At the time of writing this, I have three weeks until I go back to school for inservice and four weeks until I see students again (yikes!). So I’m starting to think about my own classroom setup and what I need to put up on the walls. If you are a new teacher and don’t know what you need then I recommend that you keep reading to gather some ideas.
Now I do not have pictures of what I did in my classroom last year, currently. However, I will have pictures soon!
Make sure students can actually see it
Whether you are teaching elementary and have students that are three foot tall kindergartners and 5 foot tall fifth graders, or you teach middle school performance ensembles and the students aren’t moving around to see your walls that much, you need to make sure that students can see what’s on the walls or it’s kind of pointless.
In my classroom I focus on educational displays and I have performance ensembles. I also teach in a high needs area where one of the needs is glasses. Many of my students need glasses and simply can’t afford them. So in all of my classroom decor packs the focus is on making sure that the text is very large and legible from across the room. I even had my percussion students tell me if they could see the word wall from their seats in the very back before I made the design permanent.
If your students can’t see the words on the word wall from where you’ll be asking about vocabulary the most you either need to rethink where the word wall is or think about where they’ll be doing vocabulary activities.
Obviously that rule goes for all content besides vocabulary, but that’s the example I have in mind right now.
Have Educational Displays
I primarily have educational displays in my classroom. I teach band and choir so there’s like one giant word wall for vocabulary for both classes, then there are smaller vocabulary displays around the room for content specific vocabulary.
In addition to the word wall I also have a solfege ladder displayed (which I use for both groups), an instrument family display (still vocabulary?), and a data display. I have to have the data display because my school district requires one. If your school district doesn’t require one then awesome, because it can be a bit of a pain.
I also keep a few sets of mini anchor charts hanging up for my students so that they can use them any time they need. I simply just don’t have enough space to keep anchor charts up all year.
Have displays where you can build community
My favorite displays for community building are made of student artwork. I tape up all of the artwork that students give me throughout the year behind my desk, so that I can just turn around and look at it when I need a boost on those super long days.
This year I really want to try to print out pictures of things that the students do at our community building events (also new this year). For more information on those check back in later; I promise I’ll write a post about it.
Have Some Admin Friendly Displays
So administrators aren’t exactly knowledgeable about music. That’s not a secret. I got to the point where I just decided to hang student work in the hallway because then I didn’t have to have a monthly theme on my hallway bulletin board. However, administrators don’t always know what the students were supposed to be doing on the assignment you are displaying.
I liked showing off rhythmic dictation assignments last year because dictation is a high level skill. Since my administrators don’t know what musical dictation is, I put a piece of paper at the bottom of the bulletin board and explained all the skills that were involved in dictation and what the process looks like.
My principal caught me in the hallway and specifically mentioned that I must be doing a great job with the students if they can do something so advanced with them. So admin really like the student work displays, and helping them understand what they’re looking at goes a long way!
In summary…
There are a few different types of displays that you need to or should have in your classroom as a teacher. I would recommend having more educational displays than anything else, at least one community building display, and an administrator friendly display that you rotate periodically.
If you don’t want to fuss with making all the classroom displays by yourself I have several items in my Tpt store. I am working very hard to get the three product lines finished before the school year begins. If you purchase the bundles now you get any new uploads for free! You should go check it out!
Displaced Pedagogy 