlife gardens. What we got instead was a number of large shops, fast food outlets, car parking and some high rise flats.

This interesting display is currently one of the most viewed photos in the Classroom Displays group on Flickr and I can see why!
Not all displays have to be for children’s work. This display was created by a Year 2 TA last year and shows how an eye-catching display can be used to carry story prompts.
This can be an effective teaching tool if the display is kept fresh by building up the prompts as the class explores story writing. The display needs to be pointed to as a classroom resource where children can be reminded to look. The same prompts can be used by the children as checklists for editing their own work.
This particular display was so lovely that it transferred to the library after Year 2 had moved on.
Buy it from our Bookshop

Update: Competition now closed.

The book is available to buy from our book shop and the price has been reduced to under £15.
Prize Draw
The author of the book kindly sent me a copy to review after several people bought it from the Classroom Displays Blog Bookstore. If anyone would like a free copy leave a comment and I’ll pick one at random on June 1st.
Lynn wrote:

Display is a mandatory aspect of teaching and yet most primary teachers have very little proper training on the subject. That’s what inspired me to write “The Rules of Display”!

The intention of the book is to provide basic guidelines rather than to be a source of inspiration for specific displays. It provides a good starting point for novices to display making with sections on Starting Points, Colour, Titles, Frames, and even covers Health and Safety.
Here’s a quote from Chapter 7 , Evaluating Your Learning Environment, which consists of a useful checklist that sums up the tone of the book:

Have you asked the children for their opinion of what is displayed? As in all aspects of learning and teaching, the children should be made aware of why you are doing what you are doing! Share your intentions with the children and give them a voice in the displays. Older children can be taught the main principles of colour selection and arrangement, and make their own classroom displays.

So far so good but, sadly there is a but, the second half of the book consists of 40 pages of “Photocopiable Resources” . These are really not that useful in this age of computers and clip art and more than a little annoying if you have paid nearly £20 for a book.
Still I like the first half.
Some teachers I showed it to were not impressed. They felt that it was too general and not linked to the curriculum enough. This is hardly surprising as it is written from a Scots perspective and there isn’t a National Curriculum in quite the same way there. (Personally I see that as a plus!) I think there’s quite a lot of food for thought in the book as well as practical advice and it’s a good starting point for students or teaching assistants.

Remember if you want to be in the draw leave a comment on this post
or you can buy the book from the Classroom Displays Blog Bookstore

I like this display from Clare in the Sparklebox Displays Gallery. The use of a black background with the red mounting and border emphasises the dramatic nature of the subject. I think the flame shaped ‘fast facts’ work well too. I’d like to have seen the children’s work mounted onto red too and perhaps even shaped like the facts. It might be petty of me but I’d also like the work to be either lined up straight or deliberately skewed - just off square grates on my visual senses

The Great Fire of London is an important topic for Year 2 history. The QCA guidelines give a good framework for dealing with what could be a difficult subject for Keystage 1 and seem to have the level about right.

With more TAs finding themselves teaching classes like History to cover PPA time I think we’ll see  lessons sticking even closer to the QCA. It would be a shame though if they didn’t take the chance to explore some of the more interesting web based resources for the topic.

• The Museum of London has a Day by Day guide to the fire which is a bit like a blog.
• Samuel Pepys is an interesting site but it’s going to need a lot of interpreting for Year 2
• There are also some basic free downloads relating to the topic to use in displays available on the Sparklebox web site.