Ideas for the classroom

Focus on... Display

With so many exciting activities now happening in primary schools in respect of language learning, creative use of school display offers excellent opportunities to develop, reinforce and celebrate languages. Primary schools have outstanding displays and this stimulating feature can be used to showcase a wide range of language activities. Here are some examples.

Words and phrases used by the children and teacher can be prominently displayed together with pictures that illustrate the concepts. These could include classroom phrases, basic conversations, names of objects, such as the colours, days of the week or parts of the body. Now that most schools have digital cameras, short dialogues could be created with the children using speech bubbles to illustrate these conversations. Seeing these, children will also begin to appreciate the links between the spoken and the written words and phrases.

Lyrics for popular songs can be displayed, again with suitable illustrations. Children love learning new songs in other languages and showing the lyrics supports learning.

If the school has a link abroad, why not show photos and information about school life in the partner school. Children greatly enjoy learning about the lives of other young people and this will stimulate their curiosity and enable them to reflect upon their own culture and that of others. There is real scope here for comparisons of school life, leisure activities, food, localities and TV. All these topics will get the children talking and increase their motivation.

When the children do a piece of work in the target language, such as a short piece of writing, a worksheet or short letter, or a short transcript of a conversation, why not laminate it and put it on a board for all to see.

Have you thought of naming the classrooms or corridors in your school after places abroad? This can really bring an international feel to the school. Imagine the corridors having street signs giving the names of well-known streets in another country.

Lastly, at some point ask the children what they most enjoy about learning a language and how it might be useful for them in their adult lives. Then put some of these up as quotes around the school. These can be named and displayed with a digital picture. The whole school community, including parents and visitors will then see that learning another language isn’t just fun and challenging, but points our youngsters to the future.

Featured in Issue 20 of the NACELL bulletin, Spring 2007