Dynamic Displays

Getting your own classroom and being able to decorate it was one of the things I was most excited about when I landed my job. The things you put on your walls can be motivating, inspiring or simply just eye-catching. In this post, I hope to show you how I've made the wall space in my room work for me.

Opinions/Adjectives Board

This is very much a 'working wall' hence why it is so messy! I always hammer on about how important it is to put opinions in work and this wall really helps pupils to do this in a variety of tenses, instantly making their work more interesting. As we come across new adjectives in reading/listening texts, they get added to the wall. Positive adjectives are in green and negative ones are in red. I allow the students to get up during the lesson to go and pick an adjective from the wall and take it back to their place and they just stick it back up there once they are done. Makes a change from the monotony of amusant/ennuyeux!

Sound Board

Pupils so often struggle with the sounds in French and have the temptation to pronounce things exactly as they look which can result in some really interesting pronunciation of some words. This Sound Board is a really useful tool and allows me to direct pupils to sounds they are mispronouncing allowing them to self correct. I see pupils actively checking this all the time which means they are taking a more independent approach to their work.

Although Spanish is more 'say what you see' in terms of pronunciation, I would be interesting in developing a similar tool for Spanish in the future. 

'Up' Colour Agreements

I unfortunately can't take credit for this one. My friend @Gem_Quinn came up with this fantastic idea for displaying colours and their agreements. While it's nothing exciting or new in terms of grammar, the display is really appealing and eye catching and just makes those initial lessons on clothes a little more interesting. It also serves as a reminder to pupils that adjectives always have to agree in another language and I suppose these colours can work in similar ways to other adjectives so it serves a dual purpose in some respects.

Higher Level Structures

Especially when it comes to GCSE, we want pupils to be showing off that little bit more. This was an idea that I took from my second placement and was one that I hadn't necessarily thought of myself. Instead of pupils using the same structures that they've been using since year 7/8, display some 'higher level structures' (seen here in pink for French and yellow for Spanish) and use this as a success criteria for their work. Again, this just makes their work a little more interesting while ticking a box on an examiner's mark sheet.

Side-Note: You can also see here my irregular present verbs poster. I have 4/5 of these dotted around the room so that pupils can constantly refer to them!

Postcards/Interesting Images

Pinterest is one of my favourite things. While it may consume many hours of my life, some of the images and ideas on their are absolutely fantastic for decorating your classroom. As you can see here, they make a drab cupboard look a little bit more interesting. The Spanish postcards you can see here were picked up on a recent trip to Barcelona!

Dressing the Board

I've recently added time indicators in French and Spanish above the board to avoid, 'how do you say 'last weekend?' etc. I've also got days of the week/months on there as well as a student guide to DIRT and the GCSE components.

Do you have any display ideas?

Share them in the comments or over at @MLMusings

If you'd like any of the display ideas, please just send an email to modernlanguagemusings@gmail.com