Away with displays: my top ten working walls.

When I first started teaching, the idea of beautiful displays made me very excited. Over the years I have worked in children’s nurseries and I could spend hours making a perfect six foot long Hungry Caterpillar or a 3D pirate ship complete with feather parrots and a child-sized pirate lovingly splattered with paint and glitter.

However, it’s not quite that simple at secondary school. What’s the point in a display if it doesn’t impact the student’s learning? What’s the point in spending hours designing and laminating a beautiful display when by the time you actually get it up on the wall you’re about to move on from the unit and no one cares anymore? And there’s always the real issue (in my mind) that there isn’t enough room to display something from everyone in every class, and is that really fair?

So instead of displays, I have working walls. And over…