Working Walls or Work in Progress

After an inspiring day at TBBLE (Manchester) I spent the train journey home excited. More excited than my daughter would be if I told her she could skip dinner and eat ice cream.

Why was I excited ... because my classroom walls will never be the same again.

It is with thanks to Innes Robinson that I now understand that classroom walls should be viewed as another work surface. They should be a work in progress and are clearly an under-utilised resource which led me to the following lesson with U6. Operational objectives are all about targets and it was this statement that hit them when they walked into the room. Why? was the question. Because it’s about achieving corporate objectives was the response. So if you were a decorating firm what objectives would you have for the notice boards in this room?

Groups were created; notice boards allocated and so began the target setting. After 15 minutes, feedback was given and some interesting objectives and ideas were discussed. Once all feedback was finished, I responded by saying, what is the point of spending a lot of time and money on designing and creating notice boards which stay the same? Websites don’t stay the same. Shop windows don’t stay the same. Businesses are forever changing so surely our classroom walls should reflect this.

The notice board was now our product and the next task was to be innovative but not too labour intensive … how are we going to do it? Well the brainstorm of ideas began ... Let’s have a board for definitions but the definitions change according to the topic we are studying. We put up quotes, different definitions, pin up good articles/newspaper clippings and make it like a spider diagram for that topic and so when we do the next topic we’ll start again. The walls will be different just like shop window displays. Nothing stays the same and my objective is to make my room as dynamic as the subject I teach.