Teaching primary
school aged pupils

Classrooms

What and Why?

Most children spend most of their daytime hours in classrooms. Unfortunately, for many children, their classrooom is a very uninviting place. Yet, we know that a stimulating and inviting classroom environment can have a significant effect on the achievement levels of children, on their attitude, and on their discipline and motivation. We also know that it is considerably easier to teach in an inviting classroom! It is not always easy to decorate a classroom if you are not in the same room all the time so the suggestions below fall into two categories.

Practical ideas

Practical ideas if you usually teach in the same room

• Involve the pupils in making decisions about how you decorate the classroom. Perhaps they can bring in posters, etc. to put on the walls.
• Display the children's work. Make sure that everyone has work put up on the display boards at some time.
• Try to create different 'corners' in the classroom, thus making smaller areas where the children can feel comfortable. For example, a reading corner, a writing corner, and a listening corner.
• Make a display area. The children could bring in things which they can show to the other children and tell them about. You could have a display that relates to the theme of the unit you are working on. For example, if you are working on Primary Colours 4, for example, you could display pictures of elephants, mammoths. If you are working on Unit 1 you could have pictures of old types of clocks.
  
  

  Practical ideas if you usually teach in a different room

• Put a cloth over your desk, or hang something on the wall, to try to create a different feeling for the English classes.
• Hang a string from one side of the room to the other and use clothes pegs to hang pieces of work from it during the lesson.
• If you have a small number of children in your class, or have divided the class into smaller groups that you will work with, you could take a mat or large piece of material for the children to sit on, around you, for example if you read them a story.
• You can make an instant display of pictures if you take an umbrella into the classroom, open it up and quickly fix pictures on it with clothes pegs or 'post-it' stickers.
• Music can also be important in establishing a welcoming classroom atmosphere.