After the quality of education, the school’s academic curriculum, teaching, the effectiveness and use of assessment and the impact of all these factors on pupils’ learning and achievement and personal development, I have been giving our schools “first impression,” some consideration. From the main drive-way / signage, parking, entrance, reception, staffroom, corridors and classrooms.
With many competiting priorities, time to dress the corridors and classrooms is hard to prioritise. Here are three observations and two gift wrapped examples for a big empty corridor space in maths block and how you could create your own.
Displays
Not all display spaces need to be filled but the anticipation that work will be displayed is important. Empty frames and labelled unused noticeboards that later become “wonder walls.” Or clothes pegs that make for live or changeable displays, you can replace the work with student names to show progress within a lesson or over time, moving student names up or down the learning line.
Word walls made from the keywords from the GCSE contents page make for quick, useable practical displays.
Use display spaces to gether feedback from the learning, share success criteria, or “What a Good One Looks Like”.
Lastly, if you want add a splash of inspiration. Try an oversized image. Here is an image adapted in Adobe Spark Post. Posterizer then allows you to create posters larger than a standard page, using the tiled printing method. It will rasterize any image and output files that can be printed at home and reassemble to the original image.
For you, two gift wrapped examples, “There is beauty in maths.”
