Displays: Pretty or Practical?

I've seen lots on Twitter and Facebook groups recently where teachers are using this time to create some incredibly beautiful displays and even furniture (!) for their classrooms. I then saw a post where someone had asked what displays others have in their language classrooms and I wasn't surprised at the responses.

It seems like forever, and a common consensus, that we display vocabulary on our walls. There have been hundreds of inventive ways that teachers have done this and when I started my teacher training, I'll admit that making a beautiful and useful display was near the top of my priority list. I had visited other schools and seen some ideas that I liked so I took an afternoon and went to work. I printed off our "key" common vocabulary and categorised them by colour. I added grammatical headings such as "Connectives" and "Intensifiers" and "Negatives". I had a selection of around 8 - 10 words in each category and enjoyed pointing out to students who struggled to remember words that they could use the wall and look for a "blue" word. Though they had a lot to look at.

I had another display board in my classroom at the time and decided that some posters about fun ways to practices French and support learning would be useful there. I never referred to them.

I then found some great posters on tenses in French. They explained in really simple terms how to conjugate into different tenses with examples of irregular verbs. Oh, and let's not forget the classroom favourite... "Dr and Mrs Vandertramp"! These I did use a little bit, they supported my explanations sometimes in lesson. Students used the verbs that were displayed, already conjugated, but didn't learn any rules from this display.

The year passed and more beautiful display pictures made their way onto my Twitter feed. I was also teaching KS4 Spanish at the time and fell in love with the beauty of "The Verb Garden" and the "AVOCADO" displays. I actually spent a whole day during the summer holidays making the AVOCADO display. Then about a week of (short) lunchtimes making "The Verb Garden" with a student who enjoyed a chat! Sometimes students turned to look at the AVOCADO display to find a word to use in their writing. They never used The Verb Garden, and neither did I.

I think what I'm trying to get at is that as beautiful as classroom displays can be, they are not always useful. There is certainly something to be said for creating a tidy, bright space where students enjoy learning, but this is perhaps a sub-benefit. We can spend an inordinate amount of time looking for and making displays that don't improve our students. If we display words on the walls, students rely on them, they don't learn them, and just because they can put them in the right place in a sentence doesn't mean they can use them fluently should the display be removed. This, I believe, is actually a hindrance. Displays that demonstrate grammar rules are equally unhelpful. Students shouldn't be concerning themselves with the process of conjugating verbs, especially in the full paradigm, which is often incredibly confusing! They don't need to know that they should take the nous form of the verb in the present tense, remove the ending and add the appropriate ending from the present tense conjugation of another verb and aaarrrgggghhh!!! This doesn't support a love of learning a language! This reinforces the thought that learning a language is too hard and "not for me". It takes too long to feel success and students need to feel success quickly in the language classroom, it will create motivation!

My most recent displays are simple and they are not cluttered. The display which is the easiest to see for everyone in the class has the pronunciation rules in French. It's not "pretty" but it's neat and tidy and easy to use. Pronunciation underpins everything we do in the classroom and when we are presented with a new text or particularly difficult word, we DUEL code it. We Dot the silent letters, Underline the vowel sounds (as displayed on the wall), Exaggerate the accents and Link the liaisons. I devised DUEL after using CUDDLES for a year and deciding that it was just too long for us, I simplified it. We do still sometimes count the letters and tell a story in order to help our spelling but I've found the need has lessened following a strong focus on pronunciation. We've found that if students can say words accurately, they can spell them accurately. The display supports this, it doesn't give anything to them for free, they still have to think.

My other displays are maps. One of France, which I refer to constantly and the other is a world map. I use the map of France to point out where places are, often in relation to Paris as they've all heard of that! Lots of place names come up in exam questions and we've noticed that students presume anything with a capital letter is someone's name. Every time a place name comes up now I head over to the map to point it out, I ask questions about where it is in relation to Paris or if it's close to the sea. I sometimes add in a little personal experience if I've been there or know something interesting about the place. The world map I use less but it's extremely useful in pointing out French speaking countries and where they are in relation to the UK or France. I have found that displays that spark conversation about what you want them to talk about have had the most benefit.

So while my displays aren't the most pretty, they are certainly the most beneficial they have ever been and I won't be changing them any time soon.