Monday, October 15, 2012

Management Monday: Displaying Student Work

This year, I'm trying something new for displaying student work in my classroom, and I just wanted to share. Meet my new classroom wall display:

I printed each student's name on a piece of card stock, and then had the students color and decorate the page however they wanted. I then laminated them and punched a hole in the corner so I could attach a 2" ring clip. Next, I used Command hooks to hang all of the students' cover pages.


At the beginning of the year, I displayed the cover pages because it was a good way to get to know more about the students and their interests based on what they had drawn or written or how elaborate their illustrations were. Now, as the year has gone on, I'm letting students choose what work they want to have displayed. They can just attach a finished piece to the ring and turn to that page of work.

Here's why I like this system:
- It creates a portfolio of student work. We're constantly adding things behind the cover page, and it's easy to pull it down when I need to have parent-teacher conferences or find work samples for students.
- It gives students some control over what work is displayed. Rather than have one uniform cute bulletin board with all of my students' work on it, my students are able to choose lots of different things to put up, and they can showcase the work they are most proud of even if there are other things in the pages behind that work.
- It's easy to change out. I don't have to deal with stapling anything or removing staples to change out the display. I can hand the students their ring and cover, and they can change it out themselves and hang it back up when they're done.

There's no question that it takes up a lot of wall space in my classroom. That's one definite downside of it, but I feel like it's a good use of wall space, and it definitely helps me do a better job with displaying student work and rotating it out more frequently.

Are you trying anything new to help display student work this year? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

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