![]() This is the time of year that teachers are getting their rooms ready for their students to begin the next school year. We have been taught that our classrooms should be "print rich" and to some, this means "let's put up a lot of cute "stuff" and fancy bulletin boards, but; I have a question for you to reflect on. How is what you are putting on your walls and on your bulletin boards helping to create independent readers, writers and thinkers? If you cannot effectively answer this question, it's time to rethink what you are putting on your walls. The article Children and Place: Reggio Emilia's Environment As Third Teacher (Strong-Wilson and Ellis, 2007) describes the walls as a third teacher in the classroom. We are in the age of teacher created materials and we see lots of cute and creative things all over teachers-pay-teachers and other site that teachers can use to aid their teaching and make their classrooms pleasing to the eye. I just have a word of caution about what, how, and how much to doing when working with this "third teacher". Kristine Mraz and Marjorie Martinelli wrote a book in 2012 titled: " Smarter Charts". This book offers some helpful tips for the charts and tools that you place on your classroom walls. They say effective charts:
Anchor Charts are tools that support the visual learner and reinforce learning of students with other learning styles. Visual Learning Theory tells us that if students have a visual that represents something they have learned they can better synthesize that learning. Mraz and Martinelli also talk about different types of charts in their book. The charts fall into these categories:
Martinelli, M. & Mraz, K. (2012). Smarter charts, K-2. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
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AuthorPearl Garden is a doctoral candidate at Texas A&M- Commerce. Follow along as she drops "pearls' of literacy and chronicles her pursuit of her Ed. D in Supervision-Curriculum and Instruction- Elementary Education. Just know that these are the ramblings of a doc student and a lot of what you read is a first draft and will go through some rewrites. Archives
February 2021
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