No Dinos Here! - Interactive classroom displays

Don't be intimidated by the expanse of blank walls and empty bulletin boards in your classroom. Don't worry that art skills are not your strong point. (They're certainly not mine!) My next few posts will offer suggestions to help you deck your walls with lively learning.

To start, we present the All-Purpose Tree display - a design for all seasons and topics. Tack a leafless tree shape (roots, trunk, branches) to a bulletin board or patch of wall. The shape may be cut out of brown paper. Art teachers call this paper "mural paper" and they may let you have some. If you prefer something more dimensional, twist brown paper grocery bags into branches. The tree shape remains on the wall throughout the school year. Leaves, blossoms, fruit, and labels may all be added to convey changing sets of information.
Since we want students to interact with the display, let them create some add-ons.

For example, for Rosh HaShanah, students can cut out leaves on which they write New Year's Resolutions or Mitzvot they hope to perform in the coming year. Once the High Holidays are over, students can reclaim their leaves or the leaves can be put in an envelope to be opened on the last day of school, giving students a chance to see how many resolutions or Mitzvot they acted upon.

The bare tree can teach Hebrew roots. Tack the 3 letters of a Hebrew word root to the root section of the tree. Students search Hebrew texts or prayers for words built from that root. They write the words they find on fruits of different shapes and attach the fruit to the tree branches. As Hanukkah nears, the root aleph, vav, resh ("or" - light) is especially appropriate.

Continue with pink blossoms containing facts about Tu B'shvat - and on throughout the year.

Let your lesson plans grow around this "Tree of Knowledge."

In future posts...more display ideas for walls that teach.