(This is the first post in a three-part series)
The new 鈥渜uestion-of-the-week鈥 is:
How can classroom walls be used most effectively?
All of us teachers have walls in our classroom. And a quick look at some teachers鈥 Instagram accounts will show you how 鈥減retty鈥 they can be. ... But do they have to be pretty? How can they be used most effectively to benefit our students?
This series will explore the topic.
In today鈥檚 Part One column, Ron Berger, Oman Frame, Martha Caldwell, Valentina Gonzalez, Julie Jee, Michael Sivert, and Stacey Shubitz contribute their responses. You can listen to a I had with Ron, Oman, and Martha on . You can also find a list of, and links to,
In addiiton to the recommendations you鈥檒l find in this series, you might want to explore
Response From Ron Berger
Ron Berger, a teacher for more than 25 years, is the chief academic officer for , a K-12, nonprofit educational organization, and an author of several books including and :
For 25 years, when I was younger and more financially challenged, I held two jobs: I was a full-time public school teacher and also a busy carpenter. Things were much clearer when I worked as a carpenter. I knew exactly what I was aiming for. My co-workers and I tacked up the house blueprints on an interior wall, and we examined them daily to remind ourselves what we were working to create.
We were surrounded by models of quality: well-crafted window and stair framing, tight finish work on cabinets and window trim. If I wanted to assess whether a miter joint I created was good enough, I just looked in another room鈥擨 compared it with examples created by master craftsmen. Our work environment clarified, every day, our mission and our standards. Can this type of clarifying environment exist in schools?
Walls That Create a Vision for Learning and Quality
In Rochester, N.Y., there is a remarkably good public school鈥擥enesee Community Charter School鈥攚ith walls that send a powerful message. The hallways look like galleries in an art museum with compelling displays of beautiful, framed student work. Some wall exhibits are more like those in a science museum鈥攖eaching exhibits鈥攚here student text, diagrams, illustrations, and models explain the Rochester canal system, or beekeeping, or concepts in astronomy. Documentation panels from different classrooms tell the story of Learning Expeditions (long-term interdisciplinary projects) with artifacts from student research, multiple drafts of student work, and final products created for authentic use in the community. There are student reflections posted with the work documenting what they learned and how they changed as learners and people from their studies. Anywhere you walk, you discover what鈥檚 going on this school鈥攚hat is being investigated鈥攁nd you recognize a fierce commitment to quality and contribution.
In the Genesee classrooms, the 鈥渂lueprints鈥 of what the class is studying and where they are heading live on poster-sized paper as anchor charts, project-management tables, vocabulary lists, thought maps, concept models, and interactive word walls. Every student is becoming an expert in a content area at the same time as he or she is learning academic skills. You don鈥檛 need to guess their area of expertise and what skills they are grappling with: The walls tell the story. During lessons, as student eyes wander, the walls refresh and recharge their minds in the journey of their learning.
You also see messages about what makes the environment clear, safe, and productive鈥攖hings like the school鈥檚 character habits, classroom norms, habits of scholarship, noise-level scales, movement-level scales, student-job charts, and directions for the use of supplies or care of the room. You see things that help to make the classroom feel alive and human: photographs of the teacher when she was young, and photos of her family and life outside of school, and photographs of students鈥 families (however they might describe their families) and students鈥 pets.
Imagine being a new student coming to this school. It鈥檚 impossible to walk through the hallways or enter the classrooms without transforming your vision of where you are going. You are headed toward higher challenge, deeper thinking, better craftsmanship. You are going to become an expert鈥攁 scientist, an historian, an artist鈥攁nd you are going to develop an ethic of excellence for what you create. You immediately understand the norms and expectations for how people will be treated. The walls make all of this clear. This is what school means here.
The School as a Living Museum
The idea that the walls in a school can function as a museum of learning for students, staff, and guests has a rich heritage in the Reggio Emilia preschool programs in Italy, which attract visitors from across the world. They pioneered the use of 鈥渄ocumentation panels,鈥 which tell the story of student learning through an artistic arrangement of artifacts from that learning. These panels differ from the typical bulletin boards in American classrooms in that they typically include documentation of ideas and thinking, maps of concepts, early and later drafts of student work, photographs of students learning, and written reflections of student thinking transcribed by adult recorders or written by students themselves.
Many individual schools and national school networks, such as the High Tech High Network and the EL Education Network, take seriously the idea of using the walls of school to clarify and inspire students and teachers about the mission of the school and the fruits of student learning. When I am in schools that do this documentation well, the effect is remarkable. It鈥檚 hard not to immediately wish you could have been a student in this school yourself or that you could get all the young people you know to attend.
Sadly, most schools and classrooms I visit are almost empty of powerful documentation and displays of learning. When there are things on the walls, they tend to be commercial products, such as generic posters of rules or tips, or motivational slogans. I understand that this is not easy. It is a serious investment of time and resources to fill the walls with generative student and teacher work, to curate one鈥檚 classroom and school well鈥攖o make it a living museum of learning and accomplishment鈥攂ut the payoff can be profound.
Response From Martha Caldwell & Oman Frame
Martha Caldwell and Oman Frame, the authors of Let鈥檚 Get Real: Exploring Race, Class, and Gender Identities in the Classroom, developed a class their students call 鈥淩ace, Class and Gender.鈥 They also provide professional development in diversity, equity, and inclusions best practices for schools through :
Identity and learning are intricately related.
When we recognize the connection between the design of an inclusive culture and learning, we can use our classroom walls to reflect the identities of our students and engage them in important conversations about learning.
Spence, a white science teacher in an urban middle school, was concerned about the STEM achievement gap he saw playing out in his classroom. Low-performing students told him science was boring and checked out during his lessons. When he looked around his classroom, he saw only posters of famous white men. 鈥淢ost people think of science as the domain of white men, but I knew students needed to 鈥榮ee themselves鈥 in the curriculum. And it wasn鈥檛 hard to find ways to represent more diversity because all kinds of people do science.鈥
Spence hung posters of scientists of color and women, updated his class library, and challenged students to research scientists of color and women. He used his classroom walls to launch inquiries into the role of race and gender in science learning, explore the implications of identity in the achievement gap, and question implicit and internalized bias. 69传媒 created avatars of themselves to display on an 鈥渋nclusion wall,鈥 so now they are surrounded by images that 鈥渓ook like them鈥 and reflect their personal and social identities. Spence鈥檚 strategies for inclusion also transformed his relationships with students. His marginalized students now see him as a trusted advocate and seek him out at lunch and after school.
Spence knows his students are engaged in a dynamic process of identity formation, constructing their identities in a reflexive relationship with their environment. The images they see mirrored back to them influence who they may become. They need to see images that support their finest human aspirations in their classrooms and curriculum and in their relationships with teachers and peers.
Too often students encounter racist and sexist stereotypes in media that denigrate the intelligence of people of color and women, and they don鈥檛 see images of them as intellectual role models. Stereotype threat occurs when students confront situations in which they risk confirming a negative stereotype associated with their social-identity group. Fear of fulfilling the stereotype interferes with cognitive function and lowers performance. Stereotype threat has profound effects on learning and achievement, especially when the negative stereotype relates to intellectual competence. 69传媒 may react to stereotype threat by distancing themselves from their identity group to avoid being stereotyped, spending less time preparing for a task, or denying the task鈥檚 importance to avoid a sense of failure. Stereotype threat results in altered identities and inhibited aspirations.
A strategy we can use to begin to address stereotype threat is to create environments that mirror the intelligence of our students鈥 social-identity groups. We can introduce role models that counter negative stereotypes and discuss implications of identity on learning. We can promote connections between identity and academics and consciously debunk the myths that certain groups don鈥檛 care about learning or do well in school. We can allow students to maintain their cultural identity as well as excel in academics.
We can use the walls of our classrooms to affirm our students鈥 intelligence and help them counteract stereotype threat. By creating an atmosphere of belonging, we can help students see themselves as valued participants in knowledge building. While marginalized students must learn to combat stereotype threat, all learners need to learn to deconstruct stereotypes and critique what they see in the world around them. Respectful discussions of categories of identity can improve classroom climates and school cultures. The walls of our classroom can demarcate inclusive spaces.
Response From Valentina Gonzalez
Valentina Gonzalez is currently a professional-development specialist for English-language learners in Texas. She works with teachers of English-learners to support language and literacy instruction. In addition to presenting, she writes a monthly blog for focused on supporting ELLs. She can be reached through her website, , or on Twitter :
It鈥檚 not difficult to figure out what is valued in a classroom and what is important for students to know. Walk into any classroom when no students are there and take a look around. You can tell a lot about the classroom just by observing the environment. What core subjects are taught? What is valued? Are the students encouraged to take ownership of the classroom?
Yet in many schools, walls are sacred spaces. Teachers must be picky about what they place on the walls because of fire-code restrictions. Only a certain percentage of the walls can be covered, so teachers must carefully select what goes on the walls.
The most effective classroom walls hold three tenets:
- They support all students.
- They are culturally responsive.
- They are clutter-free.
Supporting All 69传媒
Walls that support all students include visuals, are interactive, and are accessible to everyone. Nothing is scarier than walking into a classroom midyear with blank walls. As teachers, we can capitalize on our walls by using them to create a space where our kids can refer back to for support during independent work.
One way to do this is by co-creating anchor charts with the class and posting them on the walls. that are step by step, visually supported, and explicit can aid students while the teacher is working with a small group or conferring one on one with a student. If students are not part of creating the anchor charts, they rarely see value in them and then have trouble using them independently. They become a waste of wall space.
Another way to do this is by creating and displaying thematic that include visual supports. Invite students to add to the word walls by creating their own drawings, labels, or bringing in real objects. Interactive word walls or interactive anchor charts are highly effective because students are part of the creation. They are doing the work. In turn, they tend to own the learning.
On the contrary, too many anchor charts or anchor charts with too much text can be ineffective. It鈥檚 important to take down anchor charts that students are no longer using. If we have too many charts on the walls, and students aren鈥檛 using them, then they become wallpaper to the kids. We have to keep in mind that the entire purpose of the walls and the charts on them is to support the students who need a little extra help.
No matter the age, grade level, or content, anchor charts and word walls are an effective use of wall space. Recently a teacher in high school asked if other teachers put anchor charts up on their walls. Even in high school, students are learning new content and new vocabulary. Anchor charts and word walls don鈥檛 have to be cute. They just need to be easily accessible to students.
Culturally Responsive
Culturally responsive walls reflect our kids. If you were to walk into my classroom, you should be able to see who my kids are based on my walls. Evidence of my kids, their 鈥渇ingerprints,鈥 should be all over the walls. Their work can be prominently displayed on the walls. They can be part of the process of creating chart and word walls. Visuals supports can be student-made. These are their walls. Building this sense of community in the classroom sends a message that all of our students are valued and belong.
As teachers, sometimes letting go of the walls is difficult. We want everything to look just right and just so. Remembering that these walls belong to the kids and they will be more successful if they are involved in the creation helps to keep us from doing all the work. We have to let go and let it get a little messy. It not going to look perfect, but it will be perfectly OK.
Clutter-Free
Freeing up the wall space from any clutter can help us to have more room for the most important stuff! When I think of clutter, I think of all the teacher stuff that our kids really don鈥檛 need to see. Anything that鈥檚 just for me, the teacher, can go in a binder or in a folder. If the kids don鈥檛 need it for learning, then it can鈥檛 take up valuable space on the wall. It鈥檚 also important to remove old anchor charts and word walls as new units are introduced.
Too much clutter creates a visual mess. Kids can鈥檛 focus on the important work. There are many ways to store these so kids still have access. One is to take them down and hang them on clothing hangers and then on a rack. Another idea is to take pictures of them and print them (in color if possible) and store them in a binder. I like to give some students an individual picture of certain anchor charts, so they can have daily access to it in their journal.
What we put on our walls or what we don鈥檛 put on our walls affects how our students do in our classrooms on a daily basis. It鈥檚 important that we reflect every now and then on what we have up on our walls. Is it important? Does it add value to our students? Does it value our students?
(See image below.)
Response From Julie Jee
Julie Jee has been an English teacher at Arlington High School in New York since 2001. She teaches 12 Advanced Placement English Literature and Composition and sophomore English at the regents level. Julie loves to read, run, take photos, and spend time with her husband and three children:
Inspirational posters are nice, but they gradually become part of the scenery over the course of the school year. Displaying student work is also a positive thing, but sometimes students want to keep their writing private. 69传媒 also don鈥檛 really get a chance to read their peers鈥 writing hanging on the walls. The same activity can easily be changed into a gallery walk instead. Creating bulletin boards is also often time-consuming and ineffective in terms of building a classroom community.
Turn classroom walls over to your students. One of the best things I ever did in my classroom was getting rid of all my bulletin boards and installing white boards instead. During debates, students will jot down their arguments. When we have a class share, my quieter students often feel much more comfortable writing their points and reading them from the white board as opposed to speaking in front of the class. They like to write down their own inspirational quotes and draw visual representations of characters and moments from literature.
A few years ago, I shadowed one of my students and noticed how much she sat during each class period. The only class that gave her freedom of movement was in her independent dance study. The rest of the time, she sat quietly and raised her hand to share her thoughts on occasion. Giving students time to get up and walk around the classroom to read each other鈥檚 ideas and questions gives them the chance to think, process, move, and write some more. It gives them opportunities to voices that aren鈥檛 always heard in whole-class discussions. It also gives them a chance to interact and communicate with one another in a different way.
Response From Michael Sivert
Michael Sivert (@MSivertEdu) is an ASCD Emerging Leader for the class of 2018. Currently, Michael is a 4th grade educator in a co-teaching classroom for the Hudson City school district in Hudson, Ohio. Michael earned his M. Ed. in educational leadership from Ohio Dominican University. During his 11 years in the education field, Michael has taught 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. He has also spent time as an RTI coordinator and an administrative intern. He is passionate about student-centered classrooms and works to create inquiry-based learning opportunities for his students. He is an advocate for inclusivity in schools for all students and works to make education equitable for all:
Classroom walls are a wonderful thing鈥攚hen you use them appropriately. It鈥檚 easy to use them as decoration pieces with pictures and quotes. The feel of our rooms does matter when it comes to student happiness and feeling safe and 鈥渁t home.鈥 However, great educators create that homey feeling simply by building relationships and creating a sense of trust and unity with their students.
I鈥檓 not trying to take away your decorations, I promise. I鈥檓 known to have classroom themes and fun decorations myself, as it adds a feeling of comfort to our learning space. What I鈥檇 like to challenge you to do is to integrate those decorative items into the learning of your classroom. Here are three tips for improving the effectiveness of your classroom walls.
Make one wall a Focus Wall. Create a space for each class or course that you teach during the day. Use fun fabrics or vibrant paper as the background and incorporate your classroom theme into the wall by selecting borders that match the decor. Each space is designed to be the student鈥檚 鈥渇irst focus鈥 into your content. My Focus Walls include an anchor chart, vocabulary/word work, helpful posters, mnemonics devices, lists of books that match the topic, etc. By creating this Focus Wall space, students immediately know where to look for help.
Use quotes that have meaning. Inspirational quotes and motivational posters can often be seen in classrooms. Consider allowing students to choose which sayings make the cut when it comes to your walls. This brings a sense of student ownership to the classroom, which is a necessity for healthy learning experiences.
Student work on the walls is a must. I, admittedly, sometimes didn鈥檛 post student work because it took too much time to do. That all changed when I hung a clothesline on my bulletin board and attached student names to each clothespin. 69传媒 changed out their 鈥淔eatured Student Work鈥 when they felt like they had something they were proud of, which left me free to work with students or plan effective lessons.
Make the wall interactive. I leave one of my smaller white boards blank to start the year. This white board becomes many things throughout the year, including a graffiti wall. 69传媒 write what they are thinking about our essential question, aha moments they have, misunderstandings they would like clarified, and more. Other times during the year, it becomes a space for creating murals for students who need some positive cheer and support from their peers. Other times, it becomes a Strategy Collector, where students add Post-it notes or dry-erase versions of their problem-solving methods related to class content.
Only hang what has a purpose. My general rule of thumb is that if it doesn鈥檛 need to be displayed in my classroom, it鈥檚 not displayed. For example, I used to have a poster of a bald eagle. While the bald eagle is surely important as a symbol of our country, it didn鈥檛 fit any purpose in my classroom for my students. I鈥檝e also taken down motivational sayings that my students didn鈥檛 connect with, their daily class schedule (it鈥檚 copied in their binder and available in their Google Classroom), and fluffy decorations that didn鈥檛 add value to my students鈥 learning (or weren鈥檛 integrated into some other component of my classroom).
Keep your classroom walls fresh, full of important content and student work, and meaningful to the content and to the relationships in your classroom. Student learning will be enhanced, and students will be happier. A student鈥檚 smile, after all, is the very best decor we can have in our rooms.
Response From Stacey Shubitz
Stacey Shubitz is an , an adjunct professor, and a former elementary school teacher. She鈥檚 the author of and the co-author of . Her forthcoming book, Welcome to Writing Workshop, will be available from Stenhouse Publishers in early 2019. She blogs at and can be found on Twitter :
My first teaching job was for a principal who disliked when classrooms were plastered with posters purchased at the teacher store. As a result, I started each school year with mostly blank bulletin boards. As the days passed, student work was placed on each subject area鈥檚 bulletin boards. Throughout the school year, the bulletin boards also held co-created strategy charts.
A few years ago, Beth Moore, one of my co-authors from Two Writing Teachers, helped me to better understand what creating and sustaining a child-centered classroom was about. Beth explained the 80/20 Rule to me, which is where 80 percent of the things displayed in the classroom are student-created while 20 percent of the classroom is teacher-created. Keeping these percentages in mind ensures that students have ownership over classroom environments.
Soon after Beth told me about the 80/20 Rule, I did a walk-hrough of a school with an administrator in late August. We entered a 4th/5th grade classroom that was impeccably decorated. Chevron borders surrounded each bulletin board, which were covered with teacher-created charts, sayings, and reference tools. The administrator turned to me and asked, 鈥淚sn鈥檛 this classroom great?鈥
I knew it was a rhetorical question so I hesitated. I could agree or I could take the opportunity to share my true feelings. I inhaled, then said, 鈥淚 appreciate the aesthetics of this classroom. The teacher has color-coordinated everything in soothing blues and grays. Everything seems like it鈥檚 in order and ready to go for the first day of school. However, I wonder, where is the space for the children in this classroom?鈥
鈥淲hat do you mean? Their desks are right here,鈥 she gestured to the student seating.
鈥淎s I look around the room, I鈥檓 noticing there isn鈥檛 any empty wall space for the children. All of the charts have been created by the teacher, and they鈥檙e hanging on the walls. I don鈥檛 see any space for students to display their work in progress or to showcase finished work. I鈥檓 also noticing there鈥檚 a bulletin board for the writing process where they can move their name to the part of the writing process they鈥檙e in on any given day. However, the writing process isn鈥檛 linear, and therefore, this doesn鈥檛 seem like the best use of bulletin board space.鈥
The administrator looked at me and said, 鈥淚 thought it was pretty.鈥
鈥淚t鈥檚 an attractive space! I can tell the teacher spent hours preparing the classroom. However, starting the year with blank walls is OK. Yes, color coordinate. Yes, cover bulletin boards with fadeless paper. However, I don鈥檛 believe the actual bulletin boards should be covered with teacher-made materials. First, a child can have sensory overload when they enter an environment like this since there鈥檚 so much to read on the walls. But, more importantly, children should be part of the learning in the classroom, and the learning should be showcased on bulletin boards that change throughout the school year.鈥
I believe classrooms should be neat and inviting learning spaces, but they shouldn鈥檛 be cluttered. I invite you to talk to your students about how to fill the walls of your classroom. Try handing over 80 percent of the bulletin board space to kids. Give them ownership so they can take pride in their learning environment. You never know what can happen when students have a say over how the walls in their classroom are used. With some discussion about how bulletin boards can be useful, they can become teaching tools rather than places that only showcase perfect work or teacher-store charts.
Thanks to Ron, Oman, Martha, Valentina, Julie, Michael, and Stacey for their contributions.
Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.
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Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It鈥檚 titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.
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I am also creating a .
Look for Part Two in a few days.