Imagine sitting in a room for six and a half hours and having nothing to look at but posters (if you’re lucky), a talking head up front, and being threatened with certain death if you dare open your mouth. Add to that the possibility that this room has no windows and it’s stuffy. Or, imagine that the talking head up front is frightfully boring and the subject material is something that makes you want to pull your hair out (For me, that would have to be Shakespeare–I can’t STAND Shakespeare–a friend took me to a Shakespeare play once and by intermission I was a crazed lunatic).
However, I digress.
Recently on a Classroom 2.0 discussion, initiated by Jarrod, who asked for suggestions about room decor. He wonders how environment adds to student learning. I know when I taught for twenty years I always tried to make the classroom inviting so students wanted to be there. I made it colorful enough without trying to overwhelm my students so much that their eyes would not spin. So many teachers forget that while they can get up and walk around and talk, students can’t. And, students can get frightfully “antsy” if the room looks like a dark, dank, and dreary dungeon.
One of the comments to Jarrod’s post comes from Jane who gave some wonderful sites to go to for classroom decor sharing and ideas:
==>Classroom Displays photosharing group (Flickr)
==>Classroom Display blog
Teaching is one of the few professions where colleagues share so freely, and these are two sites that might help give your classroom that “Spring Cleaning” that you’ve been wanting to do, as well as perk your students up before state testing. Maybe these sites will give you that spark you’ve been looking for!
If you have any other sites that you know of, please share!
Tags: , classroom decor, flickr, technology integration
By: Jarrod Martin on March 27, 2008 
