Classroom Decor: the essential & no more!
Have you ever been in a meeting and thought “There are so many better things I could be doing right now, that would be a better use of my time and better serve my students”? I think we all have. This is how I feel while decorating my classroom.
I used to have more decor in my classroom. I hung up more posters but I found that I was spending time hanging (and rehanging when they fell) decorations that were not useful to my teaching and my students never looked at. Now I try to be very strategic about what I put up. I want them to be resources for my students and not visual clutter. I try to think, “what purpose will this serve me, or my students?” before I spend time putting it up. I have a lot of posters with silly sayings in French and pictures of Francophone places which are nice for students to look at but what I really want is for them to be engaging with me and the content and not looking at the posters. I prioritize the materials that I know my students will be looking at, or I will be using to make the language accessible to my students.
#1 “What purpose will this serve me, or my students?”
Above my white board I have numbers, emotions and colors to support my 4/5 UA students and some connecting words because my 7/8 students often ask for those while writing. I have verb posters in the front with high frequency verbs and the question words. I often point to these to aid in understanding.
I have a poster of classroom “rules for success”. I have an anchor chart with how to write a journal entry that we go over the first time we write in our journals and a poster with the habits of strong readers that we will discuss when we start FVR.
When we get to preferences I hang up four posters with “j’aime, j’adore, je n’aime pas and je déteste” because we often play four corners. As the year goes on we will make anchor charts and kid grids that I will have on display as well.
I start with the bare minimum and we build as we go. We are going for a productive and resourceful design, not Pinterest pretty.
#2 “What few decorations will make my classroom feel like home?”
For decoration, I sometimes bring in some succulents that my students like to water. I have my Petit Prince pen holder that I made and some drawings from students that are important to me. I have some string lights and fake vines that make it feel warm. I don’t currently have any of these up in my classroom. I have not had time and they were not essential to my instruction. I did hang the giant café poster my students were begging me to put up last year since I had an empty wall. I would not have put it up however if they had not wasted a good 20 minutes last year obsessing over it.
I have some images on my door that I like to switch out for the holidays - hearts with love words and phrases for valentines day, Mardi Gras masks, pictures of the Catacombes for Halloween, a “Capitale de Noël” arch, etc. I will hang these if I have time, my door is currently empty. I added some Monet paintings from a calendar to my walls before Open House.
Would I like a Pinterest perfect, pretty, themed classroom? Sure. It would be beautiful and a fun place to be, but do I want to invest my time in it? Nope. Again, the key is focusing on what is most important and resourceful. The rest can come later (or stay in the back of your closet).
What do you find is essential “decoration” for your students when setting up your classroom?
